The age of the Obidients
Peter Obi, one of the three main candidates for Nigerian president, is neither a savior nor a socialist, but his candidacy and his supporters have enlivened Nigerian elections.
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Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
Stories as refuge
Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga chronicles life, death, return and grief in her story collection, ‘Igifu.’
Ignore and rule
What do Europeans do when they hear the war waged by the government of Ethiopia has killed more people than the war in Ukraine?
Reading List: Lesley Nicole Braun
Anyone who has attempted to describe dance in writing knows how difficult it is. These books on dance on the continent and the diaspora gets close.
Faith in native consciousness
The writings of Ugandan lawyer David Mpanga are both literary and legalistic, rooted in African conceptions of storytelling and self-determination.
Bua Komanisi
Despite its proud history, the South African Communist Party has recently taken a backseat in South African politics. Understanding its roots helps us understand how it got here and what it will take to be rejuvenated.
Forms of woundedness
The intergenerational traumas of an anti-Black world in August Wilson’s Fences are only too familiar to South Africans.
Where the spirits conquer her
The Senegalese director, Safi Faye’s classic 1996 film, Mossane, is a love tragedy and a spiritual quest in Sereer land.
Western media is missing the point
The excessive reporting of the interplay between non-African powers in the Sahel—however crucial it may be to understand regional dynamics—betrays a Western-centric bias in international news coverage.
“Black African” may be oxymoronic
For many African immigrants in the United States, being seen as Black doesn’t necessarily equate to seeing oneself as Black.
Group therapy
South African jazz drummer Tumi Mogorosi’s latest project is a call to black people to share the questions that render our condition one of deep ache.
The colonial wounds of Senegal’s girlchild
In ‘Black Girl’ (1966) and ‘Cuties’ (2020), M’Bissine T. Diop is a cautionary figure who warns of colonialism’s wounds and afterlives for Black girl belonging in the present day.
Reading List: Hugo ka Canham
On the publication of his book on black life on the margins, the South African author reflects on work that expand the meaning of being black on the world.
Who is benefiting here?
The UKs deportation pact with Rwanda is being likened to a “human trafficking deal.” It reflects the state of Rwandan politics.
You couldn’t breathe until the trees were gone
A new film by documentarians Sara Newens and Mina T. Son shows yet another way in which nature is enlisted to marginalize Black communities.
The temptation of a simple story
In light of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Africans again grapple with the histories of Soviet—and then Russian—connections.