The balancing act of being African and an artist
In the documentary film ‘Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra,’ the director is in complete control of his artistic vision.
6134 Articles by:
Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
Constructing minorities
The legal politics of religious difference in late colonial northern Nigeria still resonate more than 60 years post-independence.
After we have grown too tired of jumping
The Ghanaian game, Ampe, is an education in Blackness and womanhood.
What needs to fall to what needs to rise
The video playlist from our one-day symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the Marikana massacre—funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—is now on YouTube.
Character assassin
Author RW Johnson’s latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders.
The labor of land
In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.
The gods of liberation
The imperative to tell the untold stories of Zimbabwean freedom fighters during that country’s liberation war, especially their engagement with spirituality.
Selling fencing as freedom
What happens when companies start to sell the idea of a frictionless consumption that helps people at the same time?
The value of holding on as we imagine an escape
As Iran withstands one of its greatest existential challenges, its men’s national team would be forced to carry the weight of a nation’s despair on the field.
Belonging is not a sport
The reality of any society, any nation, and of our world, is much messier than picking a soccer team.
A pivot towards Africa
The positive reactions of Africans to Morocco’s performance at the World Cup are not outliers. Sport has often challenged outsiders’ view of Africa’s regions as disparate and disconnected.
The (African) Arab Cup
Morocco’s World Cup heroics are forging a new, dissident Third-World solidarity, reflecting the multifaceted nature of Moroccan identity itself: simultaneously Arab, African, and Amazigh.
Qatar’s vuvuzela
The 2022 Men’s World Football Cup is in its knockout stages, so the Africa Is a Country podcast catches up with some of the most exciting events so far in the tournament.
The external domination of Africa’s agricultural future
The changing structure of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) threatens the food security of the Global South.
The entitlement of Bola Tinubu
The Nigerian presidential candidate’s claim of ’emi lokan’ (it’s my turn) reveals complex ethnic politics and a stagnated democracy. Most responses to it, humor and rumor, reflect how Nigerians enact democratic citizenship.
Father of the nation
The funeral of popular Angolan musician Nagrelha underscored his capacity to mobilize people and it reminds us that popular culture offers a kind of Rorschach test for the body politic.