What replaced the slave trade?
What happens after abolition, when control over human movement still has a price?
Morocco
A border spectacle
When thousands of young Moroccans stormed Ceuta last week, it was not an invasion, but the latest in a five-year pattern of coercive migration diplomacy on a border with five centuries of colonial history behind it.
Odyssey to Africa’s last colony
Backed by Moroccan state subsidies, Christopher Nolan’s decision to film The Odyssey in occupied Western Sahara is the latest and highest-profile chapter in a five-decade campaign to normalize colonial rule.
How Morocco’s diaspora is remaking the nation
When Ayyoub Bouaddi chose Morocco over France, he wasn’t just making a football decision, he was enacting a theory of citizenship that has been in the making since 1880.
Lions in the rain
The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.
What’s in an AFCON final?
From national redemption and continental dominance to personal legacy and political ambition, the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations final means everything to Africans.
Empty stands are not the whole picture
Why focusing on attendance figures at the 2025 AFCON is the wrong way to measure the tournament.
Just touched down in Morocco
Does the development of African football necessitate a trade off in vibes at continental tournaments?
AFCON and the politics of Africanhood
In Morocco, football has become a site for the slow re-Africanization of the country’s national identity.
A giant chance
An African Cup of Nations at home for red hot Morocco is a chance to put past trauma aside and charge on to the world stage.
The missing voices of Western Sahara
At the UN’s annual Western Sahara debate, everyone gets heard except the Sahrawis themselves.
Hospitals versus stadiums
As Morocco prepares to host AFCON and the 2030 World Cup, a decentralized youth movement is demanding real investment in public services over sporting spectacle.
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.
Art is a place for rehearsal
What happens when art steps into the gaps left by official history? A conversation on race, memory, and the unfinished work of making meaning.
North Africa’s regional power struggle
The conflict over Western Sahara is just one layer of the deep-rooted geopolitical battle for regional leadership between Morocco and Algeria.
Mosque diplomacy
In North Africa, religion is being used to spread political and cultural influence.
Henry Kissinger’s Western Sahara
Morocco is one of the United States’ oldest allies, so when it occupied Western Sahara in 1975, the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people mattered little.
Cut out of society
African women en route to Europe often land up stuck in Morocco, taking on precarious work as hairdressers and beauticians.
Taper salam
For African women passing through Morocco en route to Europe, begging on the streets becomes a way to support themselves, but also reinforces humiliation and shame.
Belonging is not a sport
The reality of any society, any nation, and of our world, is much messier than picking a soccer team.