Borrowing from Jay Ulfelder here is a list (by total views) of the top ten posts on An Africanist Perspective in 2013. Incidentally, Jay was the inspiration behind four of the top ten posts of the year – he nudged me to stick my neck out and predict the outcome of the Kenyan election. Also, this month the blog turned six. Many thanks to Chris Blattman and other academic bloggers out there for inspiration back in the day when as an undergrad in New Haven I kept writing even though no one was reading the blog.

10. Who is the African child on the cover of William Easterly’s new book? (as I noted in the post below this one was a hit on twitter, and earned a spot on the top ten list even though I only posted it this month).

9. Sloppy reporting on the Kenyan elections (some of you might remember that Kenya had elections earlier in the year in which Kenyans, including yours truly, criticized some of the coverage by the international press).

8. What next for Kenya’s policy on Somalia? (this was a reflection on what Kenya might do in reaction to the Westgate terror attack that killed dozens of Kenyans and foreign nationals).

7. Corruption under apartheid South Africa, 1976-1994 (and its present institutional legacy) (this was my attempt to link present corrupt practices in the government of South Africa to their historical institutional basis – a running theme in my thinking and writing, you may have noticed, is that discontinuities are often a mirage; things only change marginally most of the time. INSTITUTIONS RULE!).

6. Kenyan Elections 2013 Polling Trends (Presidential Race) (Posts on the Kenyan election were a hit earlier in the year).

5. Why Raila Odinga Lost (For many observers the 2013 election was Raila Odinga’s to lose. So why did he lose?)

4. Who will win the Kenyan presidential election? A look at the numbers (Just for the record: (i) I got Kenyatta’s margin of victory right; (ii) I still do not think he got passed the constitutionally required 50%+1 votes; (iii) I was wrong in predicting an Odinga victory in round 2, Kenyatta would have won a round 2 easily because of Odinga’s woeful performance in the Rift Valley and failure to match Kenyatta’s turnout rates – see number 5 above).

3. KCSE results to be released monday (National exams at the end of secondary school are a big deal in Kenya – they determine one’s placement and major in the public universities; notice that the post is from 2011 but got hits from Google searches this year).

2. The Presidential Race in Kenya’s 4th of March 2013 Election (More on the Kenyan election; again I was wrong on the possibility of an Odinga victory in the second round).

1. Uhuru Kenyatta Emerges as 1st Round Favorite in Kenya’s March 4th Poll (Did the outcome of the presidential election reflect the will of the Kenyan people, i.e. the majority of voters? My answer is yes. I still think that there were shady tricks involved in pushing Kenyatta past 50% – he got a mere 9000 votes out of over 12 million votes cast past 50%. But he was on course to win the second round. I still wish the Supreme Court had ordered a runoff in order to give Mr. Kenyatta a cleaner mandate than he presently has and to dampen the feeling among the vast majority of Odinga supporters (and the wider left in Kenya) that the election was stolen by the conservative establishment).

If you ask me, this was my favorite post of the year.

Happy Holidays!