When economists shut off your water
Access to water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. The World Bank, Nairobi Water Company, and development economists exploited this unjust context to treat poor Kenyans like guinea pigs.
6134 Articles by:
Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
Baloji’s synaesthetic universe
The return of Belgian-Congolese multitalent Baloji is nothing short of remarkable, with his latest output offering a fourfold album, an immersive exhibition, and most notably, a captivating magic realistic film.
Imagining the future through running
The successes of elite Kenyan athletes should not distract from the ways ordinary Kenyans are using it to make meaning for themselves.
What about queer joy?
Telling one’s story as a black queer person isn’t yet the luxury it is chalked out to be, especially when it remains dangerous to be queer in the world.
Israel doesn’t care about your resolutions
Imagining and demanding the decolonization of Palestine means acting to decolonize all the colonial states in the world, from Brazil to Australia, including the USA and Chile.
Not that complex
A new HBO documentary exposes the harm caused by unqualified aid workers in Uganda, but its attempts to complicate the narrative ultimately fall flat.
We shall overcome
One cannot fully appreciate Kenya’s normative Christianity and its particular obsession with public piety without appreciating the legacy of the East African revival.
With what are you apologizing?
If slavery is the material and metaphysical womb of the modern world, reparations will require nothing less than the end of this world.
Reading List: Faeeza Ballim
What does the history of South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, tell us about the apartheid and post-apartheid state?
The deafening silence of South African universities
South Africans have to demand an academic boycott of Israel, in the same way much of the Global South boycotted apartheid South Africa’s universities.
Gaza and my political conscience
American universities are trying to silence anyone who speaks up against Israel’s occupation and bombardment of Gaza.
Reclaiming development alternatives
Post-Colonialisms Today provides an antidote to Western-centric analysis of Africa in a special issue of ‘Africa Development.’
Ruto’s climate contradictions
Kenyan president William Ruto has reinvented himself as Africa’s climate champion. But, his policy contradictions reveal that this is just his latest hustle
Matchday 1: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmed Ben Bella, and Muammar Gaddafi
Africa Is a Country is proud to introduce a new podcast focused on the politics and cultural relevance of football on the African continent.
Loving, living, and communal duty
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s directorial debut is not only a love story about two star-crossed individuals, but about the whimsical landscapes of the place where they fall in love.
Egypt and the war in Palestine
As the ruler of the most populous nation in the Arab world, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi should be concerned about the fallout of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war on his regime.