Bernard-Henry Lévy in Nigeria
The French philosopher and TV personality favors spectacle over analysis. The result: we don’t make sense of political violence in Nigeria.
6428 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.
Excavating forgotten histories in South Africa
Remembering Adelaide Tantsi Dube’s poem ‘Africa: My Native Land,’ first published in 1913, the same year the white government stripped black South Africans of their land.
Reading List: Peter James Hudson
The writer, a historian of capitalism, white supremacy, and US imperialism, on four books he has been reading.
How African is the ‘African Studies Review’?
The journal’s editor acknowledges that it has a long way to go before most Africa-based scholars recognize it as an especially African journal.
Liberal democracy has failed in Nigeria
What alternative pathways are available towards accountable governance in Nigeria?
A question of desperation
Black popular culture has gained two new heroes in Queen & Slim—a film about desperate violence.
The Gig Economy Blues
The precariousness of life for women gig workers—in services like cleaning, driving, gardening, beauty supply, and catering—in Kenya.
Alternatives to starvation in Zimbabwe
An effective response to imminent starvation in Zimbabwe requires listening to the country’s farmers.
Should sleeping giants lie?
Colonial land grievances and the politics of redistribution in contemporary Kenya.
Vanquisher of troubles or light of our home
The music of Albalabel, a pioneering women’s group in conservative and patriarchal Sudan, endures over decades of struggle.
Reading List: Ainehi Edoro
English Professor and Editor of Brittle Paper, recommends five books she’s been reading.
An indispensable figure of African photography
Homage to Santu Mofokeng, photographer of quotidian black life in South Africa.
The Salah effect
More and more footballers, many from Africa, are openly displaying their religious beliefs on the fields of Europe’s top leagues.
Roti and roses
Will Shoki sits down with Ugandan-born rapper and housing advocate Zohran Mamdani about his bid to represent Queens in the New York State Assembly.
Queering pan-Africanism
The unexpected and twisting relationship between religion, pan-Africanism, and LGBTQ activism.
Linda Ronstadt is still playing Sun City
Nearly four decades later, Linda Ronstadt’s arguments against the cultural boycott – repeated in a new film – ring hollow.
The epidemic of thinkfluencers
For this group, politics is often framed as a series of never-ending discussions about social justice: The experience from South Africa.
Will the colonized ever speak?
New French film on decolonization in Africa and Asia incapable of avoiding the Eurocentrism the filmmakers wanted to steer clear of.
The best solution is coexistence
War, peace, and cooperation among herder-farmers in northeastern Uganda.
The unfinished business of the Tunisian revolution
Meryam Joobeur’s film, Brotherhood explores Tunisia’s outsized role in the Syrian conflict.