Latest
Food and the struggle for Africa’s sovereignty
How early post-independence clarity on the link between food self-sufficiency and national sovereignty offers lessons for contemporary efforts.
Representation that sells us shoes
Adidas and other private, for-profit companies that are embracing corporate queerness are never going to contribute to our liberation.
What is whiteness to a cyborg?
Tracing the digital contours of the settler colony helps us understand how old inequalities will shape a future with artificial intelligence.
Angola’s backyard revolution
This month on AIAC Radio we talk with Marissa Moorman and Paulo Flores to see how a music culture born in the quintals of Luanda helped birth a nation. Listen on Worldwide FM.
The reluctant scientist
The late Tanzanian president, John Pombe Magufuli, was initially lauded for his no-nonsense approach to corruption. But the cracks began to appear within months of his presidency.
AIAC RADIO
On this month’s AIAC Radio we head to Cape Town to understand how this creole city’s musical culture resisted containment throughout history. Listen on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.
Culture
The promise and discontents of kissing the ground
A new documentary focuses on using the soil’s carbon absorbent properties to solve the climate change problem. Not surprisingly, it also offers a business case for restorative farming.
Black Tunisians breaking taboos
Tunisia’s denial of its African identity persists today. Black Tunisians are fighting to change that.
Reading List: Kwasi Konadu
On telling stories through the evocative and varied moments in which humans live, rather than through the predictable and artificial plots historians devise.
Unchain my art
The system to pay out royalties to musicians in South Africa says a lot about the racial inequalities in the local industry.
Abandoning racial language
If we stop using terms to describe race at all, we risk undermining our struggle to eliminate racism.
Capitalism in My City
The Mathare Social Justice Centre has partnered with Africa Is a Country to produce a series of posts and videos to document everyday capitalism in Nairobi. The project is funded via the Shuttleworth Fellowship awarded to Sean Jacobs.
Drug use among young people in Nairobi's slums is on the rise. Youth also face arbitrary arrests by the police, resulting in jail time which turns them into hardcore criminals in a vicious cycle.
I’ve lived a good part of my life in Mathare 4A, part of the larger Mathare slum in Nairobi. Decent housing remains a pipe dream for the majority of the city's residents.
Politics
Border wars
The Joint Boundary Commission that Lesotho and South Africa have revived, gives hope that some sort of border deal might be possible between the two countries.
Why the tree is producing bad apples
Corruption is South Africa’s pandemic—one that has been disenfranchising and killing people long before our transition to democracy.
Lay him down on a high mountain
What is the South African political leader Robert Sobukwe’s legacy today?
Don’t cede the streets
#FeesMustFall was the most serious challenge to the post-apartheid political order, but didn’t connect to broader working-class struggles. Now, despite police brutality, students are beginning to make those linkages.
COVID-19
The reluctant scientist
The late Tanzanian president, John Pombe Magufuli, was initially lauded for his no-nonsense approach to corruption. But the cracks began to appear within months of his presidency.
Why the tree is producing bad apples
Corruption is South Africa’s pandemic—one that has been disenfranchising and killing people long before our transition to democracy.
The pathology of economics
COVID-19 exposes the deadly dominance of neoclassical economics in Africa.
The value of care
2020 has given us an archive of heart-breaking examples of the politically transformative power of care.