American pop culture that engages with Africa is often obsessed with royalty. But if we look beyond that, we just might find one another.
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The pitfalls of African consciousness
It took time to digest Beyonce’s Black Is King. Conclusion: it fails to deliver us. Instead, it’s just another capitalist construction of the world.
African art, COVID-19 and police brutality
Three prominent curators on how they are (re-)situating their respective curatorial practices in relation to the political moment.
How not to write about the Rwandan genocide
How Rwandan history is told—and who does the telling—is important as it determines who is able to participate in conversations about the past.
The specter of neocolonialism
Francophonie has served to obscure the harms caused by neocolonial projects in Africa, projects that are themselves a reflection of the racism within France’s borders.
Make Ghana pan-African again
Official Ghanaian pan-Africanism is now less motivated by African liberation and solidarity and more by profit incentives. Ghana’s Year of Return is the best example of this.
Culture
The media and the workers of Marikana
As the anniversary of Marikana just passed us, it is important to look back on how the events of those days were represented and how it is has informed our understanding about the massacre and about politics in South Africa.
The culture wars are a distraction
When our political parties only have recourse to the realm of identity and culture, it is a smokescreen for their lack of political legitimacy and programmatic content. It is cynically unpolitical, and it’s all bullshit.
Challenging notions of whiteness in South Africa
White South Africans have never really had to look in the proverbial mirror and reflect on where they come from, and how their histories have shaped their current realities, which inform their sense of belonging, shame, and entitlement.
After the monuments have been removed
Senegalese writer Mbougar Sarr on how we are actually informed about symbols we want to bring down, and about those we wish to commemorate.
Religion outside the law
Some churches in South Africa have become embroiled with criminal economies.
COVID-19
Eritrea’s deteriorating state
The Eritrean government continues to force students into military service in the middle of a pandemic. Things are about to get even worse.
What Chinese people eat
News reports claiming that “wet markets” in Asia are the source of the coronavirus obscure the fact that the consumption of wild animals is common in the West.
Structural adjustment comes home
Americans could learn a thing or two from Africans’ history of resisting structural adjustment policies.
Missing datasets
African societies are failing to systematically capture the true impact of COVID-19.
Politics
Our turn to eat
Reflections on Malawi’s recent election rerun, false starts and the hope that public representatives in Africa become accountable to their electorates’ aspirations.
The privatization of healthcare in Kenya
In Kenya, only the rich and politically connected can afford decent healthcare. Everyone else is a major illness or a road accident away from ruin.
We don’t want to reinforce capitalism and imperialism as we save the planet
In this, the first of a series of posts, we critically look at the implications of climate policy in the most powerful Western country for Africans.
The rising lakes of the Rift Valley
How climate change is threatening lives in Kenya.
The legacy of a ‘simple African’ revolutionary
Amilcar Cabral remains inspirational for Africans and non-Africans challenged by injustice and oppression.
The Footballer Is a Brand
The Liverpool striker, Sadio Mane, carries the values of his boyhood home, Bambali, with him. But his football is a product of the European professional game.
What can the Senegalese Sadio Mane’s story tell us about the marketing of dreams.