Decolonizing the Lens
Because of the 1994 genocide, Rwanda occupies a complicated place in the world’s imagination. A new film, about the preceding 1973 pogrom, wants to demystify that view. Does it succeed?
6429 Article(s) by:
Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
The new normal
Reflections from New Orleans, Louisiana—the US’s most African city—on the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Talking back: African feminisms in dialogue
How young, African feminist scholars are using their life experiences as sources and resources for theorizing their feminism.
Ghana responds to the coronavirus
Demolishing homes of poor residents in Accra while under lockdown, tells us all we need to know about the Ghanaian state’s treatment of working class people.
The undeclared war in Somalia
The United States’ military operations in Somalia are not well known because they’e carried out secretly or via proxies. COVID-19 hasn’t slowed them down.
‘We are workers, not heroes’
African health workers ask for decent work and a strong, public health care system—not applause.
Corona, how are you?
COVID-19 spreads from Europe to Africa, inverting colonial imaginaries of African disease and challenging inherited hierarchies.
The insurgency in Cabo Delgado
The climate crisis, resource extraction, and the insurgency by a group claiming affiliation to ISIL in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province.
Fear and solidarity
Surviving the COVID-19 crisis as a jobless Sierra Leonean domestic worker in Lebanon. They are stuck together after losing their jobs or fleeing abusive employers.
Home is the space
From exile, bassist and composer, Johnny Mbizo Dyani (1945-1986), explored and promoted the folk music traditions of South Africa.
Migration and Africa’s eternal lockdown
The unprecedented distress of momentarily locked-down lives should prompt Europeans to realize how much their leadership curtails freedom of movement on a permanent basis on the African continent.
The peace theater
Efforts to introduce ‘peacebuilding’ as panacea to current trends in US military spending do little to shift the imperialist status quo.
COVID-19 deepens division in the Comoros Islands
The arrival of coronavirus in the Comoros Islands has seen a disruption of informal migration routes and the unequal power relationship between the archipelago’s islands.
Mama Africa
A documentary film reclaims precolonial histories and spiritualities between Nigeria and Venezuela.
On being queer and contained
There is a disconcerting resemblance between how some Senegalese talk about homosexuality and how they discuss COVID-19.
Food is power
The World Food Program says COVID-19 will bring about a famine of biblical proportions, so it is a good time to revisit why food has never just been about the simple act of eating. Food is history. Food is identity.
The third brother
A new thriller by Andrew Welsh-Huggins follows a detective investigating the disappearance of a Somali-American teenager in Ohio.
The time to act is now
More than 90 African intellectuals wrote an open letter to African leaders about the continent’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vagabond reflections on the ‘Year of Africa’
Revisiting the clash of the American-born UN diplomat Ralph Bunche and Patrice Lumumba in 1960 over the terms and timeliness of African colonies’ independence from their European masters.
Unpacking South Africa’s COVID-19 “rescue package”
South Africa’s R50bn ($26bn) rescue package is 10% of its GDP. It is a major step forward, but some warning lights are flashing.