Africa Is a Country

My fellow Africans

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

My fellow Africans

By
William Shoki

On the next AIAC Talk, we talk with several AIAC fellows about their work. Tuesday on Youtube.

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

A few weeks ago on AIAC Talk, we spoke to Anakwa Dwamena and Bhakti Shingrapure about the world of writing and publishing on the African continent. A recurring theme throughout the conversation was how to revive the lively intellectual culture which thrived on the continent during its wave of decolonization.<

But, in romanticizing the past we can sometimes ignore that in the present, there exists a vibrant world of ideas on the continent already, that sometimes, we just aren’t looking closely enough. This is one of the reasons why Africa Is a Country began a fellowship program, the purpose of which is to “support the production of original work and new knowledge on Africa-related topics that are under-recognized and under-covered in traditional media, new media, and other public forums. It particularly seeks to amplify voices and perspectives from the left that address the major political, social, and economic issues affecting Africans in ways that are original, accessible, and engaging to a variety of audiences.”

In May last year, we awarded ten fellowships and since then have been working with the inaugural class of fellows to support the creation and publication of their original work. This week on AIAC talk, we will profile two fellows and their projects: Youlandree Appasamy, a freelance writer and editor from South Africa, will explore South African Indian class identities, particularly in Kwazulu-Natal province; and Liam Brickhill, a freelance journalist from Zimbabwe, will unearth stories on Zimbabwean cricket.

Another fellow, Ricci Shryock, has previously appeared on AIAC talk to discuss the role of women in Guinea-Bissau’s liberation war.

Last week, we were joined by Grieve Chelwa to remember the life and legacy of Zambia’s founding president Kenneth Kaunda, as well as Herman Wasserman to discuss the rise of media disinformation in Africa. Watch that show on our YouTube channel and stream the next show Tuesday at 6pm in Johannesburg, 7pm Nairobi, and 12pm in New York.

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.