The psychological pains of Ethiopian intellectuals
The desire to be absorbed into and consumed by the West, to find solace in its seductive promises, animates Robin Dimet’s film, “Sami’s Odysseys.”
Culture
Omar Blondin Diop and Issa Samb’s Senegal
Activist Blondin Diop and artist Samb are exemplars of Senegal’s post-independence promise and crisis, marked by the global uprisings of May 1968. Mustapha Saha was a friend to both of them.
Inhabiting the shapes and sounds and patterns of other people
May 21 marks the anniversary of the writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina’s untimely death in 2019. He was 48.
Take it to the house
On this month's AIAC Radio, Boima celebrates all things basketball, looking at its historical relationships with music and race, then focusing on Africa's biggest names in the sport.
El maestro siempre
Maky Madiba Sylla is a militant filmmaker excavating iconic Africans whose legacies he believes need to be known widely—like the singer Laba Sosseh.
Madiba and Mali
There is a remarkable connection between Mali and South Africa, dating back to the liberation struggle, and actively encouraged by the author’s work.
Red and Black
Yunxiang Gao’s new book takes a fresh look at connected lives of African American and Chinese leftist activists, artists and intellectuals after World War II.
The Dar es Salaam years
In the early 1970s, Walter Rodney, expelled from Jamaica, took a post in Tanzania. In Leo Zeilig’s new book, he captures those exciting, but also difficult years and how it formed Rodney.
Rushing to boycott
The cultural boycott of Russia turns to the flawed precedent of apartheid South Africa for inspiration, while ignoring the much more carefully considered boycott of official Israeli culture by the BDS Movement.
Where is black feminism?
The first book collection dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist perspectives has seen the light. One of the editors breaks down the content.
Soccer capitalism
Soccer academies in Africa sprang from European club interventions with varied success, but, as examples in Ghana prove, they can be sites of local, entrepreneurial spirit.
The party question
Marcel Paret’s book, "Fragmented Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa after Racial Inclusion," tries to make sense of politics in South African urban informal settlements.
The longing to belong
Why would African Christians in the West, discriminated against in Europe and the United States, embrace views that marginalize not only others but also themselves?
The missing pieces
Between melancholy, terror, and disillusion, Petit Pays is a groundbreaking and eye-opening take on one of the darkest pages of African history, one that is often misunderstood in the West.
Hope and optimism howled at full volume
A people’s history of Zimbabwe’s first mbira punk band, Chikwata 263, who wanted a soundtrack for the country’s post-post colonial blues.
Art and the struggle for Ambazonia
Artist Adjani Okpu-Egbe, interrogates sovereignty and solidarity in southwest Cameroon, for what is known as Ambazonia, and beyond.
An independence revue
This month on Africa Is a Country Radio, taking inspiration from the work of Chinua Achebe, we take a listen to the music of the post-independence era on the African continent.
This is appropriation that’s acceptable
The French Ethio-groove group Akalé Wubé has dissolved. For over a decade they have shown how cultural outsiders can considerately engage in music that is not theirs.
A question of color
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's novel "The Theory of Flight" may be the first to take seriously Zimbabwe’s complicated race politics, beyond the obvious black vs whites.
The art of football
Why should people be invested in a football game in a bubble called the art world? “Exhibition Match,” a multifaceted installation, explores responses to this question.