Africa Is a Country

Emmanuel Macron’s Twitter fingers

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

Emmanuel Macron’s Twitter fingers

By
Anakwa Dwamena

The stuff we couldn't cover the second week of December, so we compiled them here in byte sizes.

Emmanuel Macron, French President.

First up, Emmanuel Macron continues his streak of African agitation. This week his target –on Twitter — was Algeria. Previously, Macron acknowledged that France’s colonial war in Algeria was “a crime against humanity.” He didn’t give specifics or apologize to Algerians for atrocities committed during the war (during one French military airstrike in 1945, over 40,000 Algerians were bombed to death), Now he wants Algeria to allow the return of “thousands of Algerians who fought for the French army against Algeria during the war of independence from 1954 to 1962” and who have lived in France since then.

Speaking of Algeria: December 6 was the anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s death from leukemia at the age of 36. Some thoughts on a couple new books (published here on Africa is a Country) that seek to present the philosopher to us in a new way.  [A few, older pieces that are also worth revisiting on Africa is a Country about Fanon’s legacy are here, here, here and here–Ed]

Regarding the ongoing migrant crisis in Libya, we must look to countries of origin, destination, and transit to bear a joint responsibility for the migrants.

In fact, it is better looked as a confluence of many displacements and migration crises.

Muammar Gaddafi’s son is coming back to Tripoli and could stand for next year’s Libyan elections. 

Has Angola had a revolution of its own? Or are the new wide-ranging reforms still in the context of a political “musical chairs”?

It appears that in Soviet Russia, sorry, modern-day Nigeria, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad is extorting, assaulting and intimidating citizens. People have had enough, and there is widespread call for wider Nigerian police (ranked worst in the world) reform. #EndSARS

After paying $700m for the last 10 years, in installments, the Swiss government will return the final $320m money the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha stashed away between 1993 and 1998.

Another leader from Kano, Sanusi Lamido, puts forth another way to look at the Sahel and how West African nations and North African one can work together. 

Kenyan’s national elections made all the headlines. But the down-ballot votes show the success of devolution and suggest a path for addressing the ever-widening inequality; and

As international pressure grows on tax-dodging and financial havens, Mauritius looks to diversify its economy. 

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.