A Certain Amount of Madness Podcast

Dr. Mamka Anyona
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A Podcast dedicated to independent, fact-based analysis and commentary on a diverse range of political and economic issues affecting the African continent. Hosted by Dr. Mamka Anyona Grounded. Unfiltered. Informative

  1. Jul 16

    South Africa's Reckoning: Xenophobia, Land, and the Ghosts of Apartheid

    In this episode, we are joined by South African writer and historian Phethani Mazibandhila to unpack the growing wave of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa and the deeper political and economic forces driving it. Far from being a simple conflict over jobs or migration, xenophobic attacks are situated within South Africa's unresolved history of colonialism, apartheid, land dispossession, and economic inequality. We examine how migrant labour has long been central to the country's economy, why post-1994 political settlements failed to transform material conditions for the majority, and how movements such as Operation Dudula have emerged within this context. The conversation also explores the role of capital, political elites, and external actors in shaping narratives that pit African workers against one another while leaving underlying structures of exploitation untouched. As calls for exclusion grow louder, we ask whether Pan-Africanism offers a more meaningful path toward justice, solidarity, and liberation across the continent. Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen on your favourite podcast platform. Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠⁠⁠ YouTube⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Tiktok⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠

  2. Jul 3

    Kenya’s Broken Promise of Free Education | Boaz Waruku

    In this episode, we are joined by Boaz Waruku, veteran educationist and Senior Advisor to the Elimu Bora Working Group, to discuss Kenya's education crisis. Long considered the great equalizer in an otherwise deeply unequal country, education has, over recent years, been beset with escalating challenges and controversies, from the hasty, ill-conceived rollout of the Competency Based Curriculum, to the return of school fees, to the collapse of higher education as universities undergo insolvency, to the recent wave of school closures following fires in high schools across the country. We explore what it would mean, philosophically, in policy, and financially to actualize the Constitutional guarantee of free and compulsory basic education for a developmental state, and consider education's fundamental place in transforming Kenya.

  3. May 19

    Borrowed Lives: Kenya's Personal Debt Emergency | Radha Upadhyaya & Naomi Barasa

    Nine out of ten Kenyan households are in financial distress. Not the country — the household. Your neighbor. Your mother. You. Fuliza alone disbursed 1.24 trillion shillings last year. People are skipping meals to service loans of a thousand shillings. Young people can't get jobs because they're CRB-listed. A regulator built for 42 banks is now chasing 800 lenders and losing.In this episode, Dr. Mamka Anyona sits down with Development Economist and Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi, Radha Upadhyaya and Feminist Community Organizer, Naomi Barasa to trace how a celebrated financial inclusion story quietly became a personal debt emergency. This is a conversation about structural adjustment hiding inside an app, about debt as a tool of social fragmentation, and about what it means to organize for dignity when you're too busy worrying about collection day. 👉 Subscribe for independent, people-centred, Pan-African analysis Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠⁠ YouTube⁠⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Tiktok⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ Thank you for listening.

  4. Apr 20

    Did Maandamano Change Kenya? | Vincent Bevins, Wanjira Wanjiru & Njuki Githethwa

    A decade of protests – the 2010s – taught us that mass movements require a theory of change and an action plan to achieve it paired with effective organizing. The Gen Z protests in Kenya demonstrated the power of the will of the people but also the limitations of streets-focused actions to achieve real structural change. In this moment of rebalancing global power because of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we ask: “How do we ensure that we channel those energies and frustrations of the streets to achieve our goals of people-centred governance through collective actions by means beyond street-led protests?” Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠⁠ YouTube⁠⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠⁠Twitter (X)⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Tiktok⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast. There's a lot more to come.

  5. Mar 17

    What the US/Israel-Iran War Means for Africa | David Hundeyin

    In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on 14 February, Marco Rubio, the United States’ Secretary of State extolled the virtues of empire and denounced anti-colonial and decolonial movements of the 20th Century. Two weeks later, the United States and Israel launched a missile killing 175 girls and staff in a school in the southern city of Minab, in what is widely understood to be the opening salvo of WWIII. As of this recording, just over a week later, it is believed that 1,500 people have been killed in a war that has spread to 12 countries. In our conversation with David Hundeyin, Nigerian journalist and author, we discuss the implications for Africa which go far beyond the price of oil. This war is about whose consciousness gets to define reality in the 21st century. For Africa, it may be our first opportunity in a lifetime to redefine our sovereignty. Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠ YouTube⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠Twitter (X)⁠ ⁠Tiktok⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast. There's a lot more to come.

