Public funds for private gain
The planned global Education Outcomes Fund—the UN seems onboard—would create markets for “non-state” providers while guaranteeing profits for private investors that purchase “impact bonds.”
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Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
Italian fascists quoting Samora Machel and Sankara
The use of Marxist-inspired arguments, often distorted, to support racist or nationalist political positions, is known as “rossobrunismo” (red-brownism) in Italy.
I am German when we win
Mezut Ozil called out racism in Germany. So what happened to the conversation about dual heritage, racism and immigration there?
The President’s Footballers
Star players in Cameroon’s national soccer team have always doubled as PR pawns for the protracted rule of the country’s aging and hard-line head of state.
‘Why should we speak with you?’
An interview with Ruben Andersson on his book Illegality Inc, an ethnographic account of Europe’s efforts to halt irregular migration along Spain’s borders with Africa.
Kwame Nkrumah’s development state
Nkrumah’s government was driven by large scale state development projects. They have a mixed legacy. Can Ghanaians “redeem” the fruits of his development visions?
Pentecostal penance provides dubious prosperity
Prosperity preachers in Africa have been the subject of much media coverage, but may not be as popular as it would seem.
Decolonizing the academy
On the denial of academic institutions when it comes to talk of decolonization.
The Ghetto President of Uganda
Bobi Wine, building off political protest of the last decade, has become a symbol for a new politics in Uganda.
Eddison Zvobgo and the struggle for Zimbabwe
Eddison Zvobgo was both implicated in and a critic of Mugabe’s rule. He paid for it. His niece remembers him.
The Black Mediterranean and the limits of liberal solidarity
The documentary film, ‘When Paul came over the sea’ (2017) is an important summary of the conditions and motives behind forced displacement of African migrants
The contemporary state of Ethiopia
2018 witnessed a fundamental shift in how Ethiopia’s ruling party governs. How did it come about, what is incomplete about this transition, and what happens next.
The global ways of white supremacy
White supremacy always relies on an international interdependence as Trump’s support for white extremists in South Africa shows.
Xenophobia and party politics in South Africa
All political parties in South Africa try to mobilize voters based on their and voters’ xenophobia and they’re outdoing each other with an election scheduled for 2019.
What would happen if the women cut their ribbons?
Rungano Nyoni’s brilliant film I Am Not a Witch with humor and grace challenges our expectations put on girls.
The core of Samir Amin’s politics
The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin’s contributions to historical social science—and revolutionary theory—span an almost mind-boggling breadth.
The now neglected history of Soviet anti-colonialism
A brief history of MN Roy, an Indian delegate to the Mexican Communist Party and how the Soviet Union came to support liberation efforts in colonized nations.
What happened on Bird Island
The pain caused by the South African Apartheid government has been widely recorded. But we may not have heard the half of it.
A story of love in the time of the constitution
The relationship of South African former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela with her daughter is a perfect metaphor for the state of the country’s politics.
Afri-comics in the afterlife
Lily Saint talks with historian William Worger about the archive of sponsored comics by South Africa’s Apartheid government that he is amassing at UCLA.