Adopting Africa

We should talk about American celebrities' obsession with adopting African babies. The mostly unfunny comedian Pauly Shore is not our guide.

A still from Pauly Shore's film "Adopted."

Proving yet again that Africa always comes to the rescue of those Hollywood celebrities in need of relevance, yesterday saw the straight-to-DVD release of a mockumentary on the celebrity African adoption craze from, wait for it, Pauly Shore. Both CNN and The Huffington Post give it the full treatment. Neither is worth your time.

Suffice it to say, this one won’t be getting a review from Allison.

In any case, this has been done before, and much better:

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.