This week, Kamel Daoud became the first Algerian to receive France’s most prestigious literary honor. Yet, in Algeria, no one seems to care.
Latest
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.
The aftertaste of the ocean
Mati Diop’s ‘Dahomey’ isn’t solely concerned with the subject of repatriating Beninese artifacts, but with returning the debate to the Beninese themselves.
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.
The real Rwanda
The world is slowly opening its eyes to how Paul Kagame’s regime abuses human rights, suppresses dissent, and exploits neighboring countries.
In the shadow of Mondlane
After a historic election and on the eve of celebrating fifty years of independence, Mozambicans need to ask whether the values, symbols, and institutions created to give shape to “national unity” are still legitimate today.
PODCASTS
2024 has been the ultimate election year. Just Us Under A Tree rejoins the Africa Is a Country Podcast to reflect on South Africa’s May poll and what it reveals about contemporary democratic politics.
Culture
Museum of memory
An eye-opening documentary on African literary titan Wole Soyinka wants us to laud his “politics” without ever having Soyinka himself talk about them.
Writers for a new world
The debacle around Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest book shows us that no matter a writer’s individual acclaim, the liberal media establishment will never tolerate anything that fundamentally challenges its racist edifice.
Girl on the internet
Nicknamed the “Candace Owens of South Africa,” Siphesihle Nxokwana is an anti-feminist influencer playing to crowds already on her side.
Rebuilding a destroyed garden
South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa returns to places of pain and beauty to reinterpret the landscape and, in turn, discover something new about himself.
African contradictions in the world of science
African contributions to the globalized world cannot be celebrated while the place occupied by African peoples remains on the periphery.
Revolutionary Papers
A year long series on the archival remnants of African and black diaspora anti-colonial movement materials to retrieve a politics and pedagogy that challenge the contemporary cooptation of radical histories. Guest editors: Mahvish Ahmad, Koni Benson, and Hana Morgenstern from the Revolutionary Papers project (revolutionarypapers.org)
Nigeria's archives of revolutionary printmaking offers us insights into the dissident voices of the country's old left, which are surprisingly relevant today.
Christian theology was appropriated to play an integral role in the justifying apartheid’s racist ideology. Black theologians resisted through a theology of the oppressed.
Politics
Femicide is rising, but where’s the outrage?
While feminist movements have made significant strides in naming, recognizing, and advocating against femicide, the rest of the world appears disturbingly indifferent.
João Lourenço’s American pivot
The Angolan president’s overture to the West isn’t happening in a vacuum, nor should it be surprising.
The end of Mozambique’s two-party system?
Frelimo has been Mozambique’s ruling party since it gained independence from Portugal in 1975, while Renamo has been the official opposition since the end of its civil war. But after recent elections, things are about to change.
What’s next for the Nigerian left?
Although the #EndBadGovernance protests attempted to address lingering questions from the #EndSARS era, the potential for the left to transform Nigeria’s political landscape remains a question.
What is free and fair?
2024 has been the ultimate election year. Just Us Under A Tree rejoins the Africa Is a Country Podcast to reflect on South Africa’s May poll and what it reveals about contemporary democratic politics.
Donald Trump
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.
The dangers of white totalitarianism
Why is the US ultra-right turning to Rhodesia as their model for a white supremacist state?
On Safari
On our annual publishing break, we ask: if the opposite of “weird” is normal, what if normal is equally problematic?
Rolling with the punches
Removed from the facts, the firestorm around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is the latest attempt by the right-wing in the West to find fodder for its culture war.