Africa Is a Country

’10 things you can learn from a Nigerian’

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

’10 things you can learn from a Nigerian’

By
Sean Jacobs

Fela Kuti.

“One in five Africans is Nigerian and they certainly represent throughout the Diaspora. Much of the time, however, the over 150 million Nigerians in the world are unfairly associated with 419 email scams,” reported The Atlanta Post last month. So to counter this stereotype–and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Nigeria’s independence this year , The Post listed ten things you can learn from a Nigerian. Like: “How To Make Art A Weapon for Revolution” (that’s the guy above); “How to Own a Major Airport In The Country That Colonized Yours;” etcetera. You get the drift.

The Atlanta Post (Via New School Thoughts on Africa)

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.