The cover up
A Kenyan investigative journalist reflects on the capture of a genocidaire in Paris after 26 years on the run and its significance to the families of the victims left in his wake.
6420 Article(s) by:
Nathan Chiume
Nathan Chiume is an Africa analyst and consultant.
A brief history of anti-black violence in China
The recent news of evictions and mistreatment of African students in China during the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in a history of violence and discrimination.
Confronting the weapon of photography
The imperial legacy of the camera and the narrative power of words and images.
Eric Garner in Palestine
Activists in the occupied territories reinvent the Freedom Rides of 1960s America and in the process link US and Palestinian struggles for liberation.
Predisposed to chaos
What do we gain by exposing the material shortcomings of African health systems?
The complex history of skin lighteners
The intersecting dynamics of class and gender, changing beauty ideals, and the expansion of consumer capitalism in Africa.
Financing Africa’s COVID-19 response
We need swift, bold, and decisive action on debt relief and monetary creation in Africa in order to face the coronavirus crisis and prevent many ordinary Africans from paying with their lives.
Invitation diplomacy
Onejoon Che’s film about North Korea’s relationship to African countries suggests a unique transcontinental relationship that resists easy classification.
Ending the polarization around South Africa’s lockdown
In South Africa, we are not in a situation where we need to choose between saving lives and protecting livelihoods. It is far worse. We are in danger of losing both.
Feminist organizing on digital platforms
The coverage of African women in the mainstream media continues to be lacking and often times problematic. The website, African Feminism, wants to change that.
It has no place
COVID-19 exposes the continued inability of most white South Africans to critically reflect on privilege or engage constructively about the handling of the pandemic.
Binyavanga’s writing was enough
A close friend remembers the Kenyan writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina (January 18, 1971 – May 21, 2019).
The picture is a beginning
There’s a certain humanity in the work of late South African photographer Santu Mofokeng in how he approached his subjects and the politics of representation.
Masks off
The revival of an elite technocratic rationality is starting to undo South Africa’s lockdown, now in its second month.
This is my country
The Liberian academic and writer talks about citizenship, belonging, and what unites her fragmented nation.
The most powerful man in Nigeria
The legacy of Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, who died from COVID-19, helps us understand how powerful and yet constrained Nigeria’s Presidency is.
How to steal a country
Rehad Desai’s film celebrates the investigative journalists who expose the corruption of Zuma’s regime in South Africa, comes with a depressing note: To date, no one has gone to jail.
China and Africa: A trial by pandemic?
Recent racist incidents in China are just a manifestation of deeply rooted attitudes vis-à-vis “blackness” in China that predate and will outlive COVID-19.
Mandela and the Others
What can we learn from the 256 hours of audio recordings of the 1964 Rivonia Trial’s proceedings?
The tools for defeating quackery
Why we need randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to find the best ways to treat COVID-19.