The missing pieces
Between melancholy, terror, and disillusion, Petit Pays is a groundbreaking and eye-opening take on one of the darkest pages of African history, one that is often misunderstood in the West.
conflict
Paulo Lara and Angola’s anticolonial war archive
The death of Paulo Lara warrants an appreciation of his and his family’s contribution to preserving the documented history of Angola’s liberation struggle.
The war in Ukraine may seem far from Africa, but it is not
To compensate for its possible isolation by the West, Russia could turn its attention to Africa, making the continent the next center stage for imperialist struggles.
The Russians are here
Russia’s war with Ukraine has inaugurated the new Cold War most feared, and some wanted. Which side are you on?
A Total mess
Total is creating a social and economic disaster in Mozambique, consulting the same playbook it uses in Myanmar and Yemen where it extracts resources and silences communities.
There is no fight without the women
During Guinea-Bissau’s war of liberation, women filled key positions on the frontline. That is often forgotten in the mythology of the struggle for independence.
Abdulrazak Gurnah and the afterlives of German colonialism
Gurnah’s Nobel Prize invites us to ponder Germany’s colonial past between the Scramble for Africa and the First World War in what is now Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda.
Ignorance, denial and insurgency in Mozambique
A new and different state is necessary to manage the complex problems in the region, but is it possible under the current regime that has fed the conflict?
Colonial accountability in transition
The mass atrocities of the 1899 French invasion of what is Niger today are finally being treated with the gravity and consequence they deserve in Western popular histories.
The war in Ethiopia
Will Ethiopia’s civil war blow up its dream of a single state, and in the process, blow up Western notions of statebuilding?
What happened to Ethiopia?
The ongoing displacement and killings of minorities and the ongoing war in Tigray—labeled by the federal government as enforcing law and order—are disturbing. It can't go on.
A forsaken people
The Indigenous people of the Tibesti mountain range that straddles northern Chad and Libya have been neglected and stigmatized by the elites who control and favor development of the south.
Geographies of war-making in East Africa
African states are involved in the War on Terror more than we think. They're surrounded by an eco-system of the war industry.
When discussing war is taboo
Dieudo Hamadi’s film 'Downstream to Kinshasa' is a powerful antidote to the DRC's collective amnesia around the Six-Day War and its aftermath.
The liberation stories of Guinea Bissau
Amilcar Cabral is a household name. But what happened to the young women like Joana Gomes who helped lead Guinea Bissau’s independence struggle?
The Pearl of the Indian Ocean
Exploring the different neighborhoods within Mogadishu raises the question: who is this city really for?
Angola’s veterans
Recent changes affect the daily lives of ex-combatants and other soldiers who struggle to reintegrate into society a decade after the end of the war.
Ethiopia’s war of narratives
The current political conflict, now a civil war, in Ethiopia partly has its roots in disagreement among elites on how to narrativize Ethiopian history.
How not to write about the Rwandan genocide
How Rwandan history is told—and who does the telling—is important as it determines who is able to participate in conversations about the past.
The violence in Ethiopia
The imminent and existential danger to Ethiopia is not Abiy Ahmed and an oppressive government. It is violent ethno-nationalism.