Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.
Latest
Africa’s first children problem
No matter where they are, the children of African heads-of-state live lives comically far-removed from those of the average citizen in their home countries.
Beyond humanitarian aid
The war in Sudan shows how during conflict, the internet is as critical as food or medicine.
Marketplace of failure
South Africa’s pivot to electricity markets will be socially regressive, whether green or not.
Coming home
In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.
Shadowy interventions
The EU’s military involvement in West Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, South Sudan, and East Africa is well-known. But one mission on the continent has gone relatively unnoticed.
PODCASTS
This week on the AIAC podcast we’re talking about #RejectFinanceBill2024 and #RutoMustGo, the youth-led movements against Kenya’s out-of-touch elites.
Culture
Sudan’s cultural devastation
How the UAE-backed RSF looted Sudan’s National Museum.
The pitfalls of return
While many diasporans speculate romantically about the people we were or could have been, is that speculation mutual?
Imaginary homelands
A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.
Animating the oral tradition
A new Disney short film series dramatizes traditional African storytelling for the big screen. Does it succeed?
From Cairo to Cornell
The Malcolm X effect of Gambian-British activist Momodou Taal.
Palestine
Warring with impunity
Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.
Imperialism does not localize
In 1973, Josie Fanon interviewed then-ANC president Oliver Tambo about Israel and apartheid South Africa. Originally printed in French, it is now available in English for the first time.
L’impérialisme ne localise pas
En 1973, Josie Fanon a interviewé Oliver Tambo, alors président de l’ANC, à propos d’Israël et de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Il est désormais disponible pour la première fois depuis sa publication originale.
The psychology of oppression and liberation
What would Fanon say about the ongoing genocide in Palestine?
Politics
The appearance of democracy
The protests against illegal mining in Ghana are revealing how the country’s political class still fears an engaged citizenry.
Warring with impunity
Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.
Chimurenga Maitũ
Decolonial African feminism and the revolutionary lives of three mothers of Kenya.
Business as usual?
This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.
The complexities of solidarity
Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.
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.