The ideological vacuum in Kenyan politics
The Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network wants to challenge the vague manner elites there deal with the past and take on the challenges of the present.
History
Pio Pinto’s legacy for the Kenyan left
This week on AIAC Talk: Pio Gama Pinto was Kenya’s first post-independence martyr. Why does he matter today?
Who was Huda Shaarawi?
Egyptian women's struggle today stands on the shoulders of many historical role models. One of them is Huda Shaarawi.
A man of the people
Robert Vinson's biography of Albert Luthuli hints at how liberation histories might be reframed to better address the problems of the present.
The politics of elegance
German historian Daniel Tödt wrote a history of the Congolese évolués. In this interview, he talks about the historiographical interventions of his book and the role of Patrice Lumumba in the history of évolués.
There is no fight without the women
During Guinea-Bissau’s war of liberation, women filled key positions on the frontline. That is often forgotten in the mythology of the struggle for independence.
Uganda’s most controversial and disruptive politician
A new book revisits the career of Uganda’s first elected prime minister, Benedicto Kiwanuka, his followers, and political ideas.
Abdulrazak Gurnah and the afterlives of German colonialism
Gurnah’s Nobel Prize invites us to ponder Germany’s colonial past between the Scramble for Africa and the First World War in what is now Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda.
Bring Patrice Lumumba home
The return of Patrice Lumumba’s remains must not be an occasion for Belgium to congratulate itself, but for a full accounting of the colonial violence that led to the assassination and coverup.
Back to the future
The grievances of this generation in Kenya are disturbingly similar to those of the generation of the 1940s who took up arms in the Mau Mau movement. For both, it is about land and freedom.
If only these walls could talk
Street names are political weapons. They produce memories, attachment and intimacy—all while often sneakily distorting history.
Africans and the creation of the modern world
Europe would have been a marginal player in world history without Africa's natural resources and centuries of cheap African labor.
The exilic geographies of the South
Dugmore Boetie was part of a wave of South African writers who fled Apartheid. His exile and future literary notoriety, however, took a different path to some of the more classic refugee peregrinations.
The Nigerian and the Lenin Prize
Peter Ayodele Curtis Joseph was a prominent left nationalist in Nigeria’s struggle for independence. Then he was forgotten. How do we commemorate him?
History and the politicians
The historically fraught relationship of metropole and colony persists between France and Algeria, as a recent “symbolic” gesture reveals.
Do Africans need Karl Marx?
AIAC talk considers Karl Marx's legacy and we debate whether his ideas are still relevant. Our guests are two thinkers: Annie Olaloku-Teriba and Zeyad el Nabolsy.
A history of resource plunder
Since European colonialism first arrived, Africa has provided its best raw materials to the global North. Can African countries finally break out of this pattern?
If you want to get the West’s attention, talk about the Holocaust
The intimate connection between the horror unleashed on Europe's Jews and the preceding centuries of atrocities perpetrated by the "Enlightened" West on those they colonized and enslaved.
In search of Ethiopia’s past and present
The film "Finding Sally" grapples with Ethiopia's past, but may romanticize its present.
What is whiteness to a cyborg?
Tracing the digital contours of the settler colony helps us understand how old inequalities will shape a future with artificial intelligence.