Redrawing liberation
From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.
Politics
Beyond multipolarity
The SCO summit in Beijing revealed cracks in Western dominance—but whether they become openings for justice depends on African agency, not new patrons.
Who deserves the city?
Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.
The anticolonial roots of Kenya’s student strikes
From the colonial classroom to today’s exam halls, student strikes in Kenya are less outbursts than acts of political imagination—insisting that schools live up to their promise of justice and transformation.
The price of plugging in
Floating power plants from Turkey promise to solve blackouts in the Global South. But easy fixes come with political risks.
Colonize then, deport now
Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.
Political musical chairs
A new opposition coalition in Nigeria claims to speak for the people, but its architects are from the same old political class seeking another shot at power.
The limits of France’s racial memory
The French narrative of the Enlightenment still struggles to contend with the country’s racialized hierarchy in its cultural artifacts.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
The reopening of a border between Eritrea and Tigray masks a deeper realignment. As old foes unite against Ethiopia’s government, the risk of renewed war grows.
Gen Z and the spirit of Mau Mau
Kenya’s largest-ever protests have drawn striking comparisons to the Mau Mau uprising. But for today’s movement to endure, it must move beyond the streets and invest in political education.
The climate finance crisis
As Mozambique faces escalating climate disasters, it is shut out of the very funds meant to protect it.
All pull together
The 2025 Kenyan protests once again declared themselves “tribeless, leaderless, partyless.” But what does the idiom of unity hide?
Eurafrique reloaded
Emmanuel Macron’s recognition of Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara is a calculated pivot in a decades-old plan to reassert French influence across the Sahel.
The grift tank
In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.
Helen Zille’s transphobia
In echoing the anti-trans panic sweeping the Global North, South African political heavyweight Helen Zille joins a reactionary tradition of racialized sex policing.
The specter of Bandung
Once a symbol of anti-imperial unity, BRICS now risks becoming the very thing Bandung opposed: a club of powerful states reproducing global inequality in a new key.
Against climate resilience
Development agendas framed around “resilience” promise empowerment but often reproduce colonial power dynamics in the guise of climate adaptation.
After the coups
Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.
The quiet violence of peace deals
Trump’s Congo-Rwanda deal is hailed as diplomatic triumph. But behind the photo ops lies a familiar exchange: African resources for Western power.
In death, we part
What happens when a former president suddenly dies? The curious case of Edgar Lungu.