AfricaIs aCountry

Just add some Africa

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

Just add some Africa

By
Sean Jacobs

An ad for multinational Orange to grab customers in a Middle Eastern country for some strange reason features a weird narrative of Africans happy that their homes get flooded. What does this have to do with the Middle East? (Or with Africa, for that matter?)

Perhaps all the commercials around the World Cup in South Africa has now made  ‘Africa’ such an empty sign  that it can just be appropriated and used whenever some feel-good effect is desired.  It’s becoming a recipe: take a product, add African kids, bare feet, smiles, sunshine, glamourized poverty – and voila, there you go.  Your product will change the world.  For the better, of course. Because you care.

-Herman Wasserman

 

Further Reading

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.