The Cape Colony
The campaign to separate South Africa's Western Cape from the rest of the country is not only a symptom of white privilege, but also of the myth that the province is better run.
Politics
A generation of seeds
While it is clear that food insecurity threatens the life of millions of Kenyans, lifting the ban on GMOs is not the solution.
Don’t mobilize, organize
To rebuild, the South African left must realize that there are no shortcuts to power.
The specter of foreign forces in Haiti
The so-called 'Haitian crisis' is primarily about outsiders' attempts force Haitians to live under an imposed order and the latter's resistance to that order.
It could happen to us
Climate negotiations have repeatedly floundered on the unwillingness of rich countries, but let's hope their own increasing vulnerability instills greater solidarity.
What’s wrong with the South African Institute of Race Relations?
Surveys on race by South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations (IRR) are deeply flawed and cynically used. Its influence on mainstream politics is significant and dangerous.
Another coup in Burkina
September's coup is Burkina Faso's second of the year, and its another one with popular support. Why did it happen?
Rise of the reactionaries
AfriForum is no longer on the political fringe in South Africa, rather it's key in perpetuating increasingly mainstream, right-wing populism.
Obviously, this is not working
Former Africa Is a Country fellow, Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, based in Ouagadougou talks to Bamba Ndiaye of The Africanist Podcast on the general situation in Burkina Faso the day after the coup there.
En route to the unknown
African women exercise their right to migrate, but also face dilemmas on their way to the unknown. We need policies that protect them.
Straight in the eye
Sahrawis are robbed of their agency by a zero sum game for influence between two regional rivals Morocco and Algeria.
Postcolonial cons, scandals, and fraud
Business fraud and illicit financial flows are not a new problem for Africa — the "Drevici Affair" in Nkrumah's Ghana is instructive.
At the border, on the margins
African migrant women are exposed to intersectional systems of violence but are not simply victims.
Dispossessing to deliver
In South Africa, land occupiers are evicted from their homes in the name of housing delivery. On the Africa Is a Country Podcast this week, we attempt to understand why.
The slow cancellation of the future
Anxious and isolated, living in poverty or financial precarity, we sink into ourselves and adopt self-destructive coping mechanisms.
South Africa’s postcolonial winter is coming
After 29 years of neoliberal failure in South Africa, foreigners are a convenient scapegoat for a national elite that failed to redistribute wealth. This is a pattern common to post-colonial Africa.
Without much sorrow
Queen Elizabeth’s failure to even acknowledge or issue an apology for Britain's colonial legacy, explains why many Kenyans did not mourn her death.
The quiet violence of child maintenance
Humiliation and stigma are companions for women seeking assistance from courts to obtain maintenance in South Africa.
Brazil’s violent caste system
Despite the country’s marker as a “racial democracy,” racism and prejudice still persist in Brazil, often violently and with deadly consequences.
Frantz Fanon unveiled
Although he was a spokesperson for the Algerian National Liberation Front, Frantz Fanon’s ideas often came at odds with that movement’s political demands.