Politics

There are more cell phones in Africa than India
For Canada's Conservative Party government Africa has moved from disaster and aid to opportunity. An actual Canadian government said the above.

#Kony2005
The writer revisits his notes from 2005 when he visited Acholiland, the site of a conflict between the LRA and Uganda's military.

Africa is a Jockey
Will the breakthrough of a Swazi jockey in British horse racing change the global stakes for Africa and its diaspora's riders?

Race, Entitlement and Gay Pride in South Africa
In supposedly post-apartheid South Africa - where political and economic power are at odds - what happens in gay spaces?

The indelible mark of the mbira
The thumb piano has made somewhat of a resurgence in contemporary pop music partly because of the international stardom of groups like Konono N˚1.

Gay Shame in Johannesburg
The confrontation at Johannesburg Pride between white organizers and a group of black activists demanding Pride honor those killed, mostly black, for their sexuality, in South Africa.

Chinua Achebe reflects on Biafra, but for whom?
Achebe's "There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra" reopens old wounds about the civil war.

Township Life Has Never Looked So Glam
Solange Knowles is the second major UK or American artist to shoot a music video in Cape Town in so many months.

Malawian Twitter is not a gentle place
By far the best place to follow Malawian news and politics is social media app, Twitter. It can be relied upon to be the very first place where Malawi’s breaking news gets to the rest of us.

The world’s media and Angola’s elections
The oppression/resistance model of politics explains some things, but it does not explain everything, and less and less these days on the continent.

The trouble with South Africa’s middle class
In South Africa, there was more activity in solidarity with Pussy Riot than with the Marikana miners killed by police in August 2012.

A certain Israeli psyche
Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai basically says Israel was a white country in a debate about African immigrants and refugees.

The Dutch ‘King of Africa’
In Dutch politics, Africa mostly works as a tactic to embarrass and ridicule your opponent.

Il Manifesto
Africans can draw uninformed conclusions about what’s going on in their own backyards and on the continent.

Lesotho gets the Kristof Treatment
Nicholas Kristof believes his journalism must contain a familiar entity from Western society – a white American – to make the content accessible to his readers.

What Happened to the African Renaissance?
Last week’s assaults on the tombs of saints, scholars and prominent ancestors in Timbuktu punctuated a long, leaden moment in Mali's crisis.

There Are Women in Botswana
It’s not even news that women and children leads AIDS activism in places like Botswana, except when it’s scanted. So, here’s a primer.

On African Asylum Seekers in Israel
Media about African refugees and asylum seekers in Israel highlight their experiences and desires for rights, but erase their agency, portraying them solely as victims of violence and exploitation.