Africa Is a Country

Dakar Modern

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

Dakar Modern

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWbSVS0AmtA]

I’ve been wanting to post for a while now about the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion.  Primarily the work of the filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris; remember Harris film, “The Twelve Apostles of Nelson Mandela,” about his South African step father. The DDFR is described as an “interactive, multimedia project,” where New Yorkers–mostly Africans and African-Americans–showing Harris their family photos and photo albums and then telling the stories behind the photographs. Great project. In the video above, from the project, Pierre Thiam, chef and co-owner of the Senegalese restaurant Le Grand Dakar in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, not far from my house, gives Harris a look at a newly independent Senegal of the 1960s and 1970s.

Further Reading

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.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.