[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZOvI9bvruQ&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Rapper Nas narrates a short insert on ESPN’s “E:60” on the Liberian national amputee team made up of men, often former enemies, who lost the use of their legs or arms in Liberia’s very recent civil war.  (Above is a kind of mash up from the in-studio introduction that usually precedes an insert as well as an excerpt from Nas’ narration. I am a regular viewer of the show.)  You can watch the 10 minute insert here. It includes some incredible goals and celebrations. It is also about the politics of rebuilding societies after wars.  Not bad for ESPN.

* That’s a line from the show.

Via The Hairdryer Treatment.

Further Reading

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?