Africa Is a Country

Found Objects No.20

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

Found Objects No.20

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Q10g_Mov4&w=600&h=349]

From an episode of American comedian Drew Carey’s sketch comedy show, “Whose Line is it Anyway.” In the video from the show, Carey introduces a regular feature, “African Chant” (the sketch involves the actors making up “an African chant” based on the name of an audience member. Some of you may recognize Wayne Brady in the clip.)

Carey inadvertently blurts out that Africa “is a big country.”

The edited clip (above) highlights how throughout the rest of the episode cast member Greg basically reminds Carey of his gaffe. Carey gets him back by the show’s end.

Here are two more instances of the “African chant” from the show: examples one and two.

Further Reading

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

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.