Africa Is a Country

“Can you think of a country that starts with the letter U?”

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

“Can you think of a country that starts with the letter U?”

By
Sean Jacobs

You’ve seen those “Are you smarter than a 5 year old” videos on Youtube (it’s an actual TV show) or marveled at the intelligence of Miss Teen South Carolina, now here’s the kids from a suburban high school in Washington State. We learn that “Somebody Bin Laden” is the Vice-President of the United States, that the US gained its independence in the Civil War, that Canada is actually a state in the US, that “South America is a country that borders the US.” Oh, and one student suggested Europe and Utopia are countries that start with a U.

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.