Africa Is a Country

The Blue Kenyan

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

The Blue Kenyan

By
Elliot Ross

We may not all love Chelsea Football Club (John Terry, their klepto-petro-billionaire owner, John Terry, the list goes on) but we are loving the team’s Brazilian midfielder Ramires right now. And not just for that equalizing goal he scored on Saturday against Manchester United in the English FA Cup. When Ramires played for Cruzeiro in Brasil, fans of Os Celestes (who play in blue) nicknamed him “O Queniano Azul” or the “The Blue Kenyan” because his extraordinary stamina reminded them of Kenyan distance runners. 

A Brazilian TV channel went and did a long feature on Ramires’ life in London after he scored a brilliant lob at the Nou Camp last season. One for the Portuguese speakers, or for anyone who wants to see Ramires and his wife chasing their young son around their house before inexplicably heading to a posh ice bar in London to finish the interview. He seems like a nice fella.

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.