Growing pains
For all the grief Afropunk gets, including its commercialization and appetite for expansion, it still manages to bring people, mostly black, together over two days for a pretty great party.
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Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
Some kind of personal comfort
Kyle Shepherd’s new music blooms brightly from out of the shadow of pandemic and considers what it means to be South African, African, and human.
What happened to land grabs in Africa?
More than a decade since the surge in large-scale land acquisitions worldwide, many land deals remain in limbo. They nonetheless have far-reaching consequences for those who depend on land as foundational to life.
The cry of Black worldlessness
Poet Mongane Wally Serote’s 40-year lament, still haunts Black South Africans: “it is only in our memory that this is our land.” The land haunts our memory, and, in turn, we haunt the land’s memory.
The end of Tunisian democracy?
On this week’s episode of AIAC Talk, Will Shoki speaks with Maha Ben Gadha about the changing political landscape in Tunisia.
Not mere intellectual dissenters
Why is South Africa’s draft Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill contradicting the constitution and proposing to shield academics and scholars who propagate racist and bigoted ideas?
The secret offshore world of the Kenyatta family
The Pandora Papers connects Kenya’s ruling family to secret accounts in offshore companies and tax havens. But, state looting started with Jomo Kenyatta.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s skepticisms
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels offer a skepticism against the cultural politics of packaging African stories for global circulation and consumption.
But, first we’ll take this W
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature win raises questions about the role of the LitNobel and how they construct what we think of and buy as African literature.
A matter that defies tears
Wọle Ṣoyinka’s new novel examines a country caught in the crosshairs of unimaginable events.
Bono’s vanity
This #ThrowbackThursday piece from 2007 on Vanity Fair’s famous “Africa” issue, makes for fun, at times depressing, reading of the debates we hopefully left behind.
EndSARS, workers’ power, and war
The working class that organized #OccupyNigeria should collaborate with #EndSARS. If these two boiling points burn together to produce the fire next time, a new Nigeria will be possible.
Louder in Lagos
Africa Is a Country Radio continues its season focused on African club culture. Our next stop is Lagos. Listen here and on Worldwide FM.
The opacity of Fanon
This week on AIAC Talk, we speak with Leswin Laubscher and Derek Hook about the phenomenology of Franz Fanon and the ways he is understood throughout different eras of time.
We don’t need no education
Colonial and post-colonial governments in Kenya have worked to separate education from access to culture and information. It is an outdated model.
As we lose our fear
The Mathare Social Justice Centre mounts a photography exhibition on police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Kenya’s capital.