David Samaai was the first black (and coloured) South African to play at Wimbledon in 1949. He was 21 years old. He did so before the Americans, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.
Latest
Flawed lenses
How much work do we need to do to see our history and that of the African continent in all its complexity?
Why are Nigerian academics on strike?
Since 1999, Nigeria’s academics have gone on strike 15 times. Since February, they’ve been on strike again. This week on the AIAC Podcast, we unpack why.
The promise and peril of the digital economy
How digital capitalism, despite often being framed as potential growth engine, exploits the already marginalized and reproduces inequalities and power-relations between Africans.
Ukraine and the left’s imperialist economism
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the narrowness of the crude anti-imperialist positions that are silent about the actual invasion of an independent country.
The Russians are here
Russia’s war with Ukraine has inaugurated the new Cold War most feared, and some wanted. Which side are you on?
RADIO
Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s debut novel is painted by the music of a nightclub in a fictional central African city-state. On this month’s AIAC Radio we imagined what it might sound like.
Culture
Silencing the past of Egyptian football
The 10th anniversary of the tragedy at Port Said passed without much notice in Egypt. Have Egyptians forgotten, or are they just trying to move on?
Hard times never kill
Gonora Sounds’ music gets at what it means to be a Zimbabwean: We might be crying, but we are also dancing.
Two women, two stories, both winners
The documentary film Mane about two women—a rapper and a wrestler—is a much-needed boost of fresh air in the male-saturated tale of the “Generation hip hop” of Senegal.
Letters of recommendation
On the South African-born anthropologist John Comaroff and the political economy of silence in academia.
Worshipping other people’s gods
Kenyan filmmaker Jim Chuchu explores the struggle between indigenous cultural practice and Pentecostal Christianity.
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 last video for our Nairobi edition of Capitalism in My City, we meet the Organic Intellectuals Network.
In the third video for our Nairobi edition of Capitalism in My City, Gacheke Gachihi visits a site of environmental injustice.
Politics
The young ones
Voter apathy among young people in Kenya reveals fundamental flaws in Kenya’s democratic politics.
When people cough, black stuff comes out
In Mozambique, a troubling pattern of land grabbing, pollution and death. This time at the hands of a Brazilian-owned coal mine.
A Total mess
Total is creating a social and economic disaster in Mozambique, consulting the same playbook it uses in Myanmar and Yemen where it extracts resources and silences communities.
Will the populist wave crash over South Africa?
With the globe-spanning rise of right-wing populism, there may be good reason to fear for South Africa’s fledgling democracy.
Are the Russians really coming?
Russia has invaded Ukraine. Its growing involvement in Africa raises questions about what a war in Europe means south of the Mediterranean. We discuss this with John Lechner on the AIAC Podcast.
Technology
The promise and peril of the digital economy
How digital capitalism, despite often being framed as potential growth engine, exploits the already marginalized and reproduces inequalities and power-relations between Africans.
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.
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.