KajyibwamiNotes

  The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) marked one of the most ambitious economic projects in Africa's modern history. Bringing together 55 African economies into a single market of more than 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP exceeding $3 trillion, the agreement seeks to reshape the continent's economic future through deeper integration, increased intra-African trade, and enhanced industrial development. At its core, the AfCFTA embodies a Pan-African vision: an Africa where goods, services, investments, and ultimately people move more freely across borders, creating opportunities for shared prosperity and sustainable growth. The agreement promises to reduce tariffs on most goods, strengthen regional value chains, encourage industrialization, and reduce the continent's dependence on external markets. Yet the concerns raised by African business leaders Aliko Dangote and Abdul Samad Rabiu reveal a fundamental contradiction at the heart of t...

  A viral social media post recently claimed that Iran had discovered a weapon “more powerful than oil.” According to the post, the Strait of Hormuz does not only transport nearly twenty percent of the world’s oil, but also carries undersea cables powering the global internet. It further alleged that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had threatened to cut those cables unless major technology companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon complied with its demands. While fact-checking later showed that many parts of the claim were exaggerated or unsupported, the story nevertheless revealed an important truth about the modern world: digital infrastructure has become one of the most strategic assets in global politics. The internet is often imagined as something abstract, wireless, and borderless. In reality, the internet is deeply physical. It depends on submarine cables, data centers, cloud computing facilities, satellites, semiconductor factories, energy syst...

  The debate between facilitative and evaluative mediation has for many years occupied a central place in mediation discourse, often framed as a choice that mediators must make about who they are and how they practice. This framing suggests a sharp divide between two opposing approaches: one that privileges party self-determination and process, and another that emphasizes substantive assessment and guidance. In practice, however, this binary has proven to be more misleading than useful, particularly in contemporary mediation environments where disputes are complex, emotionally charged, and shaped by legal, commercial, and institutional realities. In lived mediation practice, facilitation and evaluation do not function as fixed identities or mutually exclusive methods. Rather, they operate along a continuum, one that requires constant judgment, attentiveness, and responsiveness to the evolving needs of the parties. Experienced mediators rarely enter a mediation committed to a singl...

On 27 June 2025, the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington, D.C. . To many observers, this appeared to be a major diplomatic breakthrough. The two countries have had a long and tense relationship, often expressed through conflict in eastern Congo, and the agreement was presented as a step toward ending years of instability. For those encountering this issue for the first time, however, it is important to understand that the agreement did not emerge in a vacuum—it is rooted in a deeply complex and long-running regional conflict. Eastern Congo has, for decades, been one of the most volatile regions in the world. Despite its vast natural wealth, including minerals essential to global technology industries, the region has remained plagued by insecurity and armed violence. Numerous armed groups operate there, driven by a mixture of political, economic, and ethnic motivations. Among them is the Democratic Forces for the Libera...

In 2025, Rwanda registered 4,479 divorces through its Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system. At first glance, this may appear to be a routine demographic figure—another statistic in an annual report. But that interpretation misses the deeper reality. These are not abstract numbers. They represent the legal dissolution of thousands of marriages, each involving families, shared assets, children, and long-term consequences that extend far beyond the courtroom. This data point is not merely descriptive; it is diagnostic. It reveals evolving social patterns, legal vulnerabilities, and structural pressures within Rwandan society. More importantly, it exposes a critical gap between how individuals approach marriage and how they navigate its legal termination.   Divorce as a Legal Event, Not Just a Personal Crisis Divorce is often perceived primarily as an emotional rupture. While that dimension is undeniable, the legal system treats it very differently. In Rwanda, divorce is a fo...

  “Crush your enemy totally.” It is one of the most provocative lines in The 48 Laws of Power—and one that sits uncomfortably within the language of diplomacy. Yet, stripped of its bluntness, it captures a strategic dilemma that the Great Lakes region has yet to resolve: what happens when a threat is not managed to extinction, but merely contained? There is a persistent temptation in international diplomacy to treat peace as a process detached from its most inconvenient realities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Great Lakes region, where frameworks are signed, statements are issued, and yet the fundamental driver of insecurity remains largely unaddressed. At the center of this contradiction lies the continued presence of the FDLR in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—a force Rwanda has, for years, identified not merely as a security concern, but as an existential threat. Rwanda’s position is neither new nor ambiguous. Before and after the 2013 Peace, Security a...