I join my president to pray for my country
The misguided rhetoric of Tanzanian President John Magufuli guides the country’s response to COVID-19.
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.
Young, gifted, and pregnant
A series of social and political interventions are required to bring down Kenya’s startling teenage pregnancy statistics.
Our inaugural class of Africa Is a Country Fellows
Funded by Shuttleworth Foundation, we will support original work by 10 fellows. It makes real our goal to construct “a world where Africans are in control of their own narrative.”
A nowhere space
In an agreement between the EU and African countries, refugees held at sea in the Mediterranean cannot claim rights to asylum. They are forever in limbo.
The afterghosts of protest
Jumoke Verissimo’s first novel, A Small Silence, explores the psychic afterlives of protest in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.
Things fall apart
Paranoia is my friend since, as Achille Mbembe says, “the pandemic democratizes the power to kill; now we all have the power to kill.”
Global finance and charity killed African healthcare
What happened to the once universally accepted idea of healthcare for all?
The politics of sugar in Tanzania
Sugar has become the new gold in Tanzania as prices for the commodity soar and stocks vanish.
Transnational African feminisms
What roles have francophone African women played in movements for pan-African liberation, historically and now?
Place matters
If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it is that the virus has no boundaries, and the well-being of both rich and poor are co-dependent. What we do about that matters.
The class character of police violence
Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?
We cannot reform ourselves out of the times we are in
To end racism, we will have to change the structures from which it draws its mandate, and get rid of liberal and right-wing politicians who give it oxygen while we are being asphyxiated.
Hip hop futures in Kenya
Rapper Khaligraph Jones (government name: Brian Ouko Robert) chronicles the challenges faced by young people in Nairobi, Kenya.
Dear David Chang
A plea for foodie celebrities like Chang, the host of a popular Netflix show, to take African cuisine seriously.
Beyond the Western gaze
The “Africa needs help” vs. “No! Africa can teach you lessons!” is tiring. Other than benefiting a few pundits, are we deriving any value from it?
Dog day afternoon
The basic lesson from Halima Ouardiri’s short film, “Clebs,” about over 750 stray dogs living in a Moroccan sanctuary: We behave just like dogs.
A time for farewell, and a return
Africans rarely re-evaluate ourselves, the basis of our knowledge and our traditions on our own terms, argues Sierra Leonean writer Ishmael Beah.
Ivan Vladislavic and Muhammad Ali
How do white South African writers confront the country’s as well as their own pasts?
What are courts for?
Why courts should not become a country’s sole moral arbiter, how the coronavirus impacted judicial processes in India and South Africa, and more.
An ode to Somali girlhood
A new film set in Djibouti City presents a searing class critique of Somali girlhood.