AfricaIs aCountry

Rhythm like you’ve never seen

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Rhythm like you’ve never seen

By
Sean Jacobs

No one mixes nationalism, tourism and sport in a feel-good cocktail quite like the South African advertising industry.

I stand corrected, but no one mixes nationalism, tourism and sport in a feel-good cocktail quite like the South African advertising industry. Like in this TV commercial for the South African national tourism authority, where Diski, a South African style of playing football that prioritizes tricks and dribbling – which in real life has only reaped bad results on the field – is roped into promote the 2010 World Cup.

It comes complete with dorky instructional video.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.