AfricaIs aCountry

The Guardian of Malawi

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Guardian of Malawi

By
Sonja Sugira

IFPRI, via Flickr CC.

If you find yourself at a cocktail party this weekend where you may be required to demonstrate your worldly intelligence to the other guests, then The Guardian‘s “Pass notes” series is for you. A complete (and short!) guide to the most important issues of the day.

Because Africa is sure to be a hot topic (isn’t it always?), you can expect that someone will bring up this week’s conviction of Malawian couple Steven Mongeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga for so-called “unnatural acts.” You, of course, will not be caught unawares, thanks to Pass notes 2,783: Malawi. In less time than it takes to look up the country on a map, you’ll learn that it is known as the “warm heart of Africa,” that celebrities like love the children there, and that negative attitudes towards homosexuality in Africa are your fault. In the event you are not quite sure what to say, The Guardian has you covered on that too:

Do say: “Colonial legacy or not, I object.”

Don’t say: “Do you think they’ll let David and Simon adopt?”

This is not funny.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.