In a recent interview on French television to promote his new book “Sortir de la Grande Nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique Décolonisée,” Johannesburg-based political philosopher Achille Mbembe suggested that Europe “seems to be gripped by an enormous desire for apartheid.” (We blogged about it here.) This is also the implicit theme of a recent lecture by British social theorist Paul Gilroy entitled “Multiculture in Europe: Melancholia or Conviviality?” which I managed to stumble on earlier this week. (Gilroy was speaking at the FORMER WEST Project at the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University in The Netherlands.) One option is to listen to it while you’re cleaning the house. I did.

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Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.