How to read Africa is a Country

A few people have emailed us about the not-so-new layout here at AIAC; mostly about finding old posts on this new layout. The main complaint: “When I am on your home page, I can’t find a way of accessing any recent posts older than ‘Latest posts’ or hope they’re in ‘Top posts’.” (Only the last posts appear on the main body of the front page along with a ‘Featured’ post.) True. Here’s some advice: Click on the ‘More…’ button at the bottom of the front page. That will take you to a blog version (dates descending) of AIAC. Or click on the ‘Archive’ widget on the right and choose a month, say ‘January 2012’, and all the posts for that month will appear in chronological order (by date descending). The other option: If you’re looking for a specific post, just use the ‘Search’ option at the top of the page in the header. Or, if you’re looking for the work of a specific blogger, click on her/his name. Hope that helps and keeps you reading.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

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.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

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.