Publications

Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the geopolitical landscape of climate action has fundamentally shifted. This policy paper examines how the EU and China interact across the Global South in support of net-zero development.

The 2025 Gen Z protests in Madagascar were catalysed by several key political events. Madagascar’s position as a Small Island Developing State, uniquely vulnerable to climate change and economic precarity, poses specific challenges, and the country’s government has failed to address these in a manner that protects the futures of its young people. The 2025 protests rallied against political corruption and government inadequacy, demanding a stronger and more just political system as well as greater accountability for systemic shortcomings. While President Rajoelina was ousted, more work is needed to ensure stronger foundations for the nation’s development and future.

The death of 13-year-old Ochanya Ogbanje in 2018 sparked Nigeria’s #JusticeForOchanya movement seeking greater protections for women and girls against sexual and gender-based violence and greater accountability for perpetrators. The movement resurfaced in 2025 following concerted efforts at mobilisation, with renewed demands for justice and concrete procedural improvements. Interviews with movement organisers from different generations draw lessons on how such movements can be managed to ensure the attention and support needed to lead to long-term, structural change.

After years of conflict and displacement, returnees in Borno State (Nigeria) strive to rebuild amid insecurity and environmental challenges. This report analyses existing risks and offers proposals for safe resettlement, climate resilience and sustainable recovery.

Across Africa, climate shocks and debt distress fuel each other in a vicious cycle. With external debt more than tripling since 2008, rising costs and plunging currencies are squeezing public finances - leaving little room for vital climate resilience investments. 

Migration from Africa will not only occupy European politics in the future; it is already shaping politics in Africa today and is an important factor for economic development.

Approximately 800,000 people were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The question of the  international community's responsibility is still being asked today. Many questions about German  foreign policy at the time also remain unanswered.

In the history of social movements in African societies, generations of women have fought against patriarchal domination to achieve gender equality. However, it is only in the last few decades that feminism in Africa has evolved as a political concept.

South Africa’s economy, which was already in a precarious state before Covid-2019, has been tipped into full blown crisis by the pandemic. Gross national government debt  is expected to be upwards of 86% within two years. Eskom, which is the country’s state-owned monopolistic and vertically integrated electricity utility, is a key driver of this escalating debt profile and lies at the heart of the economy’s structural challenges. 

How should policymakers respond to the reality and future prospect of vast populations being displaced and relocated in an era of global heating? With climate change looming, anxiety over immigration from the Global South is increasingly fuelled by apocalyptic fears of ecological breakdown.

This volume offers fresh perspectives on the relationship between climate change and human migration, questioning the pessimistic prisms of ‘security’ and market-oriented approaches to ‘adaptation’ that currently guide policy.

Current EU migration policies' increased focus on returns raises concerns on the adequacy of such measures with EU standards and fundamental rights. This publication highlights the problems and difficulties returnees face in Afghanistan, Syria, Tunisia, Senegal and Kosovo.

For this edition of Perspectives, the Heinrich Böll Foundation offered Africa-based thinkers and commentators an opportunity to critically reflect on what a “transition towards sustainability” means or should mean for the region. The articles gathered here go beyond ideological debates to also provide some case studies where green-economy principles have been applied.

For this edition of Perspectives the Heinrich Böll Foundation asked a number of African intellectuals, writers and analysts to provide their take on Africa’s relationship with Europe. The result is a small collection of interviews, short essays and comments that throw light on the complexities and complexes of this relationship, using analysis, imagery, experience, provocation and humour.

With this edition of Perspectives, the Heinrich Böll Foundation explores some of the approaches and instruments that communities and their NGO partners have developed to create room for community-centred stakeholder participation, and to champion community interests and rights.

Informed by the discussions at an international conference jointly organised by the German Development Institute, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Stanford University on “Emerging Power or Fading Star? South Africa’s Role on the Continent and Beyond”, held 12–14 July 2016 in Cape Town, the articles gathered in this edition of Perspectives shed light on some of the nuances and challenges that define South Africa’s place in the world today.

This edition of Perspectives contributes to the ongoing debate on infrastructure development in Africa by sharing snapshots of experience from around the continent, exploring questions about democratic participation, the role of human and environmental rights, and economic transformation.

This edition of Perspectives tackles questions of state capture, and how the concept can contribute to understanding and strengthening democracies across Africa. Our contributors also open the possibilities that emerge when “state capture” is released from particular institutional settings and national boundaries.

This special edition of Perspectives was compiled with the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s North Africa offices and the Transform Africa project. It is dedicated to the emerging conversation of alternative approaches that challenge the historical bias towards the industrialisation of agriculture and the food system as the main strategy to address food insecurity while preparing for a +2°C world.

The EU-Africa migration summit in Valletta in November 2015 gave birth to a new European funding instrument: the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). This study comes to the conclusion that the implementation of migration policy projects supported by EUTF funding primarily benefits the (wealthier) member states of the EU.

Against a background of political and cultural disruption, Perspectives approached writers to inquire, speculatively or not so speculatively, into an African future. The result is an eclectic mix of contributions and conversations across the arts, culture, philosophy and politics. They offer glimpses of African futures – fantastic, idealistic, or sober, but always self-confident – that place the continent at the centre of a world to come.

Media images of desperate African refugees fleeing to Europe dominate the European news. This edition will help to shed new light on aspects of the movement of African migrants that have remained on the margins of discussion, and to place the pressures experienced in Europe within a broader perspective.

This research is conducted with collaboration of a team of researchers who are expert in the field of environment and laboratory sciences, and psychology with a high degree of expertise. This is the first organized study in Afghanistan that has tried to examine environmental pollution and its impacts on public health. It also provides a platform for environmental advocacy activities in Afghanistan. It is hoped that this research will be able to pave the way for activities that can improve the mental and physical health of Afghan society.

Which African leaders qualify as an icon? Perhaps this is always a controversial question, but it was much easier to answer, say, 25 years ago, when the public memories of Pan-Africanist champions such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere were still fresh, Nelson Mandela had just walked out of prison, and Robert Mugabe was a widely respected leader.