White eyes
Pressure on African writers to avoid the criticism of poverty porn limits the imagination of the writer and the ability to speak truth to power.
Search Result(s) for: “London”
Naira Marley is no revolutionary
A fan of rapper Naira Marley writes that it will take more than counter-cultural popularity to effect any tangible change in Nigeria.
How to read postcolonial writing
The Granta controversy surrounding a Commonwealth Prize-winning story tells us less about AI than about the enduring metropolitan expectation that writing from the South should sound opaque, excessive, and primitive.
More than a two-dimensional African celebrity
A new documentary about Liverpool FC striker, Sadio Mane, is watchable, but suffers from the fallacy that sports and politics don’t mix.
Building a revolutionary party in Nigeria
On the second anniversary of Nigeria’s African Action Congress party, it is time to take stock of its track record and political prospects.
We are all Sudanese
A new film explores the perspectives of Sudanese-American artists navigating their relationships and responsibilities to the revolution back home.
Branches without roots
Across Africa, governments are elevating STEM education while sidelining the humanities. But science and technology are never neutral, and technical expertise alone cannot transform society.
Where are the flowers for Gilbert?
The drummer Gilbert Matthews was a visionary of South African jazz. The silences on his passing from official quarters are discordant.
Decolonizing African literature begins with language
Senegalese writer, Boubacar Boris Diop, on the problematic circuits of teaching African literature first legitimized in Europe in African universities
Neocolonization on a plate, with a soda to go
The risk of obesity increases with socioeconomic status in several African countries, unlike in their European counterparts with comparable income levels.
Food crimes
Why the World Food Program doesn't deserve the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
End Police Brutality in Nigeria NOW!
This week: #EndSars in Nigeria with Sa'eed Husaini and Annie Olaloku-Teriba. Stream live Tuesdays on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. Subscribe to our Patreon for the podcast archive.
Kenyan statues must fall
What could or should full decolonization in Kenya look like?
Freetown’s musical soup
The first episode of the new season of Africa Is a Country Radio, our monthly music show, focuses on the port city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Listen on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.
Holding living bodies in graveyards
The violence of keeping Ethiopian manuscripts in Western institutions.
Tips from the apocalypse
Speculative fiction by writers from Africa explore viral apocalypses. What can we learn from art on catastrophe?
Diego Maradona, anti-imperial symbol
For the peripheries and proletarians of the world — most of the world — Maradona is a symbol of defiance against the football aristocracy, corporate bosses and empire itself.
Who's afraid of Michael Jackson?
The new Michael Jackson biopic turns a politically conscious Black artist into a raceless fantasy figure, erasing the civil rights struggles, global solidarities, and histories that shaped him.
The legacy of violence in the struggle for South Africa
An excerpt of an essay, titled “Nongoloza’s Ghost,” in Lapham’s Quarterly. It's published in partnership with Africa Is a Country.