
God is a profitable and deadly business in Angola
In post-socialist, growth-oriented Angola, the rich are getting richer and the poor have only their faith.
6395 Article(s) by:
Fatima B. Derby is a Ghanaian feminist writer and queer activist.

In post-socialist, growth-oriented Angola, the rich are getting richer and the poor have only their faith.

This is not a neo-colonial offensive. The argument that it is might be comfortable and familiar, but it is bogus and ill-informed.

Plying potential audiences with expansive vistas, mystery, exotic landscapes, and ancient holdovers are time worn formulas when presenting Africa to Western audiences.


We asked about a dozen Africa Is a Country contributors what their favorite books of 2012 were. Here are their picks.


In any case, here’s 10 albums I liked this year; in no particular order. It includes Alabama Shakes, Isaac Mutant, Kendrick Lamar and Bruce Springsteen.

Janka Nabay, Ben Zabo, Sinkane, Jagwa Music, Kanyi, Youssoupha, Kyle Shepherd, Ebo Taylor, Karantamba and Francis Bebey.

Our very biased selection of the top 10 music videos of 2012.

If the image of the starving black child has been deemed obsolete, then so has the Western “we” that claimed so much power for itself in the late 1980s.

The best films of 2012 with African subjects as their focus: incredibly powerful and moving activist filmmaking that has documented the shifting politics of the continent.

If Os Kuduristas is problematic, there’s no one to blame for its existence but perhaps us, the international community and the media.

It’s 2012 and FW de Klerk still thinks Apartheid had been beneficial to its black victims. Yet global media treats him like an analyst on South African politics.

How anonymous parties define, construct, and support uprisings in Africa via social media.

Hollande’s visit coincided with a vote in the UN Security Council authorizing ECOWAS intervention in Mali; something Algeria, Mali’s northern neighbor, objected to.

How the humanitarian movement grew in close relation to the democratization of moving image technologies.

The idea that leadership is the panacea to South Africa’s varied troubles, is asserted as an almost axiomatic truth amongst South Africa’s monotonous punditry.

In South Africa, repackaging dated colonial fears about race and sex are used to sell beer and to win an advertising award for being “different.”