Whose language is the nation’s?
Senegal’s bilingual education reforms challenge the dominance of French — but foreign aid dependence and internal linguistic politics complicate the path to decolonizing the classroom.
colonialism
À qui appartient la langue de la nation?
Les réformes de l’éducation bilingue au Sénégal contestent la domination du français, mais la dépendance à l’aide étrangère et les rivalités linguistiques internes compliquent la décolonisation de l’école.
The rubble of empire
Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.
Empire’s middlemen
From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.
Whose museum is it anyway?
The dispute over Benin City’s museum project shows that returning stolen art does not settle the question of ownership.
The geography of a storm
Hurricane Melissa made clear what COP30 obscures: the climate crisis still follows the lines of empire.
Redrawing liberation
From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.
Colonize then, deport now
Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.
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.
Quando Portugal esquece
Em 'Contos do Esquecimento,' Dulce Fernandes desenterrou histórias esquecidas da escravidão em Portugal, desafiando uma mitologia nacional construída sobre viagens marítimas, silêncio e memória seletiva.
Velvet rebellions
The oppositional sartorial lens of Congolese sapeurs exposes the limits and frailties of representation work in New York's Met Gala.
Green hydrogen, old colonialism
The EU’s hydrogen push in North Africa is sold as climate progress, but beneath the green gloss lies a familiar story of extraction, debt, and dispossession.
The un-African mechanisms of queer repression
Anti-queer laws in Africa are often framed as cultural defense — but their roots lie in colonial legacies, religious nationalism, and global reactionary alliances.
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.
The bones beneath our feet
A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains — and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.
The memory keepers
A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.
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.
Macron needs to shut up more
France’s president can’t stop talking, but his condescending remarks on Africa are only accelerating the collapse of French influence on the continent.
For the archive yet to come
Colonial archives hold the violence of the past, but they also carry the potential for anti-colonial futures — if radically reimagined for justice and accessibility.
Bring back Ngonnso
One Cameroonian woman’s quest to reclaim stolen artifacts reveals the enduring wounds of colonialism and the fight to restore Africa’s heritage.