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.
neoliberalism
Africa’s last neoliberals
As the pink tide swept through Latin America, Africa’s neoliberal regimes held firm. Where is Africa’s rupture —and what explains the absence of a sustained left challenge?
The end of AGOA
A postmortem on the African Growth and Opportunities Act.
The global gateway to nowhere
Europe’s flagship development plan promises investment and partnership—but delivers debt, displacement, and old colonial patterns dressed up in green.
Will the future of food be genome edited?
What will we eat in the future—and who gets to decide? From lab-grown meat to agroecology, the politics of food in Africa are being shaped by tech dreams, corporate agendas, and grassroots resistance.
Beyond national liberation
A new book issues both an indictment of South Africa’s failed transition and a call to rebuild the left through climate justice, solidarity economies, and radical humanism.
Tariffs, Trump, and the Global South
Trump’s trade war is framed as a battle with China—but its fallout is exposing just how little power African economies have in a rigged global system.
Why the far right needs violence
Javier Milei rose to power promising freedom—but his government is unleashing economic violence, criminalizing dissent, and testing the limits of Argentina’s democracy.
From Nkrumah to neoliberalism
On the podcast, we explore: How did Ghana go from Nkrumah’s radical vision to neoliberal entrenchment? Gyekye Tanoh unpacks the forces behind its political stability, deepening inequality, and the fractures shaping its future.
Making a killing for investors
President Tinubu’s reforms have plunged Nigerians into economic despair, with soaring costs and violent repression, exposing the brutal toll of neoliberal policies.
Liberation is not propaganda
At Africa Energy Week, the language of resource sovereignty disguised a new form of climate denial that appropriates progressive rhetoric in service of fossil fuel companies.
João Lourenço, seria um fantoche americano?
A aproximação do presidente angolano com as nações ocidentais não ocorre no vácuo, nem deveria ser surpreendente.
João Lourenço’s American pivot
The Angolan president’s overture to the West isn't happening in a vacuum, nor should it be surprising.
Dear Mr Ruto
What does it benefit a man to gain a finance bill but lose his country?
Chasing shadows
A docuseries about the Springbok rugby team invites us to examine the enduring legacy of Rainbowism in South Africa.
Authoritarian India in retreat?
The BJP’s surprise underperformance in India’s general elections is a setback for the global right.
Untangling the roots of Empire
The coterie of billionaires and foreign aid agencies intent on transforming African agriculture have mostly upturned people’s lives.
Ecowexit?
Caught between pro-West loyalists and anti-West populists, West Africa’s regional bloc has come apart.
Bola Tinubu’s Nigeria
Despite liberalizing the economy to the detriment of the majority, Nigeria’s president has faced little opposition in his first year in office.
The story of Eskom
Load-shedding, deepening privatization, and unaffordable electricity makes it difficult to imagine a pivot away from the neoliberal approach to South Africa’s climate crisis.