Dialogue and Civic Spaces

The hbs contributes to democratic governance and social cohesion in the region through advancing civic and political spaces for dialogue. We partner with civil society, academia, private sector and decision makers from the region and beyond to discuss pertinent issues with regards to political, social and economic developments affecting the region. We work with youth to explore and engage in alternative forms of politics towards a more democratic future; and support civic actors to leverage new approaches to protect and advance spaces for democratic practice.

State Capture: On Kenya’s Inability to Fight Corruption

Article

In May last year, the Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) published State Capture – Inside Kenya’s Inability to Fight Corruption, a report that hit the country like a meteor. Perspectives spoke to Gladwell Otieno, AfriCOG’s director and long-time anti-corruption campaigner, about what motivated them to take a fresh view in the analysis of corruption, and what this means for civil-society action.

International Dialogue

Civic Voices on the State of Eritrea

Report

Hbs Nairobi supported the convening of a diverse group of 16 Eritrean professionals and intellectuals in December 2018 to discuss the implications of the sudden amelioration of the relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia earlier in the year. Over the 6 months which followed the workshop, participants engaged in intense consultations and decided to publish their joint reflections just a day ahead of Eritrea’s Independence Day on 24 May 2019.

Youth and Alternative Politics

Dossier: Olympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro

Half a million people are expected to visit Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics and Paralympics in August and September. At first glance this will be a huge benefit for the city. But just as for the World Cup in 2014, the city has become a contested space of political and economic interests.

Civic Spaces

Celebrating Whispers 15 Years On: How Satire Can Further Civic Discourse

This year, 2018, marks 15 years since the death of Wahome Mutahi (1954 – 2003), who was one of Kenya’s most prolific fiction writers, as well as a playwright, columnist, political satirist, pundit and public opinion leader. He was popularly known as Whispers after the name of the column he wrote for The Daily Nation from 1982 to 2003, offering a satirical view of the trials and tribulations of Kenyan life. According to George Ogola in The Idiom of Age in a Popular Kenyan Newspaper Serial, at a time when the state had all but monopolized public sites of expression in the country, Whispers kept the Kenyan popular media porous, opening up spaces for the discussion of social and political issues that could otherwise only be ‘whispered’. It became the most visible site of social, cultural and political expression for the last two decades at a time when freedom to such expression was highly constrained by the state.

Perspectives

Perspectives #03/2018: Through the Looking Glass: Images of African Futures

The Hollywood action movie Black Panther captured the imagination of audiences around the globe. In several African countries, it quickly became the highest grossing film of all time. The tale is set in Wakanda, a technologically advanced African kingdom that avoided the shackles of colonialism and slavery by isolating itself behind a guise of poverty and deprivation. Although what it presents as “African”, in terms of narrative and images, is far from uncontested, the film catapulted Afrofuturism – a discipline or aesthetic that enlists science fiction and technology to imagine black identities and futures unconstrained by past and present circumstances – from the avant-garde circles of artists and intellectuals into the mainstream.

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