Essentialism and the making of African refugees
African “refugeeness” in the media, policy, and academia is an essentialist physical image conflating material deprivation and multiple victimhoods.
Blog
The transcendence of boundaries
What kinds of radical emancipatory futures are being imagined in Africa’s speculative fictions?
A compassionate take on an invisible struggle
A new film by South African director Nomawonga Khumalo represents the contradictions and nuances of black women’s interior lives.
Equatorial Guinea’s ‘American Dirt’
A novel and Netflix film about Spanish colonialism in Equatorial Guinea raises questions about appropriation and storytelling.
Food and the struggle for Africa’s sovereignty
How early post-independence clarity on the link between food self-sufficiency and national sovereignty offers lessons for contemporary efforts.
Representation that sells us shoes
Adidas and other private, for-profit companies that are embracing corporate queerness are never going to contribute to our liberation.
What is decolonization for?
Scholars Archie Mafeje and Cedric Robinson challenged Eurocentrism. Their ideas are becoming more widely known. They're the focus of AIAC Talk this week.
What is whiteness to a cyborg?
Tracing the digital contours of the settler colony helps us understand how old inequalities will shape a future with artificial intelligence.
Angola’s backyard revolution
This month on AIAC Radio we talk with Marissa Moorman and Paulo Flores to see how a music culture born in the quintals of Luanda helped birth a nation. Listen on Worldwide FM.
The reluctant scientist
The late Tanzanian president, John Pombe Magufuli, was initially lauded for his no-nonsense approach to corruption. But the cracks began to appear within months of his presidency.
Border wars
The Joint Boundary Commission that Lesotho and South Africa have revived, gives hope that some sort of border deal might be possible between the two countries.
Promises and discontents
A new documentary focuses on using the soil’s carbon absorbent properties to solve the climate change problem.