Africa Is a Country

Adopting Africa

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Adopting Africa

By
Sonja Sugira

We should talk about American celebrities' obsession with adopting African babies. The mostly unfunny comedian Pauly Shore is not our guide.

A still from Pauly Shore's film "Adopted."

Proving yet again that Africa always comes to the rescue of those Hollywood celebrities in need of relevance, yesterday saw the straight-to-DVD release of a mockumentary on the celebrity African adoption craze from, wait for it, Pauly Shore. Both CNN and The Huffington Post give it the full treatment. Neither is worth your time.

Suffice it to say, this one won’t be getting a review from Allison.

In any case, this has been done before, and much better:

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.