Matchday 1: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmed Ben Bella, and Muammar Gaddafi
Africa Is a Country is proud to introduce a new podcast focused on the politics and cultural relevance of football on the African continent.
Culture
Loving, living, and communal duty
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s directorial debut is not only a love story about two star-crossed individuals, but about the whimsical landscapes of the place where they fall in love.
When settlers become civilians
The tragedy of settler-colonialism.
The committed cameraman
New films from Mila Turajlić salvages footage from the Yugoslavian news archives to tell a story of non-aligned internationalism against Cold War bipolarity.
Wathinta abafazi, wathinta imbokodo
How 'Dawn' magazine illustrates the significant role women played in South Africa’s armed struggle against apartheid.
Reading List: Joeva Rock
We often hear from Western donors that Africa suffers from food ‘scarcity.’ The real problem is the exploitation of African land, labor, and knowledge.
African digital culture in context
How might a longer view of African art-making affect our understanding of what counts as art, text, and authorship?
The people’s cup
This week on the Africa Is a Country podcast, we discuss the politics and spectacle of African football with Maher Mezahi.
Reading List: Vincent Bevins
The last decade saw the most protests in human history. But how is it that so many uprisings led to the opposite of what they asked for?
Against exceptionalism
Although visibility is important, contemporary queer African literature reveals how easily representation privileges narratives of the resourceful and upwardly mobile.
An ungovernable mind
Frustrated by most of his contemporaries, but supported by like-minded friends, Zimbabwean author Dambudzo Marechera forever changed our notion of what African literature is.
Taking care of each other
How a new underground club in Nairobi offers Kenyans respite from the harshness of everyday life.
Black women write
In her new biography of South African writer Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell shows how the publishing industry historically excluded Black women, and how they wrote in spite of that.
A tragic kind of hope
Nigerian and South Sudanese filmmakers give voice to the search for identity, stability, and belonging through the lens of youth and migration.
The “Caribbeanization” of Afrobeat in Colombia
In Colombia, doing straightforward political music carries many risks, including confronting state repression, political armed rebellions, and organized crime.
The rise and fall of an African novelist
By questioning black masculinity in post-apartheid South Africa, Thando Mgqolozana became one of the most impactful writers of his time. But then he got accused of the same thing he opposed.
Enduring grief in Enugu
Chika Unigwe’s novel, 'The Middle Daughter,' reimagines a Greek myth within a contemporary Nigerian context and develops it into a gripping family saga.
Shifting the guilt
Even though Israeli novelist Agur Schiff’s latest book is meant to be a satirical reflection on the legacy of slavery and stereotypes about Africa, it ends up reinforcing them.
The struggle has come to land
Two miles from the White House, 'Black Land News' forwarded a bold vision of political, economic, and cultural autonomy inspired by African decolonization struggles.
The specter of homophobia
How does it feel to be gay in an environment where homophobia is mundane and rampant, and where gays are silenced, ridiculed, and assaulted in everyday life?