You’ve heard the news about Romelu Lukaku? The 18-year-old Belgian-Congolese striker signed a contract with his dream team Chelsea over the weekend. Lukaku’s star rose fast since debuting for the national team in 2010. Football aficionados aren’t surprised by the move. And Lukaku? He knew it all along. The above fragment* is taken from a series (‘The School of Lukaku’) that was aired on Belgian national tv last year. The series followed a class of youth living and studying in Brussels, doing a good job at showing the Belgian audience a part of the city most prefer to avoid — and a reality they choose to ignore. The video shows Lukaku visiting Chelsea’s stadium on a school trip. No doubt he will make it at Stamford Bridge, or so the fans say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X7JAF77w1c

* Gotta love the use of Elbow’s Lippy Kids.

Further Reading

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahelian States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.