How the Congo crisis reshaped international relations
In July 1960, within a week of achieving independence from Belgium, the Congo (later renamed Zaire
History
When Ghanaians put their arms around New York City
Today, 30,000 of the 235,000 Ghanaian immigrants to the US call New York City home.
The unfinished business between Cameroon and France
France would rather play puppeteer than transparently acknowledge its role in first shaping — and now underhandedly curating — its colonial past.
The Kalahari cattle market
Land, landlessness and the German genocide of Namibians at the turn of the 20th century.
What lessons on fascism can we learn from Africa’s colonial past?
In the 1930s fascism’s face was immediately recognizable in colonial Africa. It was neither a foreign concept nor an external threat in Africa.
Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961)
"Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity" (Lumumba, 1960)
MLK was a Pan-African
On the third Monday of January each year, Americans mark MLK's birthday with a public holiday. Africans should too.
The Arabs had a country
No figure in the Arab world embodies the ideals and contradictions of Pan-Arabism more than Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Inheritances of our fathers
History reminds us that the past is not something that can or should be left behind. Rather, we are morally obliged to keep reflecting on them.
What’s a national anthem got to do with anything?
Next time 'Die Stem' part of the South African anthem plays, the appropriate reaction is to sit down or take a knee.
Anti-racism without race
Italy also lacks a fully developed movement against racism led by people of color. It doesn't help that white activists prefers to racism as xenophobia.
Story of a South African Farm School
The Elsenburg Agricultural College lies 50 km east of Cape Town, tucked among the quiet valleys
The Uber driver and Muhammad Ali
When your Uber driver has never heard of Muhammad Ali you realize you're not his friend and you and he occupy different worlds.
History, memory, and the nation
A website archive makes the case that Liberia needs a history that will be called 'history after the settlers.'
Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs
Except for one-year, when Mohamed Morsi was President, modern Egypt has only been ruled by military regimes
Is there a Left in Nigeria?
Most contemporary observers of Nigerian politics would be surprised to learn that the Left has been a significant part of the country’s postcolonial history.
When Haile Selassie went to Jamaica in 1966
The 21 April 1966 visit by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to Jamaica casts a big spell over the appeal of Ethiopia to Rasta and how Ethiopians perceive Rasta in turn.
The Radical Historian
Martin Legassick (1940-2016) was key to revisionist tradition among South African historians that made connections between apartheid and post-war capitalism.
The hunt for (the trial of) Dedan Kimathi
Kimati's image has long stood in, symbolically, for the ideals and lost hopes of revolutionary decolonization in Kenya.
The Magnificence of Kongo Art
Twenty-one years ago, “Angolan Sculpture, memorial of cultures,” curated by Marie Louise Bastin in the Lisbon