Music Break / Fatoumata Diawara
Easy listening. ‘Bassa’ is a song by the Côte d’Ivoire-born, Mali-raised and now France-based artist Fatoumate Diawara. We could use a translation — because maybe it’s no easy listening at all. Anyone?
Further Reading
More than just victims
To see Kaouther Ben Hania’s latest film as condoning the West’s orientalism is to to ignore the agency of the women in it.
Is the UN system still relevant?
We are failing every day to force a ceasefire and stop the genocide. But failure is not an option. We must refocus this moment.
When we say apartheid
We need to envisage a future where colonial privileges between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea are completely dismantled.
No scrubs
Why are Kenya’s doctor’s on strike?
What are academic boycotts for?
Far from democratic institutions, a study of Israeli universities reveals that they are, in fact, directly and actively complicit in Israeli apartheid and racial rule.
Between M23 and electric vehicles
With regional and global powers keen to take advantage of the DRC’s mineral wealth, it is hard to see how things can get better for the country in the short and medium term.
Whose Biennale is it anyway?
The theme for this year’s Venice Biennale, the ‘olympics of the art world’ is ‘Foreigners Everywhere.’ But beyond representation, what are the barriers to participation?
Post-Afcon blues
Who else sorely misses the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations? Re-live the excitement from the stands in a short video by the AIAC team.
When a black viking meets a black slave trader
What do computer generated images tell us about the evolution of coloniality and racialization in the AI era?
Border politics
Right-wing populists in South Africa have started copying their American counterparts by calling for a border wall.
Allez Les Grenadières
When Haiti’s national women’s team take to the field for ninety minutes, they allow the Haitian people to dream.
Speaking as one African to another
South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Robert Sobukwe is often understood as a black nationalist. So what should we make of his close friendship with a white liberal?
The people’s coup
Incoming Senegalese president Bassirou Diomaye Faye is as much outgoing President Macky Sall’s creation as he is Ousmane Sonko’s.
Goodbye, Piassa
The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.
The limits of international solidarity
The failure of South African universities to call out Israel’s genocide challenges the assumption that South Africans have a deep appreciation of injustice in Palestine given their similar experiences under apartheid.
House of stone
Roy Guthrie was a refrigerator salesman in South Africa before he moved to Zimbabwe and established its largest sculpture park.
Congo beyond the hashtags
While social media has amplified calls for social justice in long-ignored parts of the world, it should only be the beginning of our activism.
Lessons from Lesotho
With a coalition government likely after South Africa’s elections in May, many are looking at the West for examples of coalition politics. South Africans, however, should look next door.
From Salt River to the sea
When the the Palestinian Men’s National Team played an exhibition match in Cape Town, South Africa, it might as well have been a home game.
Filling in the gaps in the study of African sports
To celebrate 20 years of research on sports in Africa, the SportsAfrica network will publish a series of monthly articles on Africa Is a Country drawing on their members’ research.