Day of the dead
How stealing corpses in Gabon reflects its politics: a political system that does not hesitate to draw its vital force in death, even as death and paralysis threaten the system’s leading beneficiaries.
6443 Article(s) by:
Ladan Osman
Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden (2019) and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (2015). She lives in Brooklyn.
The problem with post-race comedy
Comics have power, especially over the young, and perhaps more than we care to acknowledge.
The confrontation with France’s slave past
A visit to a museum in a French port city, brings up questions about how slavery is remembered.
The Erasure of Dulcie September
South African activist Dulcie September would have turned 84 today had she not been assassinated in March 1988. The podcast series They Killed Dulcie revisits the murder and her legacy.
Groundings with Walter Rodney
On the 50th anniversary of Walter Rodney’s The Groundings With My Brothers, a small group of scholars on the impacts of Rodney on their intellectual development and political commitments.
Long live Ruth First
The great South African writer and activist, Ruth First, was assassinated by a letter bomb sent by the South African Security Police in Maputo, Mozambique on this day, 17 August, in 1982.
Cake politics
The Rugby Championship, the World Cup, and Springbok politics in South Africa.
Architectural resistance
A collective of artists and architects are working to reimagine public space in abandoned property developments in Ghana’s capital city.
There is no Africa in African studies
The experience of studying Africa in London makes the writers question the validity of “African Studies” as is currently taught in Britain.
Okocha, love you. Pass Maradona!
The midfielder Augustine “Jay Jay” Okocha is arguably one of Nigeria’s best men’s football players ever. It is his birthday today, August 14th.
Beyond game day
Ultras or extreme fans of football clubs in Morocco use their collective identity to push for social and political demands.
The ghost battalion
On the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) the organized force behind the revolutionary uprising in Sudan.
Fathers of the nation
Some of the mythologies about Nelson Mandela don’t line up with actual histories.
The age of the influencer
One African feminist’s view on how social media clout chasing has stalled progressive politics.
The manifestation of climate injustice
Following the new UN report on climate change and agricultural land use, David S. Williams highlights the effects climate changes will have on communities in informal urban areas.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Cold War
The author on why she felt compelled to write another book on Nkrumah. This time on Western powers smearing Nkrumah as a Communist.
The role of diaspora in revolution
Sudanese living abroad are key to the uprising: raising awareness and support for political and social transformation back home.
‘We are now treated the same as men. We have exactly the same rights’
How women farm workers in North Africa, specifically Morocco, are achieving justice on the job.
On researching in and out of Africa
The writer critiques the legacy of Christian missionaries in Africa and making sure her own engagement with Ethiopia doesn’t morph into white saviorism.
Can a hamburger free a people?
Duane Jethro goes to South African fast food chain, Chicken Licken, to eat a Big John Burger, and finds out the postcolonial feelings it inspires.