We are actually reading
The Radical Books Collective teams up with Africa Is a Country to bring you progressive conversations about books, literature, and publishing on this platform.
Search Result(s) for: “covid-19”
Like a bad rain year
The consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for African food security and the need for greater food sovereignty.
The music industry and vaccine apartheid
Music’s ingratiating moral mask has withered, revealing a disfigured face whose true ethical philosophy is, as Lauryn Hill once noted, “paper thin.”
Did dependency theorists really ignore culture?
Must indigenous knowledge be science to be valid? Philosopher Paulin J. Hountondji shows that we must ask why Africa is scientifically and technologically dependent in the first place.
Tricky coalitions
The challenge presented by Argentina: What is the best way to deal with global fiscal pressures in a local context of high expectations and public demands?
The gossip bros
The age of the podcasters as thought leaders — think #PodcastandChill and The Hustlers Corner — is upon us.
Reading List: Edna Bonhomme
The author writes about books whose true power comes from excavating the perennial endemic diseases that never leave our sight.
The politics of pathology
By using healthcare to attack immigrants, xenophobic political movements in South Africa echo long-standing right-wing obsessions.
Defying defeat
Political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s collection of writings are a powerful and evocative reminder that democracy in Egypt remains a bleak prospect.
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.
The remarkable revival of Ugandan football
Uganda has never qualified for the World Cup, but at a continental level it is making a comeback. So is its club football.
The pleasures of African popular culture
An anthology brings together 27 international scholars to deepen our understanding of popular culture on the African continent.
A democratic energy transition in Tunisia
It may seem obvious that a real transition to renewable energies is urgent, but not all transitions are the same or fair.
Outside the field of African art
Asking whether white people should curate African art anymore, may be outdated. Instead we should ask: what is African art now and does the category matter anymore?
Against war: Africa in the new world disorder
The war in Ukraine indicates a new world disorder, where great powers fight for primacy and Africa continues to be exploited.
One of the great events in global labor history
2023 marks 50 years since the Durban Strikes. It doesn't fit neatly fit into mainstream accounts of the struggle against South African apartheid.
The Black Man with the Bible in his Hand
An encounter on a Cape Town bus forces the writer to think about religion, especially Christianity, and queerness.
The dictatorship of the church
From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.
Archiving pan-Africanism
A project - helmed by historians Benjamin Talton and Jean Allman - to archive post-independence African revolutions, including Kwame Nkrumah's personal and professional papers.
The rise and fall of an African novelist
By questioning black masculinity in post-apartheid South Africa, Thando Mgqolozana became one of the most impactful writers of his time. But then he got accused of the same thing he opposed.