Passports and nations
The writer Taiye Selasi doesn’t seem to realize there is a difference between identity as a subjective, biographical problem and identity as a legal and political reality.
Culture
Five Questions for: Filmmaker Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann
Filmmaker Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann sees film as a powerful tool to inspire compassion by briefly letting us live another’s life and expand our understanding.
Making African celebrity culture
Considering the proximity of celebrity culture to how capitalism operates in Africa, why is it not given more serious attention?
Every Man Gotta Decide His Destiny
Survival is an album with a purpose. Released in 1979, it is Bob Marley’s most political recording.
Angry farmworkers on a tractor
Done 'debating' whether “Larney Jou Poes” is free speech? Let's talk about the conditions of farmworkers.
Latest episode of Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s ‘My Song’ series features politically engaged Senegalese rappers
Fed up with what a group of young Senegalese describe as the state of mind of
My barber loves these tunes
Hipsters Don't Dance 'Top 5 World Carnival Tunes' for October 2014.
The Afrobarometer
Inaugurating our series on digital African projects. We'll document projects working to make more resources about Africa’s past and present available online.
How to be an expatriate in Nigeria
Nigerians love expatriates more than they love themselves. Nigeria is expatriate heaven, claims novelist and lawyer, Elnathan John.
5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Dani Kouyaté
In 1995 filmmaker and griot Dani Kouyaté won the Golden Stallion – The award for Best
Children’s Books African Kids Could Relate To
While visiting relatives in Nigeria, I found a children’s bookshop in Lagos with no African children or African languages in their books. That day changed everything.
South African Hip Hop Series: Producer Brian Soko
Brian Soko is not a happy man! Not only is he having to deal with the
The Dookoom Debate
What role should media play in the midst of controversial cultural expressions, like songs that address racist violence by white farmers against their workers in South Africa?
South African Hip Hop Series: Video Profile On Rapper Sam Turpin
“The thing about Joburg,” observes rapper and producer Sam Turpin “it’s kind of on the scale
Pan-African fashion that rejects “social entrepreneurship”
Rejecting how African products are marketed to Westerners.
Dookoom Rises Up
A Cape Town hip hop group causes a huge stir with its music video "Larney Jou Poes" (roughly translated: Boss, your cunt.) depicting an uprising by farmworkers.
South African Hip Hop Series: Thoughts On The Late Rapper Mizchif
I was home alone one Friday night around 2001 watching, as was tradition, one of the
Dakar booms with life
The youthful and creative art scene in Senegal's capital is the subject of director Sandra Krampelhuber’s documentary film, "100% Dakar."
Ali Mazrui and Me
A fateful meeting with Mazrui, the famed Kenyan historian and broadcaster.
The Historic Legacy of Ivor Wilks
A historian of Ghana, Ivor Wilks was crucial to the founding of African history as an academic discipline in the late 1950s and to its development over subsequent decades.