The leading African writers and creative artists who are reimagining Christian thought and the several Christian-inspired groups who are transforming religious practice.
Latest
No two elephants are alike
The July riots in South Africa felt similar to that by Peronists in Argentina in December 2001. But Zuma’s people are moving from a much weaker position.
Sound Sultan’s Music Politics
Sound Sultan, who died of cancer in July 2021, battled with the cankerworm of bad leadership and outright violations of rules of law in his homeland, Nigeria, through his songs.
It’s never just about the music
Vinyl reissues are about engaging in a fight against forgetting much more than just music. Gideon Nxumalo and Spirits Rejoice’s music is transcendent of repressive daily conditions.
The exilic geographies of the South
Dugmore Boetie was part of a wave of South African writers who fled Apartheid. His exile and future literary notoriety, however, took a different path to some of the more classic refugee peregrinations.
Wolf in shepherd’s clothing
Kenya’s elites, including the church, use ponzi schemes for predatory accumulation and Kenyans will continue to see their dreams deferred if the law doesn’t change.
AIAC RADIO
Africa Is a Country Radio continues its season focused on African club culture. Our next stop is Nairobi with Kenyan journalist and radio programmer Bill Odidi. Listen on Worldwide FM.
Culture
South Africa’s fatigued and narcissistic nation-building discourse
Springbok rugby projects itself as progress, but preserves the way things are in the popular consciousness of South Africans.
Who will start another fire?
An interview with Kate Gondwe, Founder and President of Dedza Films, on a groundbreaking distribution initiative committed to supporting the next wave of emerging filmmakers and communities.
Postfeminism is only for wealthy Nigerian women
To have—or, at least, claim—a sense of self that is “already empowered” or happily unencumbered by power relations, requires a fair bit of material privilege.
What is whiteness in North Africa?
What happens when we take the study of whiteness from settler colonial contexts into the postcolony?
The longest shadow
We tell our stories when we are ready. This story is about the child sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of Anglican priests in South Africa.
Capitalism in My City
The Mathare Social Justice Centre has partnered with Africa Is a Country to produce a series of posts and videos to document everyday capitalism in Nairobi. The project is funded via the Shuttleworth Fellowship awarded to Sean Jacobs.
In the second video from our Capitalism In My City project, Dennis Esikuri talks to everyday Nairobians about the current employment opportunities in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic.
In the first video from a series for the Capitalism In My City project, Brian Mathenge decodes what everyday capitalism looks like from the margins of Nairobi.
Politics
A terrifying vision of South Africa’s future
If South Africa’s Left can’t find a way to channel popular discontentment into the building of mass progressive movements, it will instead morph into anarchy, nativism and, inevitably, authoritarianism.
Freedom and the struggle for dignity in South Africa
Within a context of spiraling poverty and inequality in South Africa, the lessons of uprisings in the 1980s are well worth revisiting. For millions of people, their socioeconomic demands remain unfulfilled.
Appeasing disgruntled critics
Israel’s success in getting observer status at the African Union is also a sign of the growing lack of interest among African leaders in the Palestinian issue altogether.
What is Black Conservatism in South Africa
South African politics remain fertile ground for new orientations: mainly conservative and black.
Análise da gestão da COVID-19
Em Angola, o governo de Presidente Lourenço não conseguiu resolver a pandemia de COVID-19 devido a corrupção e incompetência.
Technology
Nigeria’s Twitter ban and the resistance politics of VPNs
Anyone who cares about civil society, free speech, and human rights should find the state’s digital silencing of its citizens deeply troubling.
Silicon Valley in Africa
Western tech companies in Africa often claim to be "social entrepreneurs." But do their models reduce or contribute to inequality?
WhatsApp and anti-capitalism: should you stay or should you go?
Facebook and its “family” of services are a one-way street towards greater integration, data exploitation, and erosions of privacy by an increasingly monopolistic company.
More widespread than we think
Today's social movements rely on tech collectives to organize safely. But few know the history of other technologies used by earlier liberation movements.