Forty years ago, African filmmakers and revolutionaries united to reclaim cinema as a weapon for liberation and cultural sovereignty across the continent.
Latest
When Brazil’s African Muslims scared the world
Taking place 190 years ago, the Malê Revolt in Bahia, led by African Muslim slaves, shook Brazil’s foundations and echoed global fears of a new Haiti.
Requiem for a revolution
A sweeping, jazz-scored exploration of Cold War intrigue and African liberation, Johan Gimonprez’s ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ lays bare the cultural and political battlegrounds where empires, artists, and freedom fighters clashed.
Making a killing for investors
President Tinubu’s reforms have plunged Nigerians into economic despair, with soaring costs and violent repression, exposing the brutal toll of neoliberal policies.
Bring back Ngonnso
One Cameroonian woman’s quest to reclaim stolen artifacts reveals the enduring wounds of colonialism and the fight to restore Africa’s heritage.
Feeding fear and prejudice
In South Africa, a spate of food poisoning incidents has ignited another round of xenophobic scaremongering.
TV
The CAF Champions League final and the politics of North-African football ultras.
Culture
How Rashid Vally showed us the way
Rashid Vally, the visionary behind South Africa’s iconic jazz label As-Shams, forged a legacy of revolutionary jazz that defied apartheid and continues to inspire new generations of musicians, activists, and music lovers.
Ibaaku’s space race
Through Afro-futurist soundscapes blending tradition and innovation, Ibaaku’s new album, ‘Joola Jazz,’ reshapes Dakar’s cultural rhythm and challenges the legacy of Négritude.
The beautiful game’s ugly secret
The #MeToo movement exposed abuses across industries, yet men’s football remains resistant to accountability, protecting predators and sidelining survivors.
An allegiance to abusers
This weekend, Chris Brown will perform two sold-out concerts in South Africa. His relationship to the country reveals the twisted dynamic between a black American artist with a track record of violence and a country happy to receive him.
Tyla and the politics of ambiguity
Tyla’s rise as a global pop star highlights the complexities of race, identity, and cultural representation, challenging how Blackness is perceived across the diaspora.
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
Rebuilding Algeria’s oceans
Grassroots activists and marine scientists in Algeria are building artificial reefs to restore biodiversity and sustain fishing communities, but scaling up requires more than passion—it needs institutional support and political will.
Citizens for hire
Kenya’s labor export model treats citizens as commodities, exploiting workers for remittances while neglecting domestic job creation.
Metal that will bend
Once a beacon of hope for militant trade unionism, Numsa’s descent into corruption and political entanglement reflects the broader struggles facing South Africa’s labor movement.
Shell’s exit scam
Shell’s so-called divestment from Nigeria’s Niger Delta is a calculated move to evade accountability, leaving behind both environmental and economic devastation.
Africa’s sibling rivalry
Nigeria and South Africa have a fraught relationship marked by xenophobia, economic competition, and cultural exchange. The Nigerian Scam are joined by Khanya Mtshali to discuss the dynamics shaping these tensions on the AIAC podcast.
Donald Trump
Hopium kills but hope seeds
Reflections on Trump’s 2024 US presidential victory.
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?