The Nandos Plot
The chicken fast-food chain’s latest television commercial, riffing on the World Cup, satirizes stereotypical Africa yet risks reproducing the very tropes it mocks instead.
Blog
Africa on Film: The “Tarzan” Films
The "Tarzan" films, which dates back to the beginnings of Hollywood, are a perfect visual representation of colonialism in Africa.
The Stories We Tell About Africa
Chris Abani's musings on telling African stories gets at just about everything Sonja thinks about as she encounters "Africa" every day, and then attempt to write about it.
Tell ’em to skate
The first, and only, half-pipe in East Africa, built entirely by the youth from the Kampala suburb of Kitintale.
Vamos a ir a Sudafrica
Mexican broadcasters are no different from their Euro-American counterparts, in peddling outdated stereotypes about Africa.
Blue Balls
When white South Africans do ordinary things, like travel to a black neighborhood, they're showered with platitudes. This is not reserved for their black country fellows.
The only appropriate response now is silence
Lara Pawson's blog post about the way elites and media in the West talk, write and act about the African continent and its people, though hardly to them, is worth reposting here.
An anthropological mood board
For the next month we'll be bombarded with commercials riffing of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. There'll be lots of "African" themes.
After the Bulldozers
Recommended: a short film about the fate of 10,000 residents displaced after a thriving market in Lagos, Nigeria.
Introducing our new series: Africa on Film
Over the next few months, Allison Swank will commence a new weekly series on popular (and not-so-popular) films in the United States 'about' Africa.
Rihanna: Back in Blackface?
In the music video for her latest single, "Rockstar 101," singer Rihanna appears in what looks like blackface.
Coca Cola Boy
Commercials tied to the 2010 World Cup sell brands through a tired global template of African-ness: poverty as texture, hardship as atmosphere, resilience as spectacle.