Africa Brief on The Tradewinds Brief

The Nairobi Dispatch: Ruto Calls His Critics 'Noisemakers,' ODM Walks Into a Trap, Sama Fires 1,108, and a Father in Meru Does the Unspeakable

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Sunday in Nairobi. The Nairobi Dispatch introduces itself with the observation that, as weeks for political columnists go, this one required no embellishment. The facts did the work. I shall present them with the seasoning they need and no more.

Ruto in Mandera: “Noisemakers and Vision-less”

President William Ruto spent part of Friday in Mandera County. Reading from what appears to have been the morning’s prepared remarks, he dismissed his political opponents as “noisemakers and vision-less,” questioned whether they could locate Border Point One on a map, and asked rhetorically whether any of them had been to Rhamu or Wajir.

The Accra Almanac: De Gold Mine Come Back, De Free Healthcare Go Out, De Cocoa Farmer Still Waiting, and What It Means When an Opposition Cries 'Intimidation'

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 11:30:00 -0400

Greetings from Accra. The Accra Almanac introduces itself this Sunday with a week that happened to deliver the kind of political theatre a columnist dreams about and dreads in equal measure. Much to observe. Let us begin.

Damang Returns to the State

Yesterday, Saturday April 18, at the expiry of a twelve-month non-renewable lease extension, the Damang Mine reverted to the Government of Ghana at the close of Gold Fields’ operatorship. This is a significant moment and I want to mark it properly.

The Cape Chronicles: The Springboks Aren't Luck. Here's the System That Produces World Cup Champions.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Cape Chronicles: The Springboks Aren’t Luck. Here’s the System That Produces World Cup Champions.

The Cape Chronicles goes beyond the headlines. The real stories behind South African excellence — with the receipts.

South Africa has won the Rugby World Cup four times. The 1995 win in Johannesburg, memorialized by the Mandela handshake and the photograph every South African of a certain age can describe without thinking. The 2007 win in Paris. The 2019 win in Yokohama. The 2023 win in Paris again, the first back-to-back title defense since New Zealand’s in 2015. No other country has won four. Only New Zealand, with three, is close.

The Naija Lookbook: How Burna Boy, Davido, and Wizkid Built a Global Music Industry From Lagos in Under a Decade

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Naija Lookbook: How Burna Boy, Davido, and Wizkid Built a Global Music Industry From Lagos in Under a Decade

The Naija Lookbook goes beyond the headlines. What Nigeria does better than anyone — with the receipts.

Ten years ago, if you told a Universal Music executive in Los Angeles that a song recorded in Lagos would hit number one in fifteen countries simultaneously, he would have laughed. Nigerian music was a regional category. It had Fela Kuti in the canon and a diaspora audience in London and New York. But it was not, in any serious industrial sense, a global music business.