Camp of the Saints
The 1973 dystopian apocalyptic French novel that inspires today's violent white, rightwing populism.
Culture
Namaste India
Following a series of racist attacks on African students in India, an African student in India wrote this.
Sarkodie and the politics for ‘freedom-making’
Hiplife artist Sarkodie has proposed that what Ghana needs is a dictatorship. This is not inconsistent with his politics, rooted in promoting male success and a patriarchal vision of liberation.
Friday Black
The wild metaphors, stark imagery, and boundary-pushing hyperbole in Nana Kwame Agyei-Brenyah writing.
An African film manifesto, forty years later
Med Hondo (1936-2019) was Morgan Freeman and Eddie Murphy in French. His first film premiered at Cannes in 1970. And in 1979 he wrote a manifesto: “What is the cinema for us?”
Against Zionism
The moral drama of the Israeli occupation plays out at a South African school.
Others made of kindness
Ed Pavlic's new novel follows two lovers trading Chicago for Mombasa.
Africa doesn’t care about its women
I have the privilege to fight, argue or board a plane when I feel like I've had enough. The vast majority of women on the continent do not have that option.
A photographer of African liberation
Ozier Muhammad captures, for black American audiences, the expressive possibilities of Africa's liberation struggles.
Revolutionary political thought in South Sudan
Once upon a time, South Sudanese exiles in Khartoum—inspired by, among others, Charles Dickens and Malcolm X—had a radical vision for their new country.
The Museum of Black Civilizations
France no longer has an excuse to hold on to Senegal's cultural heritage. Senegal has a place for it.
Abantu Book Festival as an archive of the future
A radical feature on South Africa's literary calendar, Abantu celebrates black intellectual labor, and resists the tropes that marginalizes it.
The power of telling our own stories
When we as Africans tell our own stories, we re-write the stories in the history books that our children are still taught in schools.
A planetary humanism made to the measure of the world
Excerpts from a conversation with the British historian, writer and academic Paul Gilroy.
The ways in which movement can and cannot heal
An interview with author Emmanuel Iduma on traveling through twenty African cities.
The film festival film
A documentary film about a black filmmaker and her struggles to make a film about Marike de Klerk.
The contradictions of Africa-China in Guangzhou
The reality for Africans living in China's 'African City' contrast greatly with the way their governments and China's leaders interact.
Sidney Poitier and Capitalist Decolonization
Poitier is a pioneer in Hollywood (the first black male actor to win an Oscar), but, like in most of his US acting roles, he also played it safe in African roles he took on.
Laughing pains
Stand-up comedy, especially black stand-up, and the political in South Africa.
Magical realism in Accra
The film, "The Burial of Kojo," sparks a vital conversation about the intersections of heritage, politics, and spirituality in Ghana and in Africa at large.