http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKJ-DCMBKKI

It seems that the election atmosphere remains tense, but word from Liberia is people are taking it all in stride.

Beyond mainstream politics, it’s time for celebration.

The Lone Stars Vol. 1: Hipco and Gbema compilation is out! The album was released this past Tuesday, and is available for purchase by digital download at BandcampiTunes, or Amazon.

The above video is for David Mell’s “Hero”, one of the songs featured on the compilation. I think the album really shows the amazing talent working in both Liberia, and the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. Support these artists by buying their music!

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.