The Dutch disease (and its prescription)
Even in spite of a recent history of reactionary backlash, the movement against #ZwartePiet (Black Pete) has had some success.
Culture
The short life and times of Mamadou Saliou
For many young Africans, going abroad is seen as the only solution to help their parents struggling to make ends meet.
The New Testament
Much of black youth culture in South Africa celebrates constant self-invention, and is built on the gospel of entrepreneurship.
The wanderers from Niger
Nigerien band Anewal eschews explicit politics and sings mostly of harmony and brotherhood.
An allegory for freedom
Blackness, like the nation of Haiti herself, is a thing to be punished for committing the crime of daring to exist and resist.
Cameroon is Cameroon
On the arrest and detention of Cameroonian writer and scholar, Patrice Nganang.
The Sons of Africa in World War I
Interview with Fred Khumalo, author of a novel about the sinking of the SS Mendi, a warship carrying hundreds of black South African soldiers.
Reading Frantz Fanon
The glut of books on Fanon serve as a guide for reading him through the challenges of our present. But they also reveal the extent to which reading Fanon today is not such a straightforward operation.
Zimbabwe Coup Music Edition
Ten post-independence, pre-coup struggle songs that critiqued ZANU-PF under Mugabe and imagined a leadership change and different political culture.
Empire and Ambivalence
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's perturbing review of Maya Jasanoff's travelogue of going up the Congo River as she's accompanied by Joseph Conrad's novel, 'Heart of Darkness."
Mugabe was no revolutionary. He was obsessed with power and control
In the four decades that Robert Mugabe was at the helm of power in post-colonial Zimbabwe, his rule was anything but admirable.
The new, African magazine — for us, by us
Interview with Emmanuel Iduma, co-founder of Saraba magazine.
The real question about wildlife conservation
How did wildlife in Africa survive for millennia in together with people who never earned anything from it?
Witnessing the crimes and end of empire
“The sun never sets on the British empire.” The saying, commonly associated with the poet of
To think through and beyond the nation-state
A conversation on books, borders, and belonging with Somali-American writer, Abdul Adan.
Where township tours don’t go
Who produced that $30 mug you bought at Cape Town International Airport on your way home?
What is the point of African Studies?
There's no agreement, but the vibrant discussions and interventions by African scholars give much hope that something new is fermenting in African Studies.
Tangier’s Jazzmen — and their phantom producer
He rode on Tito Puente’s float during the Puerto Rican Day Parade of 1969, when the mambo king was given a key to the city
My Grandmother’s Archive
Faced with the uncertainty of the postapartheid world, my grandmother protects her children the same way she survived Apartheid: by making sure their papers are in order.
The short life and times of Bhele Dlunga of Marikana
Amid the violence of August 2012, one positive feature that stood out was the resilience of the autonomous organization of workers and independent trade unions in Marikana.