Panel 54 Podcast
Panel 54 is where Africa tells its own story. From Lagos to Lamu, Cape Town to Cairo, hosts Waweru Njoroge (Kenya) and Ndu Okoh (Kenya/Nigeria) explore the people, power, and politics shaping the continent. Each episode delivers sharp, evidence-first conversations with leaders, activists, athletes, and cultural voices. From sports and identity to security, media, new foreign influence, youth movements, sovereignty, and Africa’s place in a multipolar world, Panel 54 offers a global perspective through an African lens.
Episodes
What does it take to build peace when conflict is never far away?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge sits down with Brigadier General Kapeh Alwali Kazir (Rtd), former Nigerian Army officer, peacekeeper, and security strategist, to discuss leadership, diplomacy, defence cooperation, and Africa’s evolving security challenges.
What does peace actually look like in a region shaped by conflict, fragile diplomacy, and shifting security alliances?
In this episode of Panel 54 Podcast, Waweru Njoroge sits down with Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Charles Tai Gituai to unpack the realities of diplomacy, defence cooperation with the USA and others, Kenyan military history, and the di...
What if culture is one of Africa’s most powerful geopolitical tools? In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge sits down with Jinna Mutune and Mkamzee Mwatela to explore storytelling, film, performance, and the growing global influence of African creative industries.
The discussion explores how film, television, and performance can bec...
What if the security crisis in West Africa isn’t what it seems? In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Dr. Charles Omole, security expert and global adviser, to unpack the realities behind instability in the Sahel and Nigeria. From insurgency and banditry to governance failures and economic dependency, this conversation challenges the idea that conflicts in West Africa are isolated or purely local....
What if everything you think you know about Iran is incomplete?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Nazanine Moshiri, British-Iranian journalist and conflict analyst, to break down a country often reduced to headlines but lived in complexity...
From the st...
What happens when young men leave home for opportunity and are turned into cannon fodder in a foreign war?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with a Kenyan father ,David Mutai, searching for his missing son, Felix Mutai, and a returnee, Peter Njenga, who survived warzone and combat, to examine a growing and...
What happens when Africa stops exporting culture and starts building the financial infrastructure to own it?
In this episode, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with George Gachara, a cultural investor and capital architect working at the intersection of culture, finance, and policy across Africa’s creative economy.
Drawing from more than a decade financing creative industries, Gachara explains why Africa is not short of creativi...
What happens when climate change becomes a hidden driver of conflict and war across Africa?
In this episode, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh speak with Ferdinand Omondi, Communications and Story Manager for Anglophone Africa at Greenpeace Africa and an investigative journalist covering environmental and resource issues across the continent f...
What happens when Africa stops waiting for capital and starts negotiating over the resources the world needs most?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Maureen Farrell, Vice President for Global Partnerships at Valar Frontiers , a U.S.-based strategy and risk firm working across Africa, and also a former...
What happens when elections become rituals and power refuses to leave the room?
In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Prof. Nic Cheeseman, one of the world's leading scholars on African democracy, based at the University of Birmingham and the mind behind Democracy in Africa.
What does conflict actually look like up close, long before headlines catch up?In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with Frederick Grounds, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army with over three decades of service, much of it spent training and working alongside African armed forces across the continent.
Africa is no longer peripheral to global power. It is central to it. The problem is that influence does not always translate into control.In this episode of Panel 54, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh are joined by Prof. Peter Kagwanja, one of East Africa’s most influential geopolitical thinkers, to examine how power is exercised, defended, and contested across the continent.
In Part One of Panel 54’s end-of-year special, Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with some of Africa’s most influential editors to interrogate a hard question: who controls Africa’s story at a moment of global upheaval? Joining the conversation are Theophilus Yardy from Ghana, Tsepiso Makwetla from South Africa, James Muyanwa from Zambia, and James Mbugua from Kenya. The editors unpack collapsing trust in legacy media, the ris...
Japan and Africa meet at a critical moment in a changing world. One is navigating demographic pressure, technological transition and a complex security environment. The other is rising in strategic importance as the global order shifts toward multipolarity.
In this episode of Panel 54, hosts Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh sit down with His ...
Poaching networks, shrinking habitats, foreign market demand and political neglect are reshaping conservation across the region. And rangers are paying the highest price. In this episode of Panel 54, veteran ranger Michael Lenaimado joins Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh to break down what’s really happening on the front lines. He exposes how organised poaching networks operate, why demand in China for rhino horn and pangolin scales c...
After twenty-one episodes across politics, diplomacy, security, mining, protests, soft power and geopolitics, Ndu Okoh and Waweru Njoroge step away from the guest chair and turn the lens on themselves.In this special introspective episode of Panel 54, the hosts reflect on the conversations that shaped the season: interviewing former President Kufuor in Accra, unpacking debt and foreig...
West Africa’s gold is enriching the world — but devastating the people who live closest to it. Illegal mining has become an environmental catastrophe, a political flashpoint and a lucrative gateway for foreign interests. And at the centre of it all is the uncomfortable truth: exploitation thrives when governance fails.
In this episode ...
Wars without victory, alliances without trust, and peace that profits the few. The Horn of Africa remains one of the most strategic yet unstable regions in the world, and understanding why means following the money. In this episode of Panel 54, Prof. Hassan Khannaje, Director of the Horn International Institute for Strategic Studies, joins Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh to unpack the bus...
Africa’s influence on the world isn’t just political or economic; it’s cultural. From music and fashion to film and festivals, soft power is becoming the new diplomacy.
In this nineteenth episode of Panel 54, Ted Kwaka, cultural envoy and former Consul General for Kenya in Los Angeles, joins Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh to explore how Afr...
Africa’s debt crisis is no longer just about economics — it’s about power, sovereignty, and the politics of influence.
In this episode of Panel 54, economist Kevin Kigima Ng’ang’a joins Waweru Njoroge and Ndu Okoh to unpack China’s “debt trap” and what it really means for the continent’s independence and future growth.
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