The former executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission on Africa, makes his case as to why Africa should take advice on development politics and knowledge from Asia.
Latest
The balancing act of being African and an artist
In the documentary film ‘Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra,’ the director is in complete control of his artistic vision.
Constructing minorities
The legal politics of religious difference in late colonial northern Nigeria still resonate