The serious side of funny business
Nigerian comedians are getting political.
6140 Articles by:
William Decourt
William Decourt is a PhD candidate at the University of Indiana and studies African politics, governance, and international influence on the continent from authoritarian powers.
Reading List: Mara Kardas-Nelson
How did microfinance become a craze championed by bleeding-heart progressives to Global South economists, American presidents, and business executives?
The mirage of progress in women’s football
Select success stories obscure the intentional underdevelopment of women’s football in Africa.
Spectacles of incompetence
Given his track record of sowing division and making empty promises, South Africans should be wary of treating its new Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture as a lovable buffoon.
Resisting the new green colonialism
A proposed green hydrogen project in Tunisia prioritizes European energy needs over local sovereignty.
Rooting for everybody black
The Olympics, with its provocative patriotism, are the perfect forum for using a broader diasporic focus to push back against hypernationalism.
Rolling with the punches
Removed from the facts, the firestorm around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is the latest attempt by the right-wing in the West to find fodder for its culture war.
Pretty girl from Soweto
In South Africa, a popular beauty contest is revealing the specter of ultranationalism and anti-blackness.
The keyboard warriors are winning
Digital activism is playing a significant role in amplifying the impact of the #RejectFinanceBill2024 and #RutoMustGo protests, but how effective can it ultimately be?
Food wars
The theft dispute between Onezwa Mbola and Nara Smith reveals the consumerist undertones behind content for women in the online creative economy.
Not an obvious hero
In a new film, former UN-Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld is portrayed as a defender of a fledgling postcolonial state. But his role in the Congo Crisis is more complicated.
When a star dies
On the tragic death of 24-year-old marathon record holder Kelvin Kiptum.
Ending our spectator citizenship
Anti-government protests have spread to Uganda, where ordinary people are tired of passively accepting elite misrule.
Not only kafala
Domestic workers in the Gulf typically face a double bind: as a foreign worker, you are governed by kafala laws, while as a female, you are governed by the male guardianship system.
The anti-extractivism of Mdou Moctar
‘Funeral for Justice’ is a bracing recording that blends the critical sensibility of Frantz Fanon with the melodies of a genre born from an ongoing liberation struggle.
Who are the Olympics for?
Beneath the image of togetherness, the world’s biggest athletic spectacle is still beset by discrimination and exclusion.