Inventing our own fictions
For Binyavanga Wainaina, writing about Africa means to to write honestly, benching any attempts to categorize our lived experiences in language that could never accommodate them.
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Golda Gatsey
Golda Gatsey is a freelance writer and customer relationship manager.
To honor my father
On Father’s Day, an ode to Namballa Keïta, a nurse, soldier, and seemingly ordinary man, who worked tirelessly to promote education in newly independent Mali.
Mandela’s Black Marxism
Nelson Mandela is deified everywhere. But typically missing is an account of his early years, when he insisted that Marxism be responsive to South African conditions.
The bittersweet pursuit of liberation
Ismay Milford’s new book takes us into the world of anticolonialism, giving us a rich account of the struggles of a cohort of activists from east and central Africa.
Pat Robertson’s Africa
The ultra-conservative American televangelist Pat Robertson has died. As poisonous as his influence on American politics was, Robertson’s legacy in Africa is even more cynical.
The wounds that burst open
Writer, filmmaker and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga entwines the troubled story of herself and her country Zimbabwe in the book of essays, ‘Black and Female.’
Reading List: Pedro Monaville
Pedro Monaville selects key texts that helped shape a new book on Congolese student-driven left nationalism in the aftermath of Patrice Lumumba’s assassination.
Keeping the narrative straight
Although Senegal’s protests are riven with contradictions, they testify to its people’s willingness to defend their democratic rights and freedoms.
A slow emancipation
What peanut trading in late 19th century Senegal tells us about the fine line between slavery and freedom.
Dreaming of democracy in Sudan
On this week’s AIAC podcast, we discuss the roots behind fighting between factions of Sudan’s military.
Understanding Africa’s middle class
The middle classes of Africa are often idealized as spearheads of democratization and opponents of corrupt regimes. But what does the research actually say?
Archiving pan-Africanism
A project – helmed by historians Benjamin Talton and Jean Allman – to archive post-independence African revolutions, including Kwame Nkrumah’s personal and professional papers.
Reading List: Ayomide Bayowa
Nigerian Canadian poet Ayomide Bayowa discusses the influences behind his latest poetry collection.
The coloniality of global health
The full recognition of the neocolonial structure of international economic and global health relations demands much more radical political alternatives.
Who was Ndabaningi Sithole?
Zimbabwean founding father, Ndabaningi Sithole, has largely been edited out of the country’s history. But thanks to the tremendous archive of writing Sithole left behind, we can edit him back in.
Editing pan-Africanism
Many know Frene Ginwala, the iconic anti-apartheid activist, as democratic South Africa’s first speaker of parliament. But few know of her time building pan-African media in Dar Es Salaam.
Stealing the ball
Who is the black John Kennedy? A Brazilian footballer.
A power crisis
Andre De Ruyter, the former CEO of Eskom, has presented himself as a simple hero trying to save South Africa’s struggling power utility against corrupt forces. But this racially charged narrative is ultimately self-serving.
War has arrived
Writer and feminist activist Reem Abbas on the personal costs of the war between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces.
Robocop and Bin Laden in Uganda
In Kampala, Nasser Road has become an iconic site of entrepreneurial printing, most famously, its ubiquitous posters of notorious political figures like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.