The strange case of Portugal’s returnees
White settler returnees to Portugal in 1975, and the history of decolonization, can help us understand the complicated category of refugee.
colonialism
What comes after art repatriation
We all want to see Africa's heritage repatriated to the continent. But what happens after it returns?
From the Niger to the Nile
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, a number of West African Muslims migrated east, settling in Sudan and Mecca, to seek refuge from European colonization.
Blackness in Amsterdam
At the largest gathering of black people he had ever seen together in Amsterdam, the author, originally from Kenya, wonder why they knew so little of each other.
Kenyan statues must fall
What could or should full decolonization in Kenya look like?
Décoloniser la littérature africaine
Les études littéraires africaines devraient donner plus d'espace aux nombreux écrivains vivant sur le continent, dans les langues africaines.
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
The linguistic famine
The burial of African languages by Africans themselves has ensured our total immersion into colonial culture.
The specter of neocolonialism
Francophonie has served to obscure the harms caused by neocolonial projects in Africa, projects that are themselves a reflection of the racism within France’s borders.
After the monuments have been removed
Senegalese writer Mbougar Sarr on how we are actually informed about symbols we want to bring down, and about those we wish to commemorate.
The mark of the former colonizer
What explains this reluctance to discuss the permanence of symbols honoring slave traders and colonialists in the public spaces in both France and its former colonies?
Law and disorder
France’s history of violence policing left a legacy of law and disorder, targeting dissidents, in its former colonies.
A plagued history of Kampala
The parallels between COVID-19 and the 1910s in Kampala, when the colonial regime used a series of plagues to cut Ugandans out of the capital city.
Buddha in Africa
A new documentary about China's colonization of Malawi reveals how one colonial hand opens the door for another.
An ambivalent sense of belonging
Janet McIntosh's fascinating book, Unsettled: Denial and Belonging Among White Kenyans, forces an interrogation of the past.
A murder in Congo
What does the decade-old “Congo-case,” involving two Norwegian mercenaries, tell us about residue coloniality in Scandinavia?
Homeless in the city
The periodic evictions of poor families in Nairobi follows in a long tradition in Kenya, dating to colonialism, to keep the city as a space for the elite.
Transnational African feminisms
What roles have francophone African women played in movements for pan-African liberation, historically and now?
The complex history of skin lighteners
The intersecting dynamics of class and gender, changing beauty ideals, and the expansion of consumer capitalism in Africa.
Corona, how are you?
COVID-19 spreads from Europe to Africa, inverting colonial imaginaries of African disease and challenging inherited hierarchies.