In Tanzania and beyond, political elites manage informal workers not by ignoring them—but by shaping their identities, dividing their ranks, and using class to tighten their hold on power.
Latest
Green hydrogen, old colonialism
The EU’s hydrogen push in North Africa is sold as climate progress, but beneath the green gloss lies a familiar story of extraction, debt, and dispossession.
Trump tariffs and US Imperialism
Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.
Cinema against silence
A new Malian film takes on the tradition of forced marriage with humor, intimacy, and defiance—reimagining African cinema as both tribute and rupture.
The end of US empire is not the end of the world
As American hegemony unravels, the Global South must resist both nostalgia and passivity. Multipolarity won’t arrive on its own—it must be built through struggle.
Re-writing the rules of Tunisian rap
Blending Tunisian rap with Egyptian mahraganat, Lully Snake defies sexist norms, blurs borders, and opens a new space for feminist rebellion in North African popular culture.
TV
The CAF Champions League final and the politics of North-African football ultras.
Culture
Art is a place for rehearsal
What happens when art steps into the gaps left by official history? A conversation on race, memory, and the unfinished work of making meaning.
A powerful storytelling tradition
The last great Fang bard, Eyí Moan Ndong fused myth, music, and sci-fi to create epic performances that defy Western categories—and demand global recognition.
Binti, revisited
More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.
Journey through the afterlives of a colonized Africa
In a hauntingly sincere recollection of her childhood and evolution into the ‘Most Dangerous woman in Africa,’ Andrée Blouin reintroduces herself while taking readers alongside an intimate ‘Africa Tour.’
The bones beneath our feet
A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.
Revolutionary Papers
A year long series on the archival remnants of African and black diaspora anti-colonial movement materials to retrieve a politics and pedagogy that challenge the contemporary cooptation of radical histories. Guest editors: Mahvish Ahmad, Koni Benson, and Hana Morgenstern from the Revolutionary Papers project (revolutionarypapers.org)
Nigeria's archives of revolutionary printmaking offers us insights into the dissident voices of the country's old left, which are surprisingly relevant today.
Christian theology was appropriated to play an integral role in the justifying apartheid’s racist ideology. Black theologians resisted through a theology of the oppressed.
Politics
Sanctions as civilizational warfare
Framed as hard diplomacy, economic sanctions are a subtler form of warfare—one that erodes sovereignty, punishes civilians, and extends colonial power under a new name.
Paul Biya, the last Kaiser
A meditation on the oldest ruler in the world.
Pan Africanism under elite capture
Recent celebrity investments in the continent raises the question: Who is it really for?
An undignified democracy
Three decades after apartheid, South Africans are still waiting for housing, land, and dignity—while elites ask for patience that serves only themselves.
What’s left of Nigeria’s feminist left?
Once anchored in mass struggle and socialist politics, the feminist movement in Nigeria now navigates the contradictions of donor dependency, digital activism, and elite capture. On the podcast, we unpack: what happened?
Donald Trump
Tariffs, Trump, and the Global South
Trump’s trade war is framed as a battle with China—but its fallout is exposing just how little power African economies have in a rigged global system.
Why the far right needs violence
Javier Milei rose to power promising freedom—but his government is unleashing economic violence, criminalizing dissent, and testing the limits of Argentina’s democracy.
Liberal internationalism after USAID
As US aid falters, the crisis of liberal internationalism deepens. What comes next when even its strongest institutions can no longer hold the facade together?
Caught at the border
Asylum seekers from Africa are caught in a growing crisis at the US-Mexico border, as Trump's policies leave them in legal limbo and unsafe conditions.