AfricaIs aCountry

Robert Mugabe’s hostage face

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

Robert Mugabe’s hostage face

By
Anakwa Dwamena

And, the terrible experience of Tanzanian women in Oman and the United African Emirates.

Robert Mugabe, seemingly under house arrest, at a graduation ceremony at the University of Zimbabwe.

One: Despite the urge to celebrate the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 years as leader of Zimbabwe, first as Prime Minister then as President, there is much reason to be cautious. For one, coups always sets a dangerous precedent. More specifically in this case, there are few signs the people of Zimbabwe will get to decide their new leader. This is not a revolution, but a realignment.

(2) In the aftermath of 9/11, Muammar Gaddafi announced both gas and oil exploration deals with the UK, and that he was abandoning his quest for nuclear and chemical weapons. In return, secret papers reveal, British intelligence gave him assistance in chasing down his enemies all over the world.   

(3) Increasing capacity of cell phones is changing day to day life in Africa. But it is not all a positive story, when we look at how many of the telecom giants got established in the first place. 

(4) The terrible experience of Tanzanian women in Oman and the United African Emirates.

(5) Climate change along with encroaching desertification is stealing the livelihood of many below the Sahara. What is to be done? 

(6) Speaking of which: at this rate, it is estimated that fish catches will reduce be 60 percent around the continent.

(7) Another look at the role religion had in the Biafra crisis, and how the crisis effected religion. 

(8) The Nigerian women’s bobsled team will be the first African team to participate in the sport this Winter Olympics. 

(9) This week would have been Chinua Achebe’s birthday. Google celebrated this with a doodle. Achebe’s work has been celebrated for its prescience and grasp on social relations. What hasn’t been talked about much though, is how humorous his work was as well.  

(10) Watch: The African player saving lives on the football pitch

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.