Editing pan-Africanism
Many know Frene Ginwala, the iconic anti-apartheid activist, as democratic South Africa’s first speaker of parliament. But few know of her time building pan-African media in Dar Es Salaam.
Tanzania
Dreams of freedom
A historical novel by Sudanese writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin narrates an unusual love story between a slave and a princess.
Under the surface of modern economies
We need to rethink how people seek sustenance and wealth, but not divorced from their moral values, convictions, and expectations.
Pull and I shall pull
Amil Shivji’s latest film, 'Vuta N’Kuvute,' is a gift, not only to the people of Tanzania, Zanzibar and its diasporas, but to the world.
The structural adjustment of education
Why the COVID-19 pandemic is the easy culprit of the global learning crisis—and why that is only half of the story.
The ground has shifted
Western conservation NGOs condemn violence against Maasai, but also don't want herders or subsistence hunters on land they want to control and profit from.
The Dar es Salaam years
In the early 1970s, Walter Rodney, expelled from Jamaica, took a post in Tanzania. In Leo Zeilig’s new book, he captures those exciting, but also difficult years and how it formed Rodney.
People live here
Why are Ngorongoro's Maasai at risk of being evicted again? Tanzania's conservation-tourism industrial complex wants them out.
An ethnography for fad diets
Two tourists take a package trip to visit the Hadza people in Tanzania and are so jazzed with what they see, they make a podcast about it. What could go wrong?
Abdulrazak Gurnah and the afterlives of German colonialism
Gurnah’s Nobel Prize invites us to ponder Germany’s colonial past between the Scramble for Africa and the First World War in what is now Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s skepticisms
Abdulrazak Gurnah's novels offer a skepticism against the cultural politics of packaging African stories for global circulation and consumption.
But, first we’ll take this W
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature win raises questions about the role of the LitNobel and how they construct what we think of and buy as African literature.
Exit the bulldozer, enter Mama Samia
Has the recent death of Tanzania’s president John Magufuli created new political possibilities?
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.
Death by betrayal
Tanzania’s workers are at the highest risk for COVID-19 infections and deaths. Why are trade unions not taking action?
Organized interests
Ideas for how to pressure Uganda's "M-Pigs" to become elected representatives who actually serve in the public interest.
How Indian cinema shaped East Africa’s urban culture
The 60s, 70s, and 80s are often described as the Golden Age of Indian cinema and Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu had a large number of cinemas devoted to showing films made in Bombay.
Women’s liberation and media in post-independence Tanzania
Fatma Alloo (of the Tanzania Media Women's Association) on how women used the media and cultural spaces to organize and challenge gender norms.
Unfinished liberatory agendas
How Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere’s approaches to gender politics, help reshape feminist visions for reclaiming a developmental state.
All that glitters
One corporation's tax tussle with Tanzania holds many lessons for African countries that continue to struggle with the inequitable share of proceeds from their extractive sectors.