Africa Is a Country

How to read Africa is a Country

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

How to read Africa is a Country

By
Sean Jacobs

A few people have emailed us about the not-so-new layout here at AIAC; mostly about finding old posts on this new layout. The main complaint: “When I am on your home page, I can’t find a way of accessing any recent posts older than ‘Latest posts’ or hope they’re in ‘Top posts’.” (Only the last posts appear on the main body of the front page along with a ‘Featured’ post.) True. Here’s some advice: Click on the ‘More…’ button at the bottom of the front page. That will take you to a blog version (dates descending) of AIAC. Or click on the ‘Archive’ widget on the right and choose a month, say ‘January 2012’, and all the posts for that month will appear in chronological order (by date descending). The other option: If you’re looking for a specific post, just use the ‘Search’ option at the top of the page in the header. Or, if you’re looking for the work of a specific blogger, click on her/his name. Hope that helps and keeps you reading.

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.