Africa

Publication Testing the fault lines

Testing the fault lines

Published: 14 March 2025
Study
Election-related disinformation is reshaping democracies across Africa. This study examines how fake content spread during elections in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal fuels distrust, exploits divisions, and skews public perception.
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Cover: Resilient Agriculture on the African Continent: The Proof will be in the Soil

Resilient Agriculture on the African Continent: The Proof will be in the Soil

Published: 6 May 2024
E-Paper
Africa must find pathways to provide a better life for its people, including access to healthy and sustainably produced food. This policy paper takes a closer look at the role of synthetic fertilizers in African food systems.
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Cover LSF Studie

The Liquidity and Sustainability Facility for African Sovereign Bonds

Published: 10 March 2021
Over the past few decades, market-based finance has become central to the global financial system. Huge volumes of financial instruments are traded on a daily basis. In an effort to improve access to global financial markets for African countries, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) – in cooperation with the asset management firm PIMCO – has proposed setting up a Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF). This is designed to create a Special Purpose Vehicle to subsidise private sector investment in African sovereign debt. The LSF would be financed by official development assistance (ODA), multilateral development banks and/or by the central banks of members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
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Compensating Indebted Countries for Keeping Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Compensating Indebted Countries for Keeping Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Published: 5 January 2021
Fossil fuel development, in particular oil and gas, promised vast riches in the past. Today it is exposing fossil fuel producers and their creditors to a massive stranded asset risk. Technological disruption with the rapid cost-reduction of renewable energy and storage technologies, in conjunction with the inevitability of increased climate action, are at the root of unprecedented uncertainties over the future of the sector. 
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Perspectives 2/2014: Greening the Continent

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives 03/2014: What Ya Looking At?

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives 1/2016: Rights and Resources

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives 1/2017: South Africa - Emerging Power or Fading Star?

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives 02/2017: Putting People Back Into Infrastructure

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives 1/2018: The Quest for Political Accountability:

Published: 10 February 2020
This edition of Perspectives seeks to explore how actors in the state, political parties, and civil society have been able to make those in government less certain about the future balance of power through and outside of the ballot box.
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Perspectives 1/2019: Robbin’ the Hood: Inquiries into State Capture

Perspectives 1/2019: Robbin’ the Hood:

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Perspectives Africa

Perspectives 2/2019: Ecological and Social Transformation in Africa:

Published: 10 February 2020
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.
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Money against Migration: The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa

Published: 18 March 2019
Study
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.
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Perspectives Africa 3/2018: Through the Looking Glass - Images of African Futures

Published: 12 December 2018
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.
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Perspectives Africa 2/2018: Not Always on a Boat to Europe: Movements of Africans within and beyond the continent

Published: 23 October 2018
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.
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Perspectives 03/2017: The (Un-) Making of Icons in Africa

Published: 13 December 2017
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.
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Perspectives #02/2017: Putting People Back Into Infrastructure

Published: 13 June 2017
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.
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