Music Break
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Letta Mbulu performing “Music Man” on the American TV show, Soul Train, in 1977. (You can hear her husband, and main collaborator, Caiphas Semenya, on the backing track.)
Further Reading
AFCON and the politics of Africanhood
In Morocco, football has become a site for the slow re-Africanization of the country’s national identity.
The myth of Nigerian football exceptionalism
The Super Eagles don’t suffer from a shortage of talent, but represent a country unwilling to admit that greatness is not a birthright.
Salah in isolation
Distanced at club level, and scrutinized at home, there is no player with more to prove at this Africa Cup of Nations than Mohamed Salah.
The boys are back in town
Bafana Bafana’s resurgence has been forged where South African football always lives—between brilliance and the bizarre.
A giant chance
An African Cup of Nations at home for red hot Morocco is a chance to put past trauma aside and charge on to the world stage.
On the pitch
This year, instead of taking a publishing break, we will be covering the African Cup of Nations. To transition, we consider why football still matters in an era of enclosure, mediated presence, and thinning publics.
What does a museum mean here?
A dispatch from Benin City tells the unfinished story of the Museum of West African Art.
Has digital feminism peaked?
The scandal around Ezra Olubi has exposed the contradictions of Nigeria’s middle-class, online feminism.
Mapping Johannesburg’s wounds
In his latest exhibition, Khanya Zibaya charts the psychic and spatial terrain of a city where homelessness, decay, and human resilience sit uneasily together.
The missing voices of Western Sahara
At the UN’s annual Western Sahara debate, everyone gets heard except the Sahrawis themselves.
Whose museum is it anyway?
The dispute over Benin City’s museum project shows that returning stolen art does not settle the question of ownership.
Minnesota was promised to us
Somalis have answered Trump’s latest racist tirade not with outrage but with a tidal wave of trolling.
The golden light of Pops Mohamed
From Actonville to global stages, Pops Mohamed blended tradition, futurism, and faith—leaving behind a musical archive as luminous as the spirit he carried.
Pints and powerpoints
From IMF history to astrophysics, Nairobi’s Drunken Lectures turn casual drinkers into an engaged public.
Guinea’s bet on iron ore
A $20 billion iron ore mega-project is reshaping Guinea’s economy and politics, but communities in Simandou say they still lack water, electricity, and accountability.
Khartoum, the most selfish city: if we let it be
Khartoum’s recovery is not a national recovery. Until Sudan confronts the violence that has long been concentrated outside the capital, ‘liberation’ will remain a hollow word.
Calling Trump’s bluff
As the White House hypes “Christian genocide” and floats military action, northern Nigerians are responding with satire.
Paying for citizenship
What began as a revenue lifeline for small island states has become a global market where the wealthy buy mobility and sovereignty itself becomes a commodity.
What Graham Platner reveals about the US left
The economic emancipation of the American working class cannot come at the expense of the global working class.
Beyond independence
The post-colonial settlement has left Africa vulnerable to conflict, external pressure, and intellectual dependency. What comes next?