Tom Kayo

48 posts
Overhead view of a circular plenary assembly chamber with concentric rows of delegate seats.
Analysis South Africa Governance Geopolitics Policy

A seat at the table is not yet a say on the menu: the AU's G20 moment and the twenty-year siege of the Security Council

— In Johannesburg, Africa chaired the world's top economic table while the United States boycotted the meal. Formal access is compounding; power over outcomes is the harder acquisition.

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9 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A smartphone lying beside naira banknotes in Lagos, Nigeria, evoking mobile money transfers.
Analysis Capital Diaspora Policy

Africa's US$96 Billion Lifeline: Remittances Are the Last Stable Flow — and Everyone Wants a Cut

In 2024 Africans abroad sent home about US$96.4 billion — roughly three times what bilateral aid now delivers. A flow that shrugged off COVID-19 faces a different order of threat: exchange-rate mismanagement at home, immigration politics abroad, a new 1 per cent tax in the world's largest sending…

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9 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A large outdoor crowd of young people silhouetted from behind against a golden sunset sky.
Analysis Angola Elections Power Governance

Angola's Youth Found Their Voice in 2025. The 2027 Election Will Test What It Becomes.

A generation born after the civil war took to the streets over fuel prices, jobs and dignity — in the deadliest unrest since 2002. Their political awakening is the most important social force in Angola, and no one, including the opposition, fully controls it.

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4 Min
By: Tom Kayo
Aerial view of a winding river cutting through dense green rainforest canopy.
Analysis DRC Capital Policy Governance

The price of standing forest: debt swaps, carbon and the Congo Basin's hard bargain

— Three years after Gabon's blue bond, African governments are converting debt distress and forest cover into financial leverage — while carbon markets nurse an integrity hangover and donors pledge faster than they pay.

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11 Min
By: Tom Kayo
Aerial view of a solar panel field under construction, with a crane working among the rows of panels.
Explainer Energy Mining Policy

Africa's Energy Transition Trilemma: Oil, Gas, Minerals — and the Right to Develop

Africa holds the minerals the world needs to decarbonise, and produces oil and gas it may need to develop. The continent's energy debate isn't "fossil vs. renewable." It's about who captures the value — and who decides the pace.

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5 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A trading desk with candlestick charts and market data running across multiple screens and a tablet.
Analysis Debt Capital Governance

Rating the Raters: Africa's Cost-of-Capital Fight and the Battle Over the "Prejudice Premium"

African governments say the gatekeepers of global capital systematically overcharge them; the counter-evidence says governance, not geography, drives the grades. With a bruising public rupture at Afreximbank and the African Union's own rating agency preparing its first verdicts, an old grievance…

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10 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A rack of servers inside a data centre, indicator lights and cabling visible along the units.
Explainer Nigeria Kenya Technology Policy

Africa's Digital Stack: Fintech Leadership, the AI Scramble, and the Data-Sovereignty Dilemma

Africa leads the world in mobile money and is racing to build an AI economy. But with less than 2% of global compute on the continent, the defining battle is over who controls African data — and where the value lands.

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5 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A hand holding a mobile phone showing a financial app, shot close in with no visible branding.
Explainer Trade Capital Technology

The Plumbing of Sovereignty: PAPSS and the Quiet De-Dollarisation of Intra-African Trade

A Lagos trader paying a supplier in Accra still sends the money through New York. Africa's central banks have built a system to end that absurdity — 28 countries and counting — but the gap between membership and usage is where the honest story lives.

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8 Min
By: Tom Kayo
Aerial view of freight lorries parked in tight ordered rows across a large truck yard.
Explainer Trade Policy

AfCFTA in Practice: What “Africa’s Free Trade Area” Actually Means on the Ground

On paper, the African Continental Free Trade Area is the world’s largest free-trade zone by membership. In practice, its progress is uneven, corridor-by-corridor and country-by-country — and that granular reality is where the real story lives.

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5 Min
By: Tom Kayo
Rows of blue European Union flags on poles outside the Berlaymont building in Brussels.
Analysis Geopolitics Policy Capital Trade

The EU's €150bn Africa Bet: Green Transition, Migration, and the Search for Strategic Autonomy

As US aid retreats and rivals advance, Brussels is trying to reposition itself as Africa's "reliable partner." Its Global Gateway offer is real money — but it's entangled with migration politics and a hunger for critical minerals.

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4 Min
By: Tom Kayo
A line of armoured military vehicles drawn up on open sandy ground with hills on the horizon.
Analysis Security Geopolitics Mining

Russia in Africa: A Security-for-Minerals Model Reaching Its Limits

Moscow rebranded Wagner as the state-controlled Africa Corps and expanded its footprint from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea. But its model — regime protection in exchange for resources — is proving fragile, and 2026 is testing whether it can deliver.

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5 Min
By: Tom Kayo
An active construction site with several tall cranes working beneath an overhead bridge span.
Explainer China Infrastructure Debt Geopolitics

Beyond the Debt-Trap Cliché: What Africa-China Infrastructure Really Looks Like in 2026

The “debt-trap” story dominated a decade of headlines. The reality is messier and more revealing: Chinese lending has collapsed from its peak, some flagship projects genuinely underperformed, and African states are learning to renegotiate on their own terms.

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4 Min
By: Tom Kayo

Showing 12 of 48 total posts

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