Fasting and prayer don’t determine election results; and two, social media has profoundly changed the political landscape.
A terrible failure to protect school girls in Liberia
The systemic rape of girls at a school run by a private charity in Liberia lays bare the tragic consequences of outsourcing education to unaccountable, unqualified individuals.
Africa rising? A historical perspective
African demographic growth is expected to continue unabated over the next century. How should poverty reduction be addressed on the continent?
Has Africa’s May ’68 been forgotten?
How do Morocco and Senegal, the two African countries that had a May ’68 of their own, commemorate or debate that legacy 50 years later?
Two trips to Juba
Youth activism and the politics of violence in South Sudan.
Arundhati Roy in Johannesburg—An essay on essays
In a world of fake news, shallow analysis and torrid pontificating, combining empirical evidence with emotive expression, is what give Roy’s essays legs.
Worldwide White Supremacy
The post Trump fortunes of South Africa’s white nationalists
South Africa's white nationalists are finally in the spotlight, thanks to Donald Trump. Nobody likes what they see.
Why are Italian fascists approvingly quoting Samora Machel and Sankara?
Europe’s anti-immigrant far right movements find willing African allies to amplify their offensive messages.
The global ways of white supremacy
Trump's tweet repeating white nationalist propaganda about land reform in South Africa shows that white supremacy has consistently relied on an international receptivity and interdependence.
Flight of the Boers
South Africa's lead anti-land reform organization is cultivating its relationship with the international far right.
Culture
The school hairstyle protest in Soweto
When black students at an elite school in South Africa’s capital protested over how teachers treated them over their hair, everyone noticed. It’s not the same in township schools.
Exile, Return, Home?
Many will read Sisonke Msimang’s new memoir for its musings on exile and home, but it is also a political telling of the complicated South African transition.
Antiblack excellence
In Ghana, political leaders, religious leaders and leading rappers all have one thing in common.
Decolonizing streets
The renaming of streets is an important urban decolonial practice.
Husbands to rent
Try being a single woman in Nigeria.
World Cup 2018
Pogbacité
Is France's World Cup championship team a bellwether for France's political future?
Everything ends with a song
"When the game is over in Russia, I’ll go play another at the field down the street. I’ll find a song to sing on the way."
The Respectable French
The 2010 World Cup was tumultuous for France; both an athletic failure and a site of social conflict. The French Football Federation doesn't want to repeat it.
Kylian Mbappé, Karim Benzema and France’s Second-Class Citizens
Fascists love Mbappé and hate Benzema. Between these two lies the problem of romanticizing the French team as an African team.
Africa No Filter
Would white women in the US have supported #MeToo in the same way if it had been started by women elsewhere in the world?
The author grapples with how to photograph the lives of her neighbors in a part of North East Nigeria, where Boko Haram is on a reign of terror.
Politics
Why we’re losing the fight against TB
The global response to a disease that largely effects the most marginalized populations of poorer countries shows a basic lack of respect for human rights on the part of international institutions.
Silent Aid
The time is ripe to ask not “does aid work,” but “how does aid work?”
When Melania Trump went to Africa
Pith helmets and jodhpurs aside, Melania Trump went to four African countries to promote her “Be Best” education initiative. What’s that about?
How to remember Jonas Savimbi
Sixteen years after the end of the Angolan civil war, the Angolan state considers how to properly remember and memorialize the leader of UNITA.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the historians
Given her status in 20th century South African history, historians have surprisingly said little about Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, before or since her April 2018 passing.
Africa is a Radio
In INTL BLK episode 5, deejays Chief Boima and Francesca Harding take a look at race and cultural difference in Latin America through the lens of trap music.