The temptation of a simple story
In light of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Africans again grapple with the histories of Soviet—and then Russian—connections.
6437 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 influence of the middle class
With the working classes down and out, it is arguably the middle classes that will play the more decisive role in African politics going forward.
Hands off Africa
It is high time that the devastating impact of foreign intervention in Africa be taken as seriously as those in Europe.
Stop paying attention to Jonathan Jansen
The South African professor is under fire for suggesting life under apartheid was better than life under democracy. Stop giving him so much airtime.
Dreams of freedom
A historical novel by Sudanese writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin narrates an unusual love story between a slave and a princess.
Those who make homes in dark buildings
In his new book ‘The Blinded City,’ Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon takes readers into inner city Johannesburg not as it was or could be, but as it is.
Dreams of highfalutin philosophies
If an author writes with empathy, precision and authenticity about experiences foreign to their own, they’re a good writer and not a cultural appropriator.
Taper salam
For African women passing through Morocco en route to Europe, begging on the streets becomes a way to support themselves, but also reinforces humiliation and shame.
A picture’s worth
Mabel Cetu is considered South Africa’s first Black woman photojournalist and documented the everyday lives of Black communities in the 1950s.
A brief history of five elections in Angola
The specter of Angola’s 1992 elections continues to impact the country’s democratic process.
Apartheid nostalgia
South Africans agree that redistribution and economic security are urgent. But will they arrive via a deepening of democracy and public accountability, or a return to authoritarianism?
Everything the government does
On the South African Department of Tourism’s pending sponsorship deal with Premier League football club, Tottenham Hotspur.
Greed has fiercer allies than justice
Libyan writer Ibrahim Al-Koni’s latest novel is a philosophical retelling of the story of Amazigh queen Al-Kahina.
The media of the useable past
Revisiting the papers of left, anti-colonial revolt from the continent can remind us of messy, rich alternatives.
Naija decides
This month, Africa’s largest democracy and economy goes to the polls. On the AIAC podcast, we discuss Nigeria’s upcoming elections.
Museveni’s goons are polite
Uganda’s rulers don’t get that clobbering words is impossible. The pen will escape every hammer, and cross borders to haunt oppressors, even if the authors are no longer around.
Milk in the Upington sun
Fear of the future, longing for the past: the new story in South African politics.
The humiliating weight of Frenchness in Tunisia
Tunisia had sought to Arabize itself since independence and failed. It’s relation to France still very much defines the country’s character.
Faster than the ashes of a burning fire
Hausa poetics of compassion and resistance in northern Nigeria in the age of pandemics and neoliberal democracy.
Making meaning in Johannesburg
Documenting an urban housing crisis and how tens of thousands of informal workers and unemployed people struggle to reshape Johannesburg.