This week’s 20 questions from our friend:

Can Idris Elba’s acting save the Netflix movie ‘Beasts of No Nation’?

Why do African national teams do so well in FIFA age group competitions (Nigeria and Mali play each other in the Under 17 World Cup Final today in Chile) but fail so spectacularly at senior level? (A former Mexico coach–they lost to Nigeria in the semifinal–has a theory.)

Will the child refugees who are the subjects of this New York Times Magazine/Google ‘real time’ storytelling app be able to see it?

Who will win Uganda’s presidential election in 2016?

You know that President Paul Kagame can technically rule Rwanda until 2034? Think about it: North West Kardashian will be 21 and D’Banj will be 54.

Is Africa’s best footballer Yaya Toure mad at John Obi Mikel?

Will the Italian newspaper La Republica at some point explain to the rest of us why it decided to make a blackface film?

Is Bono also your go-to person on global poverty and Ethiopian history?

What is Nigerian Senator Patrick Obahiagbon saying?

Who should we blame for the pitiful state of commercial rap music?

Is Drake Zambian?

Is “Our Brand is Crisis” (the fictionalized movie version with Sandra Bullock of the revealing 2006 documentary film) as bad as we assume it is?

Why is Fareed Zakaria still allowed to make stuff up?

Does the  movement have its own soundtrack?

Have you gotten your copy of “Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy“?

What was NPR thinking?

Who believed Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (Order of the Blackface) when he pretended to know very little about his country’s deep historical ties to South Africa?

Did the City of Johannesburg take Burning Spear’s advice about social living literally?

Why do US public representatives take their foreign policy advice (on the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from Nicole Ritchie and Ryan Gosling?

Don’t we all miss Brenda Fassie right now?

Further Reading

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.