Djinns in Berlin
At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.
immigrants
Colonize then, deport now
Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.
A barren sowing
Donato Ndongo’s latest collection of short stories portrays African exile and diaspora in Spain and France.
Trump’s fake refugees
The US president’s executive order on South Africa isn’t about fairness—it’s a cynical ploy to stoke racial paranoia and shore up his right-wing base.
Kemi Badenoch and the politics of assimilation
The UK Tory leader distances herself from Nigeria, embracing colonial narratives while rejecting solidarity with a nation grappling with neocolonial realities.
Between Harlem and home
African postcolonial cinema serves as a mirror, revealing the limits of escape—whether through migration or personal defiance—and exposing the tensions between dreams and reality.
From Naija to Abidjan
One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d'Ivoire today.
De Naïja à Abidjan
Un pays est anglophone et l’autre est francophone. Quoi qu'il en soit, entre 1 et 4 millions de personnes d'origine nigériane vivent aujourd'hui en Côte d'Ivoire.
Who are the Olympics for?
Beneath the image of togetherness, the world’s biggest athletic spectacle is still beset by discrimination and exclusion.
Being young and African in elite America
A new film follows the lives of four African students at MIT, where youthful idealism gets tested by the realities of American racism and inequality.
The myth of the apolitical commission
In response to the Johannesburg fire disaster, the South African government has announced a ‘politically free’ commission of inquiry. But there is no such thing.
Who owns Afrobeats?
Does Afrobeats come from the continent or the diaspora. This reviewer of a new book on the genre's history and rapid takeover of our airwaves and playlists, argues we need to center Africa more.
Porters of colonial legacies
By looking through the lenses of Brussels’ diverse youth, 'The Porters' questions the ways Belgium fails to deal with its colonial past.
“Black African” may be oxymoronic
For many African immigrants in the United States, being seen as Black doesn’t necessarily equate to seeing oneself as Black.
Belonging is not a sport
The reality of any society, any nation, and of our world, is much messier than picking a soccer team.
Memories are to be shared
It will have to be the Algerian diaspora inside France who will eventually have to mainstream the truth of France's colonial legacy.
Instrumentalizing migrants
From Operation Fiela to Operation Dudula, xenophobia in South Africa is bent on protecting the interests of politicians.
The skeleton in the closet
The novelist Nadifa Mohamed complicates Britain’s troubled, racist legal history through the personal tale of one otherwise insignificant person, a Somali immigrant to Cardiff in Wales.
Patrick Lyoya’s life mattered
The harrowing execution of Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese refugee in Michigan, and the unfulfilled promise of resettlement in America.
Keeping a displaced group closely knit together
A photo essay on Masjid Tajul Huda, a mostly West African mosque in the Bronx, New York.