AfricaIs aCountry

Black Economic Empowerment in your dreams

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

Black Economic Empowerment in your dreams

By
Sean Jacobs

I saw this ad on TV a few times during my recent trip down to South Africa. The commercial, for South African beer Hansa Pilsener, riffs on the South African government’s Black Economic Empowerment policy, which far from creating opportunities for small businesspeople, have increasingly resulted in a few rich, politically connected billionaires, white owned companies fronted by blacks or what locals refer to as “tenderpreneurs.”

Vuyo stands a better chance of getting a free beer.

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.