  6. 12/10/2025

    The Great Kenyan Sell off: How Privatisation is Killing Kenyans

    This episode explores how privatization, shrinking public services, and climate-driven land grabs are reshaping Kenya. The discussion breaks down the push to sell state assets, the impact of structural adjustment, the rise of user fees, and the growing threat of green colonialism across water, land, and conservation spaces. You also hear a clear unpacking of the new Government-Owned Enterprises Act and what it means for sovereignty, accountability, and everyday life. Host: Mamka Anyona ("A Certain Amount of Madness" podcast)Panelists: Kevin Arenda Ovi (human rights lawyer), Dr. Mordecai Ogada (conservation policy expert, author of The Green and Evil), and Wanjira Kinotti (feminist, pan-Africanist, global lead for women's rights at ActionAid). Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠ YouTube⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠Twitter (X)⁠ ⁠Tiktok⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast. There's a lot more to come.

  7. 09/30/2025

    How the War on Terror Gave Kenya's Government Tools to Silence Dissent |Dr. Al-Bulushi & Rene Odanga

    In this episode, Dr. Samar Al-Bulushi and Rene Odanga join us as we explore the ways that Kenya's participation in the global "War on Terror" created mechanisms that are used to this day to suppress dissent, including the widely reported surveillance, arbitrary arrest, abduction, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing during the Gen Z protests of 2024 and 2025. Following the August 7th 1998 attack in Nairobi, Kenya ramped up its policing against its citizens in Northern Kenya and the Coastal region who had always been racialized as "other" since the pre-independence era. Supported heavily by the United States, Israel and other imperial powers, Kenya militarized its policing, introducing units such as the Anti Terror Police Unit and the Rapid Response Unit, which used the Anti-Terrorism Act to act with almost absolute impunity against Kenyan citizens. These are the same forces that continue to be used against dissenting Kenyans today to prop up the government in the aftermath of the #RejectFinanceBill protests and waning popularity of Ruto’s administration amidst unemployment, rising poverty, and other crises in the country. In the conversation, we also touch on the ways in which Kenya has become a sub-imperial power, building its own international image by intervening in other global South states such as Somalia and Haiti. For those watching from Nairobi/Kenya, Dr. Al-Bulushi’s book, War-making as World Making: Kenya, the United States and the War on Terror, which forms the basis of this discussion, can be found for sale at Cheche Bookshop in Lavington and online Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠ YouTube⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠Twitter (X)⁠ ⁠Tiktok⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast. There's a lot more to come.

  8. 07/24/2025

    Africa Emits 3% of CO₂ But Pays the Highest Climate Price | Fadhel Kaboub & Irene Asuwa

    Today, the reality of the climate crisis and its threat to our very survival—is unmistakably visible across the African continent. Despite contributing only 2%–3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa bears a disproportionate burden of the crisis, with 17 of the 20 countries most threatened by climate change located on the continent.Every year, actors from both the Global North and the Global South meet for the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss the ever-escalating climate crisis. COPs attract massive media attention but tend not to achieve major breakthroughs, and are frequently a forum for what Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has referred to as “blah blah blah” talks. The crisis worsens, yet governments continue to allow carbon emissions to rise. Instead, false profit-driven solutions such as “carbon-trading” and “nature-based solutions” continued to be peddled at COP and other climate summits as industrialized nations and multinationals continue to exploit fossil fuel and drive up carbon emissions. These technocratic, market-based, solutions often fail to center the plight of the working people who are bearing the brunt of climate change, especially those in the Global South. Instead, climate change has become yet another arena for what Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism: “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting marketing opportunities”. African land, in particular, is increasingly framed as a vast, "undeveloped" resource—its so-called undevelopedness seen by the Global North as a golden opportunity to offset the excesses of its consumerist lifestyle and energy overconsumption. What do we witness as a result? A rush by Global North actors to secure vast tracts of land across Africa, alienating communities who have stewarded that land for generations so as to “conserve” it and offset carbon emissions elsewhere.What would a different, more just response to the climate crisis look like for the African continent? To help us explore this urgent question, we are joined today by Fadhel Kaboub, a Tunisian development economist and member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, and Irene Asuwa, convener of the Ecological Justice Network here in Kenya. Watch A Certain Amount of Madness on⁠ YouTube⁠ Follow us on Social media: ⁠Twitter (X)⁠ ⁠Tiktok⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast. There's a lot more to come.

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A Podcast dedicated to independent, fact-based analysis and commentary on a diverse range of political and economic issues affecting the African continent. Hosted by Dr. Mamka Anyona Grounded. Unfiltered. Informative

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