AfricaIs aCountry

Janus Faced

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

Janus Faced

By
Sean Jacobs

We’re closing shop from tomorrow, December 24th, until January 4th, 2011.

Thanks for a great year supporting this site.

Meanwhile, follow us on twitter. Because if you don’t, you miss half the good stuff anyway. Some of us–Brett, Herman, Sonja and myself–have a twitterfeed running on the right-hand side of this page. (Just click on the @Twitter text and you’ll be directed to our individual Twitter pages. Others, like Boima, can be reached directly on Twitter.

We’ll update our respective feeds regularly between now and then.

Until 2011.

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.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.