Africa Is a Country

Africa 3.0

Africa 3.0

By
Tom Devriendt

Another month, another special Africa issue. This one is by French weekly newspaper Courrier International (part of Le Monde group), edited by Isabelle Lauze and Ousmane Ndiaye. Many of the articles have appeared elsewhere but are published here for the first time in French. Features and profiles include those on Congolese photographer Kiripi Katembo, Angola’s “indignados”, Senegalese collective Y’en A Marre, Nigerian Nollywood, Ghanaian journo Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Ethiopian entrepreneur Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, a very short introduction to Francophone Hip-Hop, etc. Full table of contents here. The cover photo is lifted from Omar Victor Diop’s 2012 series “The Studio of Vanities”. It’s not clear why they decided to focus only on Sub-Saharan Africa. That said, they’ve used excellent sources.

Further Reading

A city divided

Ethnic enclaves are not unusual in many cities and towns across Sudan, but in Port Sudan, this polarized structure instigated and facilitated communal violence.

The imperial forest

Gregg Mitman’s ‘Empire of Rubber’ is less a historical reading of Liberia than a history of America and racial capitalism through the lens of a US corporate giant.

Africa’s next great war

The international community’s limited attention span is laser-focused on jihadism in the Sahel and the imploding Horn of Africa. But interstate war is potentially brewing in the eastern DRC.

The Cape Colony

The campaign to separate South Africa’s Western Cape from the rest of the country is not only a symptom of white privilege, but also of the myth that the province is better run.

Between East Africa and the Gulf

Political encounters between the Arab Gulf and Africa span centuries. Mahmud Traouri’s novel ‘Maymuna’ demonstrates the significant role of a woman’s journey from East Africa to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Āfrīqāyī

It’s not common knowledge that there is Iran in Africa and there is Africa in Iran. But there are commonplace signs of this connection.

It could happen to us

Climate negotiations have repeatedly floundered on the unwillingness of rich countries, but let’s hope their own increasing vulnerability instills greater solidarity.