Evidence & verification
Link the material behind a public claim. Verify names, places, dates, numbers, and quotations. Attribute institutional statements rather than treating them as independent proof. Seek corroboration appropriate to the claim.
Standards & accountability
Editorial standards
Research design, source verification, ethical inquiry, editorial independence, corrections and privacy.
Selection & publication labels
Publish within the African state–society, history, culture and knowledge research programme. Journal research, learning synthesis, selected news and commentary have distinct labels and collections. Institutional prestige and publication volume do not establish relevance.
Editorial independence
A funder, advertiser, political actor, or commercial client cannot buy a predetermined conclusion or suppress legitimate scrutiny. We retain editorial judgement about every institution, including prospective supporters.
Fairness & a right to respond
Represent relevant perspectives without giving unsupported claims equal evidential weight. Before publishing a consequential allegation, seek an appropriate response, record the approach and deadline, and arrange qualified editorial or legal review where needed.
African scholarship & historical context
Define places, periods and comparisons. Engage African scholarship, relevant languages and underused evidence; explain continuity, critical junctures and alternative interpretations. Scrutinise categories such as patrimonialism and state failure. A country, ruler or source does not stand for the continent.
Research design & review
Journal contributions require a manageable question, defined scope, engagement with scholarship, an evidenced argument, a contribution and ethical methods. Original research, reports, analysis, interviews and editorials use human editorial review. Automated source checks are distinct from that review and cannot fabricate sources, quotations, interviews, events or academic peer-review status.
Research ethics, consent & safeguarding
Explain selection, access, translation, positionality and data ownership. Obtain appropriate consent for interviews and oral histories; assess risks, anonymity and representation, especially for children and people at risk. Do not invent participant observation or fieldwork.
Corrections & complaints
Readers can contact the editor with a publication title, the disputed claim, and supporting evidence. Assess the issue, correct significant errors visibly with a date and explanation, and provide a reply or appeal pathway when oversight is established.
Conflicts & transparency
Disclose material personal, financial, or organisational interests. Label commissioned work and sponsorship. Keep a record of funding restrictions and publish relevant funder information without exposing confidential personal data.
Copyright & responsible reuse
Use original work, permitted excerpts, and licensed assets. Credit photographers and sources, follow licence terms, and distinguish illustrative images from photographs documenting our own activity.
Photograph sources, credits and licences · German Press Code · UNESCO media and information literacy
Wellbeing coverage
Public education
Wellbeing articles distinguish general education from an individual assessment.
The website does not offer diagnosis, therapy, personalised treatment, or crisis support. It does not collect clinical histories.
Before funded wellbeing activities
Agree the scope, safeguarding responsibilities, qualified review, consent and data procedures, and appropriate local referral information with delivery partners.
Human wellbeing is an editorial and educational concern. We will not claim that reading a publication alone produces a clinical improvement.
Governance & responsibilities
Current responsibility
Eric Niyonkinzo, Founder & Executive Director, currently coordinates the initiative, editorial decisions, partnerships, and contact. A governing board, registration, fiscal host, and charitable or tax-exempt status are not confirmed here.
Before public fundraising or grant contracting, publish verified legal-entity or host details and establish an appropriate oversight and complaints arrangement. A founder’s title does not replace a governing body or eligible grant applicant.
Contact the responsible personFounding financial commitments
- Use funds only for their agreed purpose and eligible costs.
- Maintain accounting records, contracts, receipts, payroll evidence, and required reports.
- Record conflicts and separate requesting, approving, and reviewing expenditure as the organisation develops.
- Use fair, documented purchasing and anti-fraud procedures.
- Do not bill one cost to multiple funders.
- Disclose grants and sponsorship appropriately; publish programme and financial reporting when funds are received.
The procedures for procurement, audit, complaints escalation, safeguarding, and data management must be completed and applied before the relevant funded activities begin. No audits, awards, partners, or completed compliance assessments are claimed.
Privacy information
This site has no public reader accounts, newsletter database or payment collection. Readership measurement stores only daily page-view and engaged-view totals for public pages. It does not store analytics cookies, browser identifiers, IP addresses, referrers or individual browsing histories. Engaged views mean 30 visible seconds and reaching 75% of the main article; they do not establish comprehension or unique readership. Browsers sending Do Not Track are excluded. Search filters are not saved as personal profiles. Essential hosting infrastructure may process access and technical logs.
Email and telephone links open your own applications. Enquiries reach Eric using the contact details shown on the contact page. Do not send confidential medical information, identification documents, or sensitive source material through these general contact channels.
The private editorial workspace uses a founder-only website account. We store the account email, a salted password hash, a hashed recovery key, and hashed session tokens. An essential secure session cookie keeps the editor signed in; sessions expire after twelve hours without activity or seven days. Expired sessions and security attempt counters older than one day are removed during successful account operations. The first password setup verifies the existing owner account through the hosting service once. This does not create public reader profiles.
Before adding newsletters, reader accounts, research-participant records, donations, or other personal-data workflows, publish a specific notice covering the responsible entity, purpose and applicable legal basis, retention, recipients, and rights. Verified publisher and legally required contact details must be completed before a public organisational launch.
Suggestions, contributions & recommendations