Guinea and the bully
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.
Unfinished business doesn’t go away
What will it take to get Germany to own up fully to its colonial history, specifically the atrocities it committed during the Genocide in Namibia?
Pentecostal republic
Christian Pentecostalism has crept to the center of public life in Nigeria.
Kinshasa headache
The harsh realities of resistance for a new generation in Joseph Kabila’s Congo.
Pay me what you owe me
Brooklyn, Biggie Smalls and Hari Kunzru’s White Tears.
Worldwide White Supremacy
The post Trump fortunes of South Africa’s white nationalists
South Africa's white nationalists are finally in the spotlight, thanks to Donald Trump. Nobody likes what they see.
Twisting pan-Africanism to promote anti-Africanism
Europe’s anti-immigrant far right instrumentalize the ideas of pan-Africanists in their fight to keep immigrants, especially from Africa, out of the EU. They also find willing African allies to amplify their message.
The global ways of white supremacy
Trump's tweet repeating white nationalist propaganda about land reform in South Africa shows that white supremacy has consistently relied on an international receptivity and interdependence.
Flight of the Boers
South Africa's lead anti-land reform organization is cultivating its relationship with the international far right.
Culture
Rwanda’s £30 million sleeve
The Arsenal ‘Visit Rwanda’ sponsorship deal is government image management 101.
The ethics of political art
A critical review of Swiss theatre director Milo Rau’s multi-media project, “Congo Tribunal,” about the violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Black and Black
A new film explores the often-fraught relationship between African immigrants and African-Americans in the United States.
I am German when we win, but an immigrant when we lose
Once foreign media moved onto the next story after Mezut Ozil called out racism in Germany, what happened to the conversation about dual heritage, racism and immigration there?
‘Why should we speak with you?’
An interview with Ruben Andersson on his book Illegality Inc, an ethnographic account of Europe’s efforts to halt irregular migration along Spain’s borders with Africa.
World Cup 2018
Pogbacité
Is France's World Cup championship team a bellwether for France's political future?
Everything ends with a song
"When the game is over in Russia, I’ll go play another at the field down the street. I’ll find a song to sing on the way."
The Respectable French
The 2010 World Cup was tumultuous for France; both an athletic failure and a site of social conflict. The French Football Federation doesn't want to repeat it.
Kylian Mbappé, Karim Benzema and France’s Second-Class Citizens
Fascists love Mbappé and hate Benzema. Between these two lies the problem of romanticizing the French team as an African team.
Africa No Filter
Would white women in the US have supported #MeToo in the same way if it had been started by women elsewhere in the world?
The author grapples with how to photograph the lives of her neighbors in a part of North East Nigeria, where Boko Haram is on a reign of terror.
Politics
Cobalt isn’t a conflict mineral
Policymakers need to properly assess the risks to ordinary Congolese people from expanding the “conflict minerals” category.
Public funds for private gain
The planned global Education Outcomes Fund–the UN seems onboard–would create markets for “non-state” providers while guaranteeing profits for private investors that purchase “impact bonds.”
The president’s footballers
Star players in Cameroon’s national soccer team have always doubled as PR pawns for the protracted rule of Paul Biya, the country’s aging and hard-line head of state.
The contested legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana
Nkrumah’s government was driven by large scale state development projects. They have a mixed legacy. Can Ghanaians “redeem” the fruits of his development visions?
The Ghetto President of Uganda
Bobi Wine, building off political protest of the last decade has become a symbol for a new politics in Uganda and a threat to Museveni’s hold on power.
Africa is a Radio
In INTL BLK episode 5, deejays Chief Boima and Francesca Harding take a look at race and cultural difference in Latin America through the lens of trap music.