Where mining and conservation meet
Far from signaling a break from the past, the convergence of mining and conservation in West Africa underscores a recurring pattern that stretches back to colonialism.
neocolonialism
Could expanding protected land undermine biodiversity?
Paradoxically, conservation efforts in Liberia and Senegal are threatening native ecology.
Where have the Chapungu gone?
What connects Zimbabwe’s chimurenga spirit, the disappearing bateleur eagle, and the stubborn afterlife of colonial capital?
Whose story gets to be heard?
A new film investigates the long-standing land disputes between Kenyans, the government, and multinational corporations, whose expansive plantations are the site of much of the Kikuyu people’s hardship.
What Kwame Nkrumah knew about profit shifting
From colonial accounting tricks to modern tax havens, Nkrumah understood how capital escapes, and why political independence was never enough.
Elimination by other means
From Iraq to Gaza, empire no longer needs to annihilate populations when it can dismantle the very structures that make collective life possible.
Global Africa for whom?
Nairobi’s cultural moment reflects both the promise of continental imagination and the anxiety of performing arrival for the world’s gaze.
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.
Beyond multipolarity
The SCO summit in Beijing revealed cracks in Western dominance—but whether they become openings for justice depends on African agency, not new patrons.
The price of plugging in
Floating power plants from Turkey promise to solve blackouts in the Global South. But easy fixes come with political risks.
The global gateway to nowhere
Europe’s flagship development plan promises investment and partnership—but delivers debt, displacement, and old colonial patterns dressed up in green.
South Africa’s American refugees
Cape Town’s digital nomads chase cheap luxury and scenic backdrops—but behind the matcha lattes and “social impact days” lies a deeper story of economic power, displacement, and global inequality.
Pan Africanism under elite capture
Recent celebrity investments in the continent raises the question: Who is it really for?
As aid ends, empire endures
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built—rooted in control, dependency, and depoliticization—still shapes Africa’s development.
New route for old exploitation
A US-backed infrastructure project in the DRC is framed as development, but history suggests it’s just another pipeline for foreign powers to profit from Congo’s riches.
The wrong way to end aid
The humanitarian industrial complex should be dismantled—but not by a billionaire-backed administration with no plan beyond abandonment.
Between blackout and embargo
In Cuba, new forms of marginalization and racism have surfaced, but the dream of a good society based on the core principles of “buen vivir” for its people has not died.
When justice means impunity
Twenty-one years after Liberia’s political elite acquiesced to “negative peace,” the US now champions the fight against impunity. Except when their own companies are involved.
The mine dumps of Silicon Valley
While it might be cathartic to compare Elon Musk’s tech firms to apartheid-era mines, the connection between ex-South Africans and American capitalism is complicated.
What does Africa want?
To navigate multipolarity, the continent needs a common narrative that strategically mediates its conversations with China and other world powers.