How racialized intellectual outputs placed in just the right circumstances can do the most damage.
Latest
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?
Nigeria’s Twitter ban and the resistance politics of VPNs
Anyone who cares about civil society, free speech, and human rights should find the state’s digital silencing of its citizens deeply troubling.
Where do just ideas come from?
Episode #41 of AIAC Talk explores Senegal’s early post-colonial history, to make sense of the unhappiness with the government of incumbent president Macky Sall. Watch it Tuesday on Youtube.
Trapped by history
Mexican American director John Gutierrez new film, set in Cape Town, South Africa, touches on colonialism, displacement, and man’s complicated relationship with nature.
The legacy of French colonial psychiatry
French psychiatry in West Africa saw Black bodies as “alien” to white ones. It hasn’t changed much.
AIAC RADIO
This month on Africa Is a Country Radio we wrap up our seasonal theme of port cities, and make a stop in Dakar, Senegal. Listen on Worldwide FM or Mixcloud.
Culture
The house of migrants
Two brilliant filmmakers and two stunning documentaries creating new narratives about migration.
International thief thief
There can no longer be false justifications for holding Benin Bronzes, and other pilfered materials, in museums outside of Africa.
The making and unmaking of permanent minorities
Mahmood Mamdani’s new book asks how communities that have been enemies can heal. But does it succeed?
Exile is more than a geographical concept
Episode #39 of AIAC Talk is about exile: a new film on a Libyan dissident and a new exhibition on the black experience. Watch it live Tuesday on YouTube.
The possibility of thought
A Black South African academic in the United States on breaking the silence on Israeli apartheid in US classrooms and on campuses.
Capitalism in My City
The Mathare Social Justice Centre has partnered with Africa Is a Country to produce a series of posts and videos to document everyday capitalism in Nairobi. The project is funded via the Shuttleworth Fellowship awarded to Sean Jacobs.
In the second video from our Capitalism In My City project, Dennis Esikuri talks to everyday Nairobians about the current employment opportunities in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic.
In the first video from a series for the Capitalism In My City project, Brian Mathenge decodes what everyday capitalism looks like from the margins of Nairobi.
Politics
Kwame Nkrumah and Israel
Israel projected itself as a plucky postcolonial nation. Many African nations and leaders bought into it. Israel’s occupation of the Sinai in 1967, changed that.
Accra to Bandung, Addis to Beijing
On AIAC Talk this week, we are tackling Africa’s long and evolving relationship with Asia. Watch it live Tuesday on YouTube.
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.
Managing the city like the military
Nairobi is already witnessing the sidelining of democratic institutions. Now a new city management agency is further excluding the public.
History and the politicians
The historically fraught relationship of metropole and colony persists between France and Algeria, as a recent “symbolic” gesture reveals.
Technology
Silicon Valley in Africa
Western tech companies in Africa often claim to be "social entrepreneurs." But do their models reduce or contribute to inequality?
WhatsApp and anti-capitalism: should you stay or should you go?
Facebook and its “family” of services are a one-way street towards greater integration, data exploitation, and erosions of privacy by an increasingly monopolistic company.
More widespread than we think
Today's social movements rely on tech collectives to organize safely. But few know the history of other technologies used by earlier liberation movements.
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.