Yacht rock or slave ship rock?
Once we’re done talking about its viral quality, is Toto’s “Africa” a song about the continent with the same name, or a song about how millions of enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas?
Africans are largely on their own facing climate change
What the response to #CycloneIdai tells us about Zimbabweans’ relationship to the state and each other.
Protest art in Sudan’s uprising
Drawing on a long history of political art and protest and to bypass old media censorship, Sudani artists go to the street and online to complement street protests.
Reanimating mobile cinema
Sunshine Cinema is repurposing a tool of 20th century European colonial and neocolonial capitalist domination.
How the poor can fight back against the banks
The small business owners revolution in Tanzania: Form a poor people’s bank.
Africa No Filter
The secretary of a Tanzanian bus drivers' union explains why the system of privately owned commercial buses is breaking down. He proposes collective ownership.
In Somalia young people are the majority, yet have to act and perform “age"—appear older—to succeed or get anywhere in life.
Politics
Diagnosing neopatrimonialism
It’s been very difficult to pin down what political scientists, who favor the term, mean when they talk about patrimonialism or neopatrimonialism.
Accountability for Apartheid?
The legacy of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission twenty-one years later.
Algeria’s bloodless coup
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s latest attempt to buy time and the way ahead for the three week-long popular uprising against his and the military’s rule.
The stuttering development of a radical electoral alternative in Nigeria
Omoyele Sowore was the presidential hope of Nigeria’s most active leftist groups. He fared abysmally. So, what next for progressive electoral politics in Nigeria?
Algeria 2019—A beautiful line of flight
If what has been happening in Algeria since February 22, 2019, may not be a revolution, it very much looks like it.
Africa is a Radio
INTL BLK radio is back with a border crossing mix of Afrobeats and Zouk, as well as an interview with Sierra Leonean electronic music producer Lamin Fofana.
Culture
Thinking with Africa, making the world
How could thinking with Africa help us fulfill our humanity? And might thinking with Africa open up a possibility for world-making?
What is the Dangbe word for chameleon?
When it comes to language preferences in Ghana, indigenous languages suffer. It is a continental problem.
Namaste India
Following a series of racist attacks on African students in India, an African student in India wrote this.
Camp of the Saints
The 1973 dystopian apocalyptic French novel that inspires today’s violent white, rightwing populism.
Sarkodie and the politics for ‘freedom-making’
Hiplife artist Sarkodie has proposed that what Ghana needs is a dictatorship. This is not inconsistent with his politics, rooted in promoting male success and a patriarchal vision of liberation.
Football is a Country
Who gets to host future editions of the men’s soccer World Cup is not just big business, but also a bargaining chip in international relations.