KwaZulu-Natal Gothic
The crime drama ‘Reyka’ looks at violence in the troubled South African province.
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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.
Bookends: Rémy Ngamije
Rwandan-Namibian writer and founder of Doek! arts organization shares his sober routine and dramatic daydreams.
Another coup in Burkina
September’s coup is Burkina Faso’s second of the year, and its another one with popular support. Why did it happen?
A new Zion
The spread of Garveyism from the US to Africa was as much about political liberation as it was religious salvation.
Rise of the reactionaries
AfriForum is no longer on the political fringe in South Africa, rather it’s key in perpetuating increasingly mainstream, right-wing populism.
How to write like Binyavanga Wainana
This week on the AIAC podcast, we discuss a new posthumous collection of writing from Binyavanga Wainana.
Obviously, this is not working
Former Africa Is a Country fellow, Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, based in Ouagadougou talks to Bamba Ndiaye of The Africanist Podcast on the general situation in Burkina Faso the day after the coup there.
Participation without competition
Yoruba political ontology, non-competitive democracy, and the sacrality of power in Nigeria.
En route to the unknown
African women exercise their right to migrate, but also face dilemmas on their way to the unknown. We need policies that protect them.
Reading List: Melinda Ferguson
The award-winning South African author Melinda Ferguson takes us through a selection of books exploring freedom, death, truth, as well as psychedelics, which can be a route to pondering such big questions.
Straight in the eye
Sahrawis are robbed of their agency by a zero sum game for influence between two regional rivals Morocco and Algeria.
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.
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.