Beyond the Western gaze
The "Africa needs help" vs. "No! Africa can teach you lessons!" is tiring. Other than benefiting a few pundits, are we deriving any value from it?
Blog
Dog day afternoon
The basic lesson from Halima Ouardiri’s short film, “Clebs,” about over 750 stray dogs living in a Moroccan sanctuary: We behave just like dogs.
A time for farewell, and a return
Africans rarely re-evaluate ourselves, the basis of our knowledge and our traditions on our own terms, argues Sierra Leonean writer Ishmael Beah.
Ivan Vladislavic and Muhammad Ali
How do white writers confront South Africa's as well as their own pasts?
What are courts for?
Why courts should not become a country’s sole moral arbiter, how coronavirus has impact judicial processes in India and South Africa, and more.
An ode to Somali girlhood
A new film set in Djibouti City presents a searing class critique of Somali girlhood.
The lesser of two evils
In Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, a partial COVID-19 lockdown has increased domestic violence, but women are not turning to shelters.
The bedroom adventures of African women
Talking to other African women about sexual experiences, desires, and fantasies without feeling judged.
Whiteness in Southern Africa
Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa from the 1930s to the 1990s, particularly the region’s white workers and white poor and their relationship with white-ruled states.
Creating colonial Portugal in Africa
How colonial Portugal, to project the idea of a multi-continental and multiracial country, initiated a drive to encourage white settlement in Angola and Mozambique.
Uncovering ‘undesirable whites’ in the colonial archive
Can African scholars write different histories about settler societies—especially as Africans or Africanist scholars based in Africa or in the diaspora? The case of Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) is instructive.
Working-class whiteness vs. the apartheid state
How did South Africa’s white working class—those whites uncomfortably far removed from elite white policymakers and uncomfortably close to the politicized black workforce—experience the reform of apartheid?