Belgium’s blackface problem

• Heleen Debeuckelaere

Racism in Belgium is endemic, and not taken seriously. Few people talk about it and even fewer are listening.

Kenya gets an Art Fair

• Gemma Solés

Kenyan artists have to grapple with a number of challenges, including how to use digital platforms to promote and sell art at a fair price.

Soweto Punk Revolution

• Christine Hogg

A punk festival comes close to what one would imagine the DIY-embracing, eccentricity-accepting and obedience-ignoring CBGB’s of the ‘70s to have been like.

Nelson Mandela founded a beauty contest

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Weekend Special is basically highlights of the stuff we shared via social media, i.e. Twitter and Facebook. We fell off but feel it’s the right time to do it more regularly.

The limits of the idea of “alternative Africas”

• Laura J. Mitchell

How much energy should we invest in counterfactuals like: What if a diminished Europe, devastated by a plague, did not produce colonial powers, how might Africa’s history have unfolded?

5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Jihan El-Tahri

• Katarina Hedrén

Mexico’s deadly virus

• Santiago Solorzano

Moni

• Ts'eliso Monaheng

Fifty Four Kingdoms

• Sean Henry Jacobs

The apparel and accessory company, 54 Kingdoms, makes fashion with “a pan-Africanist sensibility.” They thought the African Cup of Nations is a good place to start.

Bienvenidos a América Latina es un país

• Camila Osorio Avendano
• Pablo Medina Uribe

Latin America is a Country is the newest member of the Africa is a Country family. The section is coedited by Pablo Medina Uribe and Camila Osorio.

The Digital Mandela

• Liz Timbs

Finding ways to deconstruct the legacy from reality when it comes to South Africa’s democratic president, Nelson Mandela.

#MyDressMyChoice

• Dan Moshenberg

In Kenya, women are organizing against the gender and moral police. Theyr’e using hashtags: #SavetheMiniskirt, #StripMeNot and #MyDressMyChoice.

Tis the blackface season in the Netherlands

• Alice de Vries

Zwarte Piet is just more evidence of how the Dutch majority silences and denies racist realities, especially that of black people there.

They do know it’s Christmas

• Sean Henry Jacobs

Bob Geldof doesn’t need to do a #BandAid30 for Ebola. African musicians made a song already.

How To Use a Sjambok

• Sisonke Msimang

This and other lessons from the South African front lines.

Has the giant fallen?

• Sakhela Buhlungu

The split within South Africa’s largest trade union federation, COSATU.

Willy Sagnol’s Race Problem

• Tom Victor

Africa is a Radio, Episode #7

• Boima Tucker

This month’s selection of tunes is from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Colombia, the United States, the U.K., Angola, and classics from East Africa.

The Bullshit Files: The “Mandela Ray Ban Sculpture”

• Duane Jethro

Public art, the vandalism of Nelson Mandela’s legacy for commerce and the spoiling of public space in Cape Town.

The key figures in Colombia’s Picó sound system culture

• Boima Tucker