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.
Kenya
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.
African homophobia and the colonial roots of African conservatism
Turn any homophobic corner in Africa and you're guaranteed to run into a delirious celebration of "African culture," but there's nothing African about homophobia.
Blind to the matatus
The future of Kenya's matatus (commuter buses) and their inherent place in the capital Nairobi's culture and society, is all but absent in the government's neoliberal vision for urban planning.
Celebrating Binyavanga Wainaina’s queerness
Binyavanga's fashion sensibility as well as his choices in his memoir, and his essays, will have a lasting impact after he is gone.
Our man of the people
Binyavanga Wainaina was a writer who not only produced seminal work, but also contributed to and shaped the African literary tradition into what it is today.
When Achieng met Ellen
Ellen DeGeneres wanted an African story. Achieng Agutu obliged. Don’t hate the player, though, hate the game.
The marginalization of African runners
The international body governing track and field announced that the longest distance race to be held will be the 3000 meters. We know who will benefit least from this change.
Others made of kindness
Ed Pavlic's new novel follows two lovers trading Chicago for Mombasa.
Will Kenya’s courts let gay people live?
Director Wanuri Kahiu went to look for hopeful African love stories and made a lesbian love story, amid court sanctioned homophobia.
Voltamos a Africa
Is emigrating to Africa an option for Black Brazilians in the time of Jair Bolsonaro's toxic, racist, rightwing regime?
Looking for my religion
The power of having a god who resembles us.
The disastrous road of private prisons
Kenya's prisons are in serious need of reform. Opening the door to private interests is not the solution.
The film about nowhere
Invisible City [Kakuma], a film about Kenya's largest refugee camps, seems keen on making a point but is anchored on unsteady ground (with some shitty translation).