The mirage of progress in women’s football
Select success stories obscure the intentional underdevelopment of women’s football in Africa.
6357 Article(s) by:
Fatima B. Derby
Fatima B. Derby is a Ghanaian feminist writer and queer activist.
Spectacles of incompetence
Given his track record of sowing division and making empty promises, South Africans should be wary of treating its new Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture as a lovable buffoon.
Resisting the new green colonialism
A proposed green hydrogen project in Tunisia prioritizes European energy needs over local sovereignty.
Rooting for everybody black
The Olympics, with its provocative patriotism, are the perfect forum for using a broader diasporic focus to push back against hypernationalism.
Rolling with the punches
Removed from the facts, the firestorm around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is the latest attempt by the right-wing in the West to find fodder for its culture war.
Pretty girl from Soweto
In South Africa, a popular beauty contest is revealing the specter of ultranationalism and anti-blackness.
The keyboard warriors are winning
Digital activism is playing a significant role in amplifying the impact of the #RejectFinanceBill2024 and #RutoMustGo protests, but how effective can it ultimately be?
Food wars
The theft dispute between Onezwa Mbola and Nara Smith reveals the consumerist undertones behind content for women in the online creative economy.
Not an obvious hero
In a new film, former UN-Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld is portrayed as a defender of a fledgling postcolonial state. But his role in the Congo Crisis is more complicated.
When a star dies
On the tragic death of 24-year-old marathon record holder Kelvin Kiptum.
Ending our spectator citizenship
Anti-government protests have spread to Uganda, where ordinary people are tired of passively accepting elite misrule.
Not only kafala
Domestic workers in the Gulf typically face a double bind: as a foreign worker, you are governed by kafala laws, while as a female, you are governed by the male guardianship system.
The anti-extractivism of Mdou Moctar
‘Funeral for Justice’ is a bracing recording that blends the critical sensibility of Frantz Fanon with the melodies of a genre born from an ongoing liberation struggle.
Who are the Olympics for?
Beneath the image of togetherness, the world’s biggest athletic spectacle is still beset by discrimination and exclusion.
Who dreams of sunrise?
Siddhartha Deb’s latest book asks readers to consider incarceration as both a metaphor and fact of life in India today.
Speaking poetry to power
Amid the turmoil of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, a unique group of individuals has emerged as powerful agents of change.
The mad man
As he loses his grip on power, Kenya’s president is losing the plot.
The puzzle as propaganda
At the height of African decolonization, radical writers turned to interactive features like competitions and quizzes to engage their audiences.
Nairobi’s disastrous flood response
Days before mass protests broke out across Kenya, the national government enacted a mass, unjustified forced removal campaign across Nairobi.
Kenya’s third liberation movement
It’s no longer just about the finance bill. Kenyans want fundamental change.