Africa Is a Country

Robert Mugabe’s hostage face

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

Robert Mugabe’s hostage face

By
Anakwa Dwamena

And, the terrible experience of Tanzanian women in Oman and the United African Emirates.

Robert Mugabe, seemingly under house arrest, at a graduation ceremony at the University of Zimbabwe.

One: Despite the urge to celebrate the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 years as leader of Zimbabwe, first as Prime Minister then as President, there is much reason to be cautious. For one, coups always sets a dangerous precedent. More specifically in this case, there are few signs the people of Zimbabwe will get to decide their new leader. This is not a revolution, but a realignment.

(2) In the aftermath of 9/11, Muammar Gaddafi announced both gas and oil exploration deals with the UK, and that he was abandoning his quest for nuclear and chemical weapons. In return, secret papers reveal, British intelligence gave him assistance in chasing down his enemies all over the world.   

(3) Increasing capacity of cell phones is changing day to day life in Africa. But it is not all a positive story, when we look at how many of the telecom giants got established in the first place. 

(4) The terrible experience of Tanzanian women in Oman and the United African Emirates.

(5) Climate change along with encroaching desertification is stealing the livelihood of many below the Sahara. What is to be done? 

(6) Speaking of which: at this rate, it is estimated that fish catches will reduce be 60 percent around the continent.

(7) Another look at the role religion had in the Biafra crisis, and how the crisis effected religion. 

(8) The Nigerian women’s bobsled team will be the first African team to participate in the sport this Winter Olympics. 

(9) This week would have been Chinua Achebe’s birthday. Google celebrated this with a doodle. Achebe’s work has been celebrated for its prescience and grasp on social relations. What hasn’t been talked about much though, is how humorous his work was as well.  

(10) Watch: The African player saving lives on the football pitch

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.