The music is not yours
On the latest AIAC podcast, the gang from the Nigerian Scam explores how Afrobeats got globalized, who captured the value, and why the party may be ending.
capitalism
You can’t kick politics out of football
Despite commercialization and elite capture, the world’s most popular sport still generates forms of collective life that resist the logic of capitalism.
Could expanding protected land undermine biodiversity?
Paradoxically, conservation efforts in Liberia and Senegal are threatening native ecology.
Where mining and conservation meet
Far from signaling a break from the past, the convergence of mining and conservation in West Africa underscores a recurring pattern that stretches back to colonialism.
A sick health system
The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.
Remember AFCON?
Behind the refereeing drama and rising revenues, AFCON 2025 exposed a tournament increasingly shaped by global capital rather than the long-term health of African football.
Where have the Chapungu gone?
What connects Zimbabwe’s chimurenga spirit, the disappearing bateleur eagle, and the stubborn afterlife of colonial capital?
We must learn to sit in the dark together
At our first workshop from our festival in Nairobi, The Elephant’s Joe Kobuthi, reflected on a year since #EndFinanceBill.
Drip is temporary
The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.
The world isn’t broken, it was built this way
From Congo to Gaza, the machinery of empire hides behind the language of aid and development.
Shell’s exit scam
Shell's so-called divestment from Nigeria’s Niger Delta is a calculated move to evade accountability, leaving behind both environmental and economic devastation.
Reading List: Adam Hanieh
Materially speaking, oil is simply a sticky, black goo. It doesn’t have any innate power separate from the kind of society we live in — capitalism.
The mine dumps of Silicon Valley
While it might be cathartic to compare Elon Musk’s tech firms to apartheid-era mines, the connection between ex-South Africans and American capitalism is complicated.
Marketplace of failure
South Africa’s pivot to electricity markets will be socially regressive, whether green or not.
Food wars
The theft dispute between Onezwa Mbola and Nara Smith reveals the consumerist undertones behind content for women in the online creative economy.
What to do about the South African economy?
Some progressive economists argue that a bigger budget deficit is the solution to the country’s socio-economic woes. But it isn’t that straightforward.
Untangling the roots of Empire
The coterie of billionaires and foreign aid agencies intent on transforming African agriculture have mostly upturned people’s lives.
Nairobi’s third places
In Nairobi, skateboarding provides an alternative space where consumption is not a prerequisite for entry.
Ruto’s green growth lie
The marketization of climate action, epitomized by Kenyan president William Ruto, allows the super-rich to buy their safety while the rest of us are left behind.
Banana Republics
Western leftists are arguing among themselves about whether there will be bananas under socialism. In Africa, however, bananas do not necessarily represent the vagaries of capitalism.