Africa Is a Country

Asking for a friend

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

Asking for a friend

By
Africa is a Country

This week’s 20 questions from our friend:

Can Idris Elba’s acting save the Netflix movie ‘Beasts of No Nation’?

Why do African national teams do so well in FIFA age group competitions (Nigeria and Mali play each other in the Under 17 World Cup Final today in Chile) but fail so spectacularly at senior level? (A former Mexico coach–they lost to Nigeria in the semifinal–has a theory.)

Will the child refugees who are the subjects of this New York Times Magazine/Google ‘real time’ storytelling app be able to see it?

Who will win Uganda’s presidential election in 2016?

You know that President Paul Kagame can technically rule Rwanda until 2034? Think about it: North West Kardashian will be 21 and D’Banj will be 54.

Is Africa’s best footballer Yaya Toure mad at John Obi Mikel?

Will the Italian newspaper La Republica at some point explain to the rest of us why it decided to make a blackface film?

Is Bono also your go-to person on global poverty and Ethiopian history?

What is Nigerian Senator Patrick Obahiagbon saying?

Who should we blame for the pitiful state of commercial rap music?

Is Drake Zambian?

Is “Our Brand is Crisis” (the fictionalized movie version with Sandra Bullock of the revealing 2006 documentary film) as bad as we assume it is?

Why is Fareed Zakaria still allowed to make stuff up?

Does the  movement have its own soundtrack?

Have you gotten your copy of “Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy“?

What was NPR thinking?

Who believed Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (Order of the Blackface) when he pretended to know very little about his country’s deep historical ties to South Africa?

Did the City of Johannesburg take Burning Spear’s advice about social living literally?

Why do US public representatives take their foreign policy advice (on the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from Nicole Ritchie and Ryan Gosling?

Don’t we all miss Brenda Fassie right now?

Further Reading

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.