Goodbye B.B. King. Here he is playing live in Kinshasa, then Zaire, 1974
Hamba kahle, B.B. King (1925-2015)
Further Reading
Beyond independence
The post-colonial settlement has left Africa vulnerable to conflict, external pressure, and intellectual dependency. What comes next?
Trump’s beef with Nigeria
Trump’s threats of military action against Nigeria are not about Christian genocide, but are about rare earths, China, and the scramble to control Africa’s mineral future.
Davido’s jacket
Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
Empty riddles
Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.
Heritage on horseback
A photo essay on Nigeria’s Durbars and the power of royal pageantry.
When Moscow looked to the horn
Half a century after the Soviets built their base on the Gulf of Aden, the same strategic coastline is once more drawing in foreign powers, old and new.
How much does a Nigerian intellectual cost?
The country that once produced some of Africa’s fiercest moral voices now struggles to sustain independent thought.
The sound of what remains
Jean Maxime Baptiste’s latest film listens to how grief and history reverberate across generations in French Guiana.
The coup kids are in charge now
Across the continent’s new coup belt, young officers are stepping into power, casting themselves as guardians against corrupt civilian elites.
Who cares about African heritage?
While the world debates restitution, Africa’s own heritage institutions are collapsing. The question is no longer who took our past, but who is keeping it alive.
Life after aid cuts
Trump’s aid cuts have gutted HIV programs across Nigeria—forcing local women-led groups to rebuild health and dignity from below.
Whose transition is it anyway?
Africa’s first G20 presidency could mark a turning point for the continent—or simply another performance of green-washed extraction led by mining elites.
Elimination by other means
From Iraq to Gaza, empire no longer needs to annihilate populations when it can dismantle the very structures that make collective life possible.
The mirror and becoming
In Najaax Harun’s paintings, the self confronts its own reflection—haunted, tender, and unafraid to transform.
Filming what survives
Made just as Sudan descended into war, ‘Khartoum’ captures the beauty, pain, and humanity of a city shaken by violence—and the filmmakers who became refugees alongside their subjects.
The invention of foreigners
From indirect rule to Operation Dudula, the lines dividing citizen from stranger trace back to the way empire organized identity and labor.
When solidarity becomes spectacle
Francesca Albanese’s visit to South Africa exposed a truth we prefer not to face: that our moral witness has hardened into ritual. We watch, we clap, we call it solidarity.
Global Africa for whom?
Nairobi’s cultural moment reflects both the promise of continental imagination and the anxiety of performing arrival for the world’s gaze.
The geography of a storm
Hurricane Melissa made clear what COP30 obscures: the climate crisis still follows the lines of empire.
After the coronation
In Tanzania, the Gen Z uprising meets a state whose old bargains have collapsed.