Africa is a Radio has a Football (is a Country) focus this week. Things have been moving so fast in FIFA’s controversial world that this show is a bit behind on the latest news. But we think you will enjoy the discussion anyway. Also included is a brief discussion around today’s UEFA Champion’s League Final.

And, a new segment in our show is an interview series we will have with various public figures. Our first interviewee is Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. The audio included in the show is only a brief excerpt, so visit the blog later on this week to get the whole thing.

Of course, as always, the show includes a selection of tunes from across the African continent and its diaspora. Stream it here via Mixcloud, and download the archive from Groovalizacion.

Further Reading

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.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.