Ms. Harris goes to Africa
For all the coverage about Kamala Harris' Afrobeats Spotify playlist, or her search for her grandfather’s house in Lusaka, her African trip is about shoring up US positions.
Search Result(s) for: “Ethiopia”
How to think about colonialism
Contemporary approaches to the legacy of colonialism tend to narrowly emphasize political agency as the solution to Africa’s problems. But agency is configured through historically particular relations of which we are not sole authors.
Beyond the headlines
Recent violence across the Eritrean diaspora is being instrumentalized by populists. But the violence is a desperate cry for attention and requires the Eritrean opposition to seize the moment for regime change.
Imagining the future through running
The successes of elite Kenyan athletes should not distract from the ways ordinary Kenyans are using it to make meaning for themselves.
Bayard Rustin’s Zimbabwe
A new film about American civil rights icon Bayard Rustin overlooks his later conservative turn, evident in his attitudes to anticolonial resistance in Africa.
Poetry, nationalism, and al-Shabaab
In Somalia, poets are considered organic public intellectuals.
Punching above its weight
South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel is the latest example of its ability to act as a normative superpower, exceeding even the great powers in shaping global moral discourse.
AFCON is a tournament like no other
Our host of the African Five-a-Side podcast kicks off his coverage of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d'Ivoire.
A sojourn in Sharjah
Reflections on the 16th edition of the Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual March meeting.
The Mogadishu analogy
In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.
Rhetoric is not enough
Although Lula da Silva called Israel’s war against Palestinians a genocide, the Brazilian president is yet to follow that up with concrete action.
From Cairo to Cornell
The Malcolm X effect of Gambian-British activist Momodou Taal.
African contradictions in the world of science
African contributions to the globalized world cannot be celebrated while the place occupied by African peoples remains on the periphery.
Making films against amnesia
The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record — and help us remember differently.
As aid ends, empire endures
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built — rooted in control, dependency, and depoliticization — still shapes Africa’s development.
After the uprising
Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure — raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.
Will the future of food be genome edited?
What will we eat in the future — and who gets to decide? From lab-grown meat to agroecology, the politics of food in Africa are being shaped by tech dreams, corporate agendas, and grassroots resistance.
Africa and the AI race
At summits and in speeches, African leaders promise to harness AI for development. But without investment in power, connectivity, and people, the continent risks replaying old failures in new code.
Africa’s last neoliberals
As the pink tide swept through Latin America, Africa’s neoliberal regimes held firm. Where is Africa’s rupture — and what explains the absence of a sustained left challenge?
The specter of Bandung
Once a symbol of anti-imperial unity, BRICS now risks becoming the very thing Bandung opposed: a club of powerful states reproducing global inequality in a new key.