Royal succession in the age of social media
New Zulu king Misuzulu’s strategy for ensuring the relevance of his monarchy copies from the Windsors in Britain: use the media.
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Miguna Miguna
Miguna Miguna is a Kenyan activist and lawyer.
Defying defeat
Political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s collection of writings are a powerful and evocative reminder that democracy in Egypt remains a bleak prospect.
What’s wrong with the South African Institute of Race Relations?
Surveys on race by South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations (IRR) are deeply flawed and cynically used. Its influence on mainstream politics is significant and dangerous.
There are no dogmas for the practice of democracy
Africans have been decolonizing, critiquing, but also enriching liberal democracy from an African perspective since colonial times. Pro-democracy and decolonial intellectuals owe a debt to this body of work and can learn from it.
Reading List: Shimrit Lee
The author of ‘Decolonize Museums’ assembles a list of essential reading on the past, present and future of museums.
KwaZulu-Natal Gothic
The crime drama ‘Reyka’ looks at violence in the troubled South African province.
Bookends: Rémy Ngamije
Rwandan-Namibian writer and founder of Doek! arts organization shares his sober routine and dramatic daydreams.
Another coup in Burkina
September’s coup is Burkina Faso’s second of the year, and its another one with popular support. Why did it happen?
A new Zion
The spread of Garveyism from the US to Africa was as much about political liberation as it was religious salvation.
Rise of the reactionaries
AfriForum is no longer on the political fringe in South Africa, rather it’s key in perpetuating increasingly mainstream, right-wing populism.
How to write like Binyavanga Wainana
This week on the AIAC podcast, we discuss a new posthumous collection of writing from Binyavanga Wainana.
Obviously, this is not working
Former Africa Is a Country fellow, Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, based in Ouagadougou talks to Bamba Ndiaye of The Africanist Podcast on the general situation in Burkina Faso the day after the coup there.
Participation without competition
Yoruba political ontology, non-competitive democracy, and the sacrality of power in Nigeria.
En route to the unknown
African women exercise their right to migrate, but also face dilemmas on their way to the unknown. We need policies that protect them.
Reading List: Melinda Ferguson
The award-winning South African author Melinda Ferguson takes us through a selection of books exploring freedom, death, truth, as well as psychedelics, which can be a route to pondering such big questions.
Straight in the eye
Sahrawis are robbed of their agency by a zero sum game for influence between two regional rivals Morocco and Algeria.
Postcolonial cons, scandals, and fraud
Business fraud and illicit financial flows are not a new problem for Africa—the “Drevici Affair” in Nkrumah’s Ghana is instructive.
The discovery of religion
We need to stop looking to Euro-America and its models and traditions, especially religion, as the source of all answers to the problems of the African continent and its people.
At the border, on the margins
African migrant women are exposed to intersectional systems of violence but are not simply victims.
Dispossessing to deliver
In South Africa, land occupiers are evicted from their homes in the name of housing delivery. On the Africa Is a Country Podcast this week, we attempt to understand why.