Binyavanga’s writing was enough
A close friend remembers the Kenyan writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina (January 18, 1971 - May 21, 2019).
Kenya
Kenya’s prison industrial complex
The fundamental flaws in President Uhuru Kenyatta's plan to make jails profitable.
The undeclared war in Somalia
The United States’ military operations in Somalia are not well known because they'e carried out secretly or via proxies. COVID-19 hasn't slowed them down.
Corona, how are you?
COVID-19 spreads from Europe to Africa, inverting colonial imaginaries of African disease and challenging inherited hierarchies.
Food is power
The World Food Program says COVID-19 will bring about a famineof biblical proportions, so it is a good time to revisit why food hasnever just been about the simple act of eating. Food is history. Foodis identity.
The contested narratives of a dead man’s legacy
Kenyans are split about the legacy of president Daniel Arap Moi, who served from 1978 to 2002 and died on 4 February 2020: Vile and reprehensible vs a benign Baba, history suggests the latter.
The need for a people-driven response to the coronavirus pandemic
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, African governments should stop seeing non-governmental actors as a threat to their own legitimacy.
Painting Kenya’s power dynamics
The painter talks about how the distance between Nairobi and London allows him to take on topics at the heart of Kenya’s body politic.
The People vs 4G internet and other corona stories from Kenya
This crisis has further emphasized the neglect of Kenya’s poor by the government, and is therefore “a wake up call that we are on our own.”
Family politics and the supernatural
A new documentary film tells a tale of everyday class, religious, and educational contestations around land in Kenya.
The Gig Economy Blues
The precariousness of life for women gig workers — in services like cleaning, driving, gardening, beauty supply, and catering — in Kenya.
Should sleeping giants lie?
Colonial land grievances and the politics of redistribution in contemporary Kenya.
The pitfalls of symbolic decolonization
Mukoma wa Ngugi's opening remarks at the launch (today) of the 2020 Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival in The Hague.
Bottom-up hustling in Nairobi’s slums
Prevailing thoughts on slums stress their transitory character, but the complexity of everyday life in slums, including how people manage survival, is lost in the way they are understood from the outside.
What is home?
For immigrants — especially African and black immigrants to Western countries — the question of home is complex.
The Kenyan Hunger Games
Philanthropy and celebrities are not enough to remedy the inequalities that persist in Kenya.
Kenya’s mobile money revolution
Mobile-phone-based, person-to-person payment and money transfer systems are innovative — but are they really good for poverty reduction and development?
Beyond White Jesus
While many African Christians can only imagine a white Jesus, others have actively promoted a vision of a brown or black Jesus, both in art and in ideology.
Waterless scars and pipe dreams in Nairobi
Poor Nairobi residents pay close to four times more for water that is much less clean, adequate or consistent.
Nostalgia for empire
Boris Johnson is in the running for UK Prime Ministers. The UK Conservative Party is particularly fond of Britian's colonial past, but Johnson usually outdoes himself in this regard.