Matchday 1: Mobutu Sese Seko
The African Five-a side podcast continues to explore the stories of five African heads of state and their influence on football. This week, we introduce our striker.
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Golda Gatsey
Golda Gatsey is a freelance writer and customer relationship manager.
Bayard Rustin’s Zimbabwe
A new film about American civil rights icon Bayard Rustin overlooks his later conservative turn, evident in his attitudes to anticolonial resistance in Africa.
Israel’s Sharpeville moment
It is often imagined that world opinion was always united in its opposition to apartheid in South Africa—it wasn’t. Today, global indifference to Palestine is changing too.
The false equivalence of the colonized and colonizer
Choosing to focus on denouncing Palestinian violence is akin to asking them to passively accept their fate—to die quietly and not resist.
Being black in Argentina
What does Javier Milei’s presidential victory mean for Argentina’s black and indigenous minorities?
The repression of Palestine solidarity in Kenya
Kenya is one of Israel’s closest allies in Africa. But the Ruto-led government isn’t alone in silencing pro-Palestinian speech.
Ruto’s green growth lie
The marketization of climate action, epitomized by Kenyan president William Ruto, allows the super-rich to buy their safety while the rest of us are left behind.
Arming oppression
Africa’s largest arms trader is trying to obscure its ties with apartheid Israel, and its connections to other autocratic regimes.
Are the 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers a new era for African Football?
This week on the African Five-a-side podcast, we take a look at the kick off of the African qualifiers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Solidarity means more than words
Although the South African government is one of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause, its actions tell a different story.
We are here
As the slaughter continues unabated in Gaza, it is abundantly clear that both the present and history are often written by the victors.
God, ancestors, and nature
Environmental protection is deeply-held practice in African spirituality. What happens when it is re-shaped by Christianity and capitalism?
The man behind ‘Uganda Renaissance’
How an experimental periodical led by an individual editor thrived in Nasserist Cairo even though it never joined the canon of revolutionary print.
Hier kom die bokke
Something’s different about the reaction to South Africa’s victory at the 2023 Rugby World Cup, its fourth title.
Matchday 1: Kwame Nkrumah
Up next in the African Five-a-side podcast, we name our central defender, and explain how Ghana’s first president boycotted the 1966 FIFA World Cup and won two Afcons.
Keeping Afrobeat decolonial in Buenos Aires
One bandleader’s quest to keep Afrobeat political in Latin America.
There is no youth monolith
Young people have become an influential demographic in Nigerian politics. But are they a coherent political constituency?
Jailbreak in Conakry
How Guinea’s former president, Moussa Dadis Camara, nearly broke out of prison.
What is the United Nations for?
Israel’s assault on Gaza has shown, once again, that the UN Security Council is ineffective when it comes to preventing wars and protecting the human rights of all people.
Where is African cinema in Hollywood?
It would seem that Hollywood has discovered Africa again. But how does all the new American content about Africa’s past compare to a previous generation of African-made movies on the same topic?