Too big to regulate
Dangote’s refinery ended Nigeria’s dependence on imported fuel and became Africa’s most important energy asset overnight when Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz. But it also became the country’s most powerful monopoly.
Blog
The extinction pitch
Warnings from researchers at Anthropic and OpenAI that their own products could end humanity distract from the real damage AI is already doing.
Who profits from ‘saving’ women?
From the Women’s War of 1929 to the Anlu uprising three decades later, African women were organizing and resisting long before donors arrived to ‘give them a voice.’
Roaches in revolt
A joke born from a Chief Justice’s insult grew to 22 million followers and forced out a cabinet minister in eight weeks. What does this reveal about India and about the limits of leaderless revolt everywhere?
What Europe’s migration deals are really buying
European officials are calling the EU-Mauritania migration deal a success. Here’s what the numbers don’t count.
Why the US should not recognize Somaliland
Washington’s own record of intervention in the Horn of Africa — not Mogadishu’s — is the strongest case against recognizing Somaliland now.
This book was born in the streets
Kenya’s youth uprising was documented in real time through music, murals, memes, and essays. Publishing that history became an act of resistance in its own right.
Who killed the Shoga?
Long before modern sexual identities reached the East African coast, the Swahili shoga occupied a recognized place in women’s society, until colonialism and later Western frameworks remade them.
Somalia’s uncertain hand-off
As the UN and the US pull back from Somalia’s security architecture within months of each other, Mogadishu insists it is ready. The gap between that confidence and the country’s political reality tells a different story.
Reading List: Faraaz Mahomed
How do the struggles of one generation echo, decades later, in another’s?
Who started Nollywood?
Kenneth Nnebue made 27 Yoruba-language films before Living in Bondage. Why does Nigeria still only remember the one he made in Igbo?
On Safari
This publishing break, we contemplate why we’re all feeling so burnt out.