Africa Is a Country

Africa is a Country; the academic edition

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

Africa is a Country; the academic edition

By
Sean Jacobs

Between them Wayne Marshall and Martin Murray pointed me to these 2 panels at the recent annual meeting of the American Geographical Association that took place here in New York City:

Africa is not a country: Challenges and opportunities in teaching about Africa I (Sponsored by Graduate Student Affinity Group, Geography Education Specialty Group, Africa Specialty Group)

Room: Carnegie Suite East, Sheraton, Third Floor (Panel Session)
ORGANIZER(S): Ryan Good, University of Florida; Amelia Duffy-Tumasz, Rutgers University
CHAIR(S): Kathleen Dietrich
Panelists: Seth Appiah-Opoku, University of Alabama;
Janet Puhalla, Saginaw Valley State University;
James Saku, Frostburg State University;
Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo, SUNY Cortland;
Veronica Ouma, Hofstra University

Africa is not a country: Challenges and opportunities in teaching about Africa II (Sponsored by Graduate Student Affinity Group, Geography Education Specialty Group, Africa Specialty Group)

Room: Carnegie Suite East, Sheraton, Third Floor (Panel Session)
ORGANIZER(S): Ryan Good, University of Florida; Kathleen Dietrich
CHAIR(S): Amelia Duffy-Tumasz, Rutgers University
Panelists: Jennifer Bjerke, Rutgers;
Sarah Smiley, Kent State University at Salem;
Hilary Hungerford, University of Kansas;
William Y. Osei, Algoma University

Anybody who attended and who has some feedback?

Further Reading

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

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.