Africa Is a Country

T.I.A*

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

T.I.A*

By
Sean Jacobs

What is either a gollywog or coon ornament in a Christmas display of an East 17th Street between 5th and Union Square West, Manhattan store, was spotted by my neighbor, Chinnaya Nwosu, last week. According to Chinnaya there were a variety of these kinds of items in the store, including what looked like Sambos with grass skirts, spears and headdress, etc. “The store owner palmed me off with, ‘They are just crafts made in Thailand.’ I tried reasoning that this kind of imagery was not conceived in Thailand, and that the ignorance of the [people in Thailand] making them cannot justify them being on shop shelves in New York City. The guy said that nobody else had complained- eying me as a trouble making reactionary.”

* This is hopefully the start of a regular series of posts of snapshots– we’ll call it T.I.A. This is Africa–that remind us from Africa or pretend to be of Africa that we encounter everyday.

Further Reading

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.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.