Unmasking Nigerian elites
In the Nigerian film ‘La Femme Anjola,’ which delights with brilliant performances, no one is exactly who they seem.
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Karen Chalamilla
Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam.
The circus of peer-reviewed publications
Academic journals pride themselves on “blind peer-review.” However, what if all that’s blind is the reckoning with inherent systemic discrimination?
Story maps of no location
Julie Mehretu, an Ethiopian-American painter, defies expectations that artists of color should produce representational work.
The border between Africa and Spain
The film Adú justly calls attention to Europe’s closed borders, but neglects to examine why people are migrating from Africa.
Diagnostic dilemmas
The increasing visibility of Qur’anic healing in Cairo intersects with psychiatry’s growing foothold in public awareness, creating fertile ground for debates about affliction, care, and expertise.
Fractured dreams: The life of a Libyan exile
Muammar Gaddafi occupies a contested space in the histories of postcolonial Africa. What about his Libyan opponents?
What happened to Ethiopia?
The ongoing displacement and killings of minorities and the ongoing war in Tigray—labeled by the federal government as enforcing law and order—are disturbing. It can’t go on.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Encounter with Karl Marx
Nkrumah’s written works and speeches reveal a selective encounter and appropriation of tools—in this case from Marxist thought—that were translated through Nkrumah’s traveling theory.
The way we tell stories
Raoul Peck’s ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ missed the opportunity to engage with the history of colonialism in a way that empowers viewers to imagine a future in which whiteness is not the locus of power and authority.
العدمية كحالة أفريقية خاصة
تكمن فرادة حالة العدمية في أفريقيا كتاريخ وحضارة وشعوب في ارتباطها المتشعب بواقع دموي عنيف من جهة وصيرورة رؤى طوباوية من جهة أخرى، كما يعبر عنه كل من رواية “ذوي الجمال لم يولدوا بعد” للكاتب الغاني ايي كواي أرما وفيلم “آخر أيام المدينة” للمخرج المصري تامر سعيد.
A different picture of the struggle
Oral histories conducted with women involved in South Africa’s liberation struggle offer us startlingly candid portraits of youth activism.
Three psychologies of Mau Mau
How racialized intellectual outputs placed in just the right circumstances can do the most damage.
The Nigerian and the Lenin Prize
Peter Ayodele Curtis Joseph was a prominent left nationalist in Nigeria’s struggle for independence. Then he was forgotten. How do we commemorate him?
Nigeria’s Twitter ban and the resistance politics of VPNs
Anyone who cares about civil society, free speech, and human rights should find the state’s digital silencing of its citizens deeply troubling.
Where do just ideas come from
Exploring Senegal’s early post-colonial history, to make sense of the unhappiness with the government of incumbent president Macky Sall.
Trapped by history
Mexican American director John Gutierrez new film, set in Cape Town, South Africa, touches on colonialism, displacement, and man’s complicated relationship with nature.