Milking the dream
The 2022 Venice Biennale shows that despite the lack of investment from African nations or the occasional hijacking by mercenary curators, African artists are finding ways to be seen.
6135 Articles by:
Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
Where, and why, is North Africa?
The centrality of race, colonialism, political projects around transnational identities, and the social sciences, all had effects on how the Middle East as a region came to be.
Colonial Vice at the Venice Biennale
At the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, all is not well when it comes to relative newcomers from the African continent.
The political economy of “decolonization”
Decolonization in Kenya may be permitted in its universities if the Kenyan government receives a grant to promote it, or if foreign donor will sponsor it.
A crop that changed the world
The story about peanuts, and the people who grew it at the margins of an empire in 19th century West Africa, then the most abundant source of the world’s most important oilseed.
Stellenbosch University’s intractable racism problem
The University of Stellenbosch in South Africa treats racism as an issue that must be soft-soaped to avoid alienating white people.
Imagining new stories, new freedoms, and new joys
Lindsey Green-Simms’ book “Queer African Cinemas” explores the intersections of postcolonial thought, queer theory, and screen media.
Climate change as class war
On this week’s AIAC podcast: After an upswing before the pandemic, the global climate justice movement currently looks stuck. What kind of climate politics can appeal to the majority of people?
Guinean first ladies and big (political) business
The wives of (former) heads of state form an important part of the political elite in Guinea, considerably shaping the country’s sociopolitical and economic past and present.
A little bit of African thinking
The profound influence, often underplayed, that great African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral had on Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire.
Kwasi Wiredu’s golden rule
The greatest achievement of Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu was to recast African knowledge from something lost to something gained.
What’s good for investors isn’t good for Africans
How Africa’s pension funds risk becoming instruments of Africa’s neoliberal takeover.
An African Queer in the academy
We do not have to die, become sick or leave the academy to live and be in this space.
Keeping a displaced group closely knit together
A photo essay on Masjid Tajul Huda, a mostly West African mosque in the Bronx, New York.
The land of the freed people
‘We Slaves of Suriname’ (1934) was the first study of Dutch colonial rule from the perspectives of the people who resisted it. It is has been published in English for the first time.
Something for nothing
As coal is dying we must be prepared to absorb the transferable infrastructure of this industry and re-tool it for use in the emerging economy.