Sudan war: ethnic divisions are being used to cover up army failures – peace scholar: Sudan’s civil war has devastated the country and strained relations with neighbouring South Sudan. Events in January 2025 have stirred up xenophobic feelings in Sudan and outrage in its southern neighbour, heightening the risk of regional instability. Early in the …
South Africa: coalition government won’t fix past failures – expect the private sector to play a bigger role in delivering power, transport and security: To help save the planet, governments across the globe are choosing to adopt sustainable policies and encourage (or coerce) the private sector to do likewise. Given the climate crisis, most responsible …
Ethiopia’s Amhara crisis: Abiy’s political failures threaten a return to war: The federal government of Ethiopia declared a state of emergency in Amhara region on 4 August 2023. A special session of parliament endorsed this decision, placing the administration of the country’s second largest region under the military. This followed clashes between federal troops and …
US banking failures: the role of big auditors in another financial crisis: Three recent and very serious US bank failures – Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature and First Republic – have one common denominator: all three businesses were audited by one of the world’s major professional services firms, KPMG. The company has stood by its …
Digital bank runs: social media played a role in recent financial failures but could also help investors avoid panic: SObeR 9426/Shutterstock A crisis of confidence in the US banking sector led people to pull their money from banks including Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse, and more recently, First Republic Bank and California-based PacWest Bancorp. …
Casey review: how the Met police needs to accept that it is institutionally racist and deal with failures: Carrie Gomez/Shutterstock Louise Casey’s review of the standards of behaviour and internal culture at the Metropolitan police makes for uncomfortable reading. It was commissioned following the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who …
Soaring interest rates contributed to recent bank failures – and there could be more to come: Sven Hansche/Shutterstock US bank regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 2023, after it suffered US$ 42 billion (£35 billion) of deposit withdrawals in a 24-hour period. This was the largest bank failure since the 2008 global …
How changing banks’ corporate social responsibility reporting could prevent future financial failures: A company's internal structure can provide protection from external events. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – the failure of the biggest US lender since the 2008 global financial crisis – has created waves across the global banking system. The …
Nigeria’s new Lekki port has doubled cargo capacity, but must not repeat previous failures: Guo Jun/Xinhua via Getty Images Three-quarters of the world is covered by water and up to 90% of world trade is seaborne. Seaports and shipping are critical to the conduct of global trade. Africa has relatively few natural harbours that offer …
Philosophy can help us deal with failures that seem insurmountable: GoodStudio/Shutterstock Philosophically speaking, some kinds of failure are more interesting than others. Failing to make a meeting on time or not being able to get out of bed without hitting snooze at least once on your alarm would fall in the “less interesting” camp. You …
Ukraine war: Russia’s problems on the battlefield stem from failures at the top: For authoritarians like the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the military can serve a number of functions. Not only is it a key aspect of maintaining control and projecting power, but in Putin’s case it has served as a key national resource to …
UK drought: are farmers facing the crop failures of 1976 all over again?: July 2022 was the driest July in England since 1935. Combined with record breaking temperatures, we are hearing talk of a drought comparable to the great drought of 1976, with fears of disruptions to public water supply and poor crop yields, especially …
Kenya and South Africa offer insights into digital economy failures: Telemarketers at an international outsourcing call centre in Nairobi. Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images The World Bank is warning of the real danger of a massive economic downturn across the world. In a recent analysis it warned that many countries – including those in sub-Saharan …
How Nairobi police failures let people get away with murder: A protest against police brutality outside parliament buildings in Nairobi. Patrick Meinhardt/AFP via Getty Images At least one person gets killed every two days in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. Most of these cases either go unreported or are never resolved. Only 94 murder cases were …
‘We suppressed our scientific imagination’: four experts examine the big successes and failures of the COVID response so far: The World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic on March 11 2020. In the two years since, countries have diverged on their containment strategies, introducing many different ways of mitigating the virus, to varying effect. Here, …
Gas price spike: how UK government failures made a global crisis worse: JazzLove/Shutterstock The UK government has been in emergency talks with leaders from the energy industry as gas prices (and with them, electricity prices) have soared to more than four times the level they were at the same time in 2020. Concerns are growing …
Sir Clive Sinclair: even his failures were prescient inventions: Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the UK’s first mass-market home computer, has died at the age of 81. Pioneer of tiny portable devices, truly affordable computers and novel, electric forms of transportation, he leaves behind what some see as a checkered history of hit-and-miss inventions. But …
Chaos in South Africa points to failures in the project to build a democracy: South African soldiers interrogate a pedestrian outside a mall in Soweto. Photo by Emmanuel Croset/AFP via Getty Images The spate of violence that’s engulfed South Africa shows that not all citizens have internalised constitutional democracy and the rule of law as …