Postcolonial cons, scandals, and fraud
Business fraud and illicit financial flows are not a new problem for Africa—the “Drevici Affair” in Nkrumah’s Ghana is instructive.
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Marjorie Ruganda
Marjorie Namara Rugunda is a writer, researcher, and PhD student at the University of British Columbia.
The discovery of religion
We need to stop looking to Euro-America and its models and traditions, especially religion, as the source of all answers to the problems of the African continent and its people.
At the border, on the margins
African migrant women are exposed to intersectional systems of violence but are not simply victims.
Dispossessing to deliver
In South Africa, land occupiers are evicted from their homes in the name of housing delivery. On the Africa Is a Country Podcast this week, we attempt to understand why.
Reading List: Edna Bonhomme
The author writes about books whose true power comes from excavating the perennial endemic diseases that never leave our sight.
The proper course of justice
Existing models of racial healing center whiteness and demand the emotional labor of Black folk, fetishizing reconciliation but forsaking justice.
The slow cancellation of the future
Anxious and isolated, living in poverty or financial precarity, we sink into ourselves and adopt self-destructive coping mechanisms.
In sun and shadow
On the last episode of our sports and music series on Africa Is a Country Radio, we visit with Sean Jacobs and Tony Karon of the Eleven Named People podcast to preview the 2022 men’s World Cup football tournament.
South Africa’s postcolonial winter is coming
After 29 years of neoliberal failure in South Africa, foreigners are a convenient scapegoat for a national elite that failed to redistribute wealth. This is a pattern common to post-colonial Africa.
Philosophy for the people
For philosophy to be relevant in Africa, it must democratize and address contemporary social problems.
The wounded hippo
In a US confronting its own anti-black racism, sentimental imaginings of Africa do little but uphold the white savior industrial complex.
Without much sorrow
Queen Elizabeth’s failure to even acknowledge or issue an apology for Britain’s colonial legacy, explains why many Kenyans did not mourn her death.
Soft Salafization in the Sahel
Many see Salafism as rigid and unbending, but in the Sahel, political conditions force its proponents to be smart and savvy.
African joy, joy in Africa
We are usually more attuned to Africa’s pains than to Africa’s pleasures. What would studying African pleasures, beyond censorious judgment, look like?
The quiet violence of child maintenance
Humiliation and stigma are companions for women seeking assistance from courts to obtain maintenance in South Africa.
Brazil’s violent caste system
Despite the country’s marker as a “racial democracy,” racism and prejudice still persist in Brazil, often violently and with deadly consequences.