Sidney Poitier and Capitalist Decolonization
Poitier is a pioneer in Hollywood (the first black male actor to win an Oscar), but, like in most of his US acting roles, he also played it safe in African roles he took on.
Culture
Laughing pains
Stand-up comedy, especially black stand-up, and the political in South Africa.
Magical realism in Accra
The film, "The Burial of Kojo," sparks a vital conversation about the intersections of heritage, politics, and spirituality in Ghana and in Africa at large.
Walter Rodney was way ahead of his time
Rediscovered lectures Walter Rodney gave in 1978 in Hamburg shows a reflective intellectual, thinking critically about postcolonial African governance.
Who’s reporting Africa now?
NGOs and freelance journalists are increasingly filling the vacuum being left by a declining Western media presence. It's not all good.
Entry-level misogyny
In a heteronormative society like Nigeria, men are entitled to sex with any and all women.
Will Kenya’s courts let gay people live?
Director Wanuri Kahiu went to look for hopeful African love stories and made a lesbian love story, amid court sanctioned homophobia.
American tribalism
Political 'tribalism' has for far too long been seen as an African problem. It is also an American problem, reflecting parallel legacies of colonialism.
I have rarely seen a people pray as much as Haitians do
The legacies of colonialism and the African slave trade on religious practices in the African diaspora.
Democracy by numbers
If you want a prejudice to look respectable, put a number to it and compile an index. You can then rule the minds of many people.
The burden of being Nigerian
On xenophobia against Nigerians in Ghana.
The spear of the nation
Apartheid propaganda, white media and Afrikaner nationalists painted Verwoerd's killer as crazy, but Dimitri Tsafendas was a committed political activist.
This is what a neoliberal trade union looks like
Zambia's mining unions increasingly focus on profit-generating businesses, at the expense of collective action.
The house of exile
Edward Said once said of the usefulness of exile for intellectual work: it involves adopting “a spirit of opposition, rather than accommodation.” James Baldwin and Sisonke Msimang took it to heart.
O problema com ‘Black Panther’
No primer aniversario do estreno do filme 'Black Panther,' re-publicamos o ensaio de Russell Rickford traducido em Português.
Schooling desegregation and decolonization are not the same thing
Constant attention to segregation in formerly white South African schools limits our understanding of how race works in the school system.
African history on its own terms
There are far richer and complex stories to the Africa's history than we think we know; especially the perspectives of African women.
Ghana’s royal visitors
The contrasting receptions for high profile visitors to Ghana — first Prince Charles and Camilla from the UK, then a group of African-American celebrities from the United States — says a lot.
Bus politics in Dar es Salaam
The secretary of a Tanzanian bus drivers' union explains why the system of privately owned commercial buses is breaking down. He proposes collective ownership.
The disidentification of Mahamat Saleh Haroun
2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of Chad's first feature film, 'Bye Bye Africa.'