Brazil’s election poses a question that extends well beyond Latin America: how much freedom does a country retain to define its international role when external pressure collides with domestic political exhaustion? For the Global South, the answer matters more than any foreign government’s preference regarding the next occupant of the presidential palace. Strategic autonomy remains […]

On September 30 2026, China honoured 50 foreign experts with the 2026 Chinese Government Friendship Award for their outstanding contributions to the country’s development. The ceremony took place at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where Shen Yiqin, the Chinese State Councillor (the equivalent of a senior minister without portfolio or a deputy […]

President Xi’s latest visit to Washington came less than five months after his US counterpart President Trump was in Beijing on a state visit in May this year. The Chinese President’s trip to Washington besides coming too soon, was also very symbolic of a new trend in China-Us relations. While the September bilateral meeting comes […]

Germany is currently undergoing a profound political crisis, and being one of Africa’s major international development partners, we should be reasonably concerned. It is a crisis that goes against the very ethos of how Germany’s politics usually works. The German political culture values stability more than anything. This is why, for decades, its ruling parties […]

How useful is a theory about power that consistently fails to explain what the world’s most powerful country does? In a few days, students in the United States will return to university, and thousands of them will enroll in international relations (IR) courses. They will be instructed on the major theories of IR, like realism, […]

On 20th September 2026, Ella Pamfilova, chief of the Russian Central Election Commission, announced that United Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s party, had overwhelmingly won the Parliamentary elections, polling 355 of 450 seats in the State Duma. The election, with voter turnout above 59%, saw United Russia perform significantly better than in the 2016 election, when […]