We are taking a collective break from blogging until Thursday, January 10th to give us a chance to breathe and catch up with our lives. Till then feel free to read our rich archive of posts from 2012, check in with our “Best …”-lists below and follow us on Facebook and Twitter where we may post occasionally in the interim. Happy New Year!
UPDATE: Apologies, but we’ll be back on Monday, January 14th.
This year, instead of taking a publishing break, we will be covering the African Cup of Nations. To transition, we consider why football still matters in an era of enclosure, mediated presence, and thinning publics.
A dispatch from Benin City tells the unfinished story of the Museum of West African Art.
The scandal around Ezra Olubi has exposed the contradictions of Nigeria’s middle-class, online feminism.
In his latest exhibition, Khanya Zibaya charts the psychic and spatial terrain of a city where homelessness, decay, and human resilience sit uneasily together.
At the UN’s annual Western Sahara debate, everyone gets heard except the Sahrawis themselves.
The dispute over Benin City’s museum project shows that returning stolen art does not settle the question of ownership.
Somalis have answered Trump’s latest racist tirade not with outrage but with a tidal wave of trolling.
From Actonville to global stages, Pops Mohamed blended tradition, futurism, and faith—leaving behind a musical archive as luminous as the spirit he carried.
From IMF history to astrophysics, Nairobi’s Drunken Lectures turn casual drinkers into an engaged public.
A $20 billion iron ore mega-project is reshaping Guinea’s economy and politics, but communities in Simandou say they still lack water, electricity, and accountability.
Khartoum’s recovery is not a national recovery. Until Sudan confronts the violence that has long been concentrated outside the capital, ‘liberation’ will remain a hollow word.
As the White House hypes “Christian genocide” and floats military action, northern Nigerians are responding with satire.
What began as a revenue lifeline for small island states has become a global market where the wealthy buy mobility and sovereignty itself becomes a commodity.
The economic emancipation of the American working class cannot come at the expense of the global working class.
The post-colonial settlement has left Africa vulnerable to conflict, external pressure, and intellectual dependency. What comes next?
Trump’s threats of military action against Nigeria are not about Christian genocide, but are about rare earths, China, and the scramble to control Africa’s mineral future.
Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.
A photo essay on Nigeria’s Durbars and the power of royal pageantry.
Half a century after the Soviets built their base on the Gulf of Aden, the same strategic coastline is once more drawing in foreign powers, old and new.