The Afropolitan Must Go
Is it a good idea to separate African urbanites from the rest of their cohort? How is that even constructive, wonders the writer of Norwegian and Tanzanian descent.
6315 Articles by:
Miguna Miguna
Miguna Miguna is a Kenyan activist and lawyer.
Street Photography in Johannesburg: Akinbode Akinbiyi
I love the way that Nigerian photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi works. I mean his approach to photography and the way that he uses his camera. At least in the video below, he's shooting with a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera, using the sports finder. That immediately makes him one of my favorite photographers. I adore Rollei TLRs, and it's tremendous fun to use the sports finder. The technique, like the camera itself, went out of fashion in the early '60s, except among fans and eccentrics. (I'm both, I'll admit.)
Before They Resurrect the Noble Savage
Jimmy Nelson’s photographs are deliberately constructed to capitalize on his own vision of these groups.
Wangechi Mutu in conversation with Trevor Schoonmaker
Schoonmaker: When did you start to see work by African artists that you did respond to? Was that in New York? Mutu: In New York, ironically, you know, in the early ’90s. Richard Onyango, one of Kenya’s big painters, was one of the first shows I saw.
My Favorite Photographs: Arnaud Contreras
Since 1999, Contreras has documented, via documentary films, radio programs and photographs, dramatic changes to the Sahara.
The death of Oury Jalloh
One of Germany’s most enigmatic post-war lawsuits will have to be reviewed. This post is both a chronology of what is sufficiently proven and a list of the numerous crudities that remain. What is can't be disputed can be summed up in one sentence: On 7 January 2005, Oury Jalloh, an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, burned to death in a police cell in the city of Dessau. The narrative about these events that has dominated public dialogue in Germany ever since has followed the official version of events as they were uttered on the very same day by the police. It goes like this:
The forgotten founding figure of African nationalism
Nokutela Dube wasn’t just the wife of John Dube, one of the founders of the continent’s oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress.
Lilian Thuram’s burden
Why should black players have the burden of calling out racism, while white players don’t feel compelled to do the same?
Weekend Music Break 62
10 new music videos from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenya, Mali, Burundi (via Belgium), South Africa and Nigeria
L’Afrique Est Un Pays
Dutty Artz and Africa Is a Country co-present the EP, “L’Afrique Est Un Pays,” as a gift to Africa is a Country readers. For a limited time you can download the EP by liking our Facebook page.
My Own Private Mangaung
Heard about Mangaung? No, not the site of the 1912 founding of the ANC nor last year’s ANC Conference. The real Mangaung. The prison. Mangaung Prison, run by G4S, is the world’s second largest private prison in the world. G4S is proud of that. They’re not so proud of last month’s allegations, revealed by Ruth Hopkins of the Wits Justice Project, of gross, brutal and widespread torture, forced anti-psychotics and shock therapy, and general anarchy and chaos on the part of the staff.
Revisiting Sweden’s colonial past
The image of a benevolent, preternaturally anti-racist “good old Sweden,” spreading its perfect democracy around the world, is fiction.
My New York Times column about Cape Town
The author wrote a column about racial and class inequalities in the city where he lived. The usual backlash by those in power followed.
Moonshine Roots Music and Fela Kuti
Valerie June admires Fela Kuti, Ali Farka Toure, Miriam Makeba and a Nigerian blues singer she once heard in her car, but can’t remember their name.
A window into South Africa’s jazz history
The first full color photographs of the vibrant, underground jazz scene that flourished in South Africa in the 1960s.
File under: Dutch Liberalism
No, there’s is not a vigorous debate on blackface and racism in the Netherlands. Instead it’s the usual duplicity of Dutch liberals.