Achille Mbembe (the links are to previous references of Mbembe on this blog) gave a lecture at the Birkbeck School of Law in March of this year. You can download an audio recording of the talk entitled ‘Law, Democracy and the Ethics of Mutuality: Notes on the South African Experiment’ here.
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.
As the White House hypes “Christian genocide” and floats military action, northern Nigerians are responding with satire.
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.
The economic emancipation of the American working class cannot come at the expense of the global working class.
The post-colonial settlement has left Africa vulnerable to conflict, external pressure, and intellectual dependency. What comes next?
Trump’s threats of military action against Nigeria are not about Christian genocide, but are about rare earths, China, and the scramble to control Africa’s mineral future.
Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.
A photo essay on Nigeria’s Durbars and the power of royal pageantry.
Half a century after the Soviets built their base on the Gulf of Aden, the same strategic coastline is once more drawing in foreign powers, old and new.
The country that once produced some of Africa’s fiercest moral voices now struggles to sustain independent thought.
Jean Maxime Baptiste’s latest film listens to how grief and history reverberate across generations in French Guiana.
Across the continent’s new coup belt, young officers are stepping into power, casting themselves as guardians against corrupt civilian elites.
While the world debates restitution, Africa’s own heritage institutions are collapsing. The question is no longer who took our past, but who is keeping it alive.
Trump’s aid cuts have gutted HIV programs across Nigeria—forcing local women-led groups to rebuild health and dignity from below.
Africa’s first G20 presidency could mark a turning point for the continent—or simply another performance of green-washed extraction led by mining elites.
From Iraq to Gaza, empire no longer needs to annihilate populations when it can dismantle the very structures that make collective life possible.
In Najaax Harun’s paintings, the self confronts its own reflection—haunted, tender, and unafraid to transform.
Made just as Sudan descended into war, ‘Khartoum’ captures the beauty, pain, and humanity of a city shaken by violence—and the filmmakers who became refugees alongside their subjects.
From indirect rule to Operation Dudula, the lines dividing citizen from stranger trace back to the way empire organized identity and labor.