Feminists organizing offline in Africa
On the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) based in Kenya.
6427 Article(s) by:
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.
The Che Guevara of the Cape Flats
Ashley Kriel, murdered on 9 July 1987, embodied a kind of politics that people feel are missing from South African politics today: tireless commitment and sacrifice.
A plagued history of Kampala
The parallels between COVID-19 and the 1910s in Kampala, when the colonial regime used a series of plagues to cut Ugandans out of the capital city.
Ubaguzi wa vijana na mapambano ya kijamii
Vijana masikini wa jiji la Nairobi wanachukuliwa kama wahalifu kwa ajili ya vurugu za mfumo ambazo zinawanyima ajira, haki na uhuru.
Most of the friends I grew up with are dead
How poor urban youth in Nairobi are criminalized by systemic violence that denies them jobs, justice, and freedoms.
Society as we know it
The hashtag movement #WeAreTired highlights that rape is an epidemic in Nigeria, but nobody in power wants to tackle it.
The existing order of things
As the South African ruling class wages a protracted war against the poor and working class, it grows comfortable with the idea that people have more or less accepted the status quo.
A deafening salvo
With a new book, Chimurenga resurrects Festac, the blackest and largest ever gathering of artists from Africa and its diaspora in 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Niger Delta, oil, and Trump’s America
Lessons for Americans in the age of Black Lives Matter, from the Niger Delta’s long struggle for environmental justice.
Independence Day
The labor and political organizing of Somali immigrants in the US Midwest should inspire more Americans to join the broader movement for worker rights and racial equality.
Feminism, religion and culture in Senegal
Islam is interpreted to establish the dominance of men, and this male supremacy is at the root of all our problems.
The battle within
Uhuru Kenyatta’s political war against his deputy president and supposed ally, William Ruto.
Buddha in Africa
A new documentary about China’s colonization of Malawi reveals how one colonial hand opens the door for another.
Lumumba’s iconography in the arts
On anniversary of the birthday of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of an independent Congo, we ask, “What iconography arose around him, and why is that iconography so diverse?”
An ambivalent sense of belonging
Janet McIntosh’s fascinating book, Unsettled: Denial and Belonging Among White Kenyans, forces an interrogation of the past.
Six LGBTQ+ figures from African history
In honor of Pride month, we revisit the past which shows that many Africans were unapologetic about their sexuality and gender non-conformity.
The Two Sudans
During the Cold War, Khartoum was very successful at frustrating solidarity by other Africans for South Sudan’s independence struggle.
What does it mean to be African in a post-apartheid academy?
The Nigerian scholar and poet, Harry Garuba, who died in February 2020, was a key figure in African Studies and teaching literature in South Africa.
‘We have no Harlem in Sudan’
The current global discourse on Black Lives Matter does not yet adequately include anti-black racism beyond how the West experiences it.
Exclusionary city
The destruction of Tarkwa Bay in Lagos and the battle over what makes a city and who belongs in it.