Last year, Chris Abani introduced Ghana-born writer and poet Kwame Dawes (who spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica) to a Lannan Foundation audience:

And talked with him:

The Lannan archive has enough talks to keep you entertained for a whole week, by the way. There’s Howard Zinn in conversation with Arundhati Roy (and the same Arundhati Roy more recently), there’s J.M. Coetzee, Eduardo Galeano, Octavio Paz, Cornel West, Czeslaw Milosz, Lucille Clifton, Nadine Gordimer, etcetera.

I suggest you browse yourself. — Tom Devriendt

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.