New world disorder
The world has changed significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. But the roots of today’s disorder, stretch further back than we think. This week on the AIAC Podcast, we discuss.
neoliberalism
Gangsters as people’s champions
In a country like South Africa where government trust is low, gangsters and criminals who provide assistance to their communities are seen as the people’s champions.
Capitalism Mtaani at the Dandora dumpsite
In the third video for our Nairobi edition of Capitalism in My City, Gacheke Gachihi visits a site of environmental injustice.
Growing pains
For all the grief Afropunk gets, including its commercialization and appetite for expansion, it still manages to bring people, mostly black, together over two days for a pretty great party.
Postfeminism is only for wealthy Nigerian women
To have — or, at least, claim — a sense of self that is “already empowered” or happily unencumbered by power relations, requires a fair bit of material privilege.
Another neoliberal Spring
Now that we have had time to process it: Uganda's January 2021 elections were a key step in the country's long transformation towards a fully fledged neoliberal society.
Liberation after independence
On AIAC Talk this week, we mark Independence Day in Sierra Leone, and Freedom Day in South Africa — but what does freedom really mean on the ground in these countries? Watch the show live Tuesday on YouTube.
Capitalism is a disease
Anyone who lives in fear of getting sick exists in a state of unfreedom.
Man of action
An interview with Brian Peterson, author of a new biography of Thomas Sankara. Peterson positions 1980s Burkina Faso as counterhegemonic to the neoliberal transition then.
The class curse
How is Kenya's "new middle class" contributing to a pervasive low-quality oppression that leaves Kenyans feeling hopeless?
What is learning for?
The ideal South African is not the citizen but the consumer, and this is impressed upon children immediately when some are sent to private schools.
The global and class inequalities of fossil fuel subsidy reform
Climate activists and leftists should tread cautiously when they use the climate argument to support fossil fuel subsidy reform in Africa.
Black faces in high places
The pan-African left should greet Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s likely promotion at the World Trade Organization with extreme caution.
The business of Black death
The global public health industry is complicit in the reproduction of “the African tragedy.”
Lessons from Africa’s past to cope with COVID-19
How managing COVID-19 and other crises necessitates Africa’s structural transformation, and what we can learn from the early post-independence development projects.
Pan-Africanism begins at home
Official Ghanaian pan-Africanism is now less motivated by African liberation and solidarity and more by profit incentives. Ghana’s Year of Return is the best example of this.
A private city
Eko Atlantic in Lagos, like Tatu City in Nairobi, Kenya; Hope City in Accra, Ghana; and Cité le Fleuve in Kinshasa, DRC, point to the rise of private cities. What does it mean for the rest of us?
Global finance and charity killed African healthcare
What happened to the once universally accepted idea of healthcare for all?
Kenya’s prison industrial complex
The fundamental flaws in President Uhuru Kenyatta's plan to make jails profitable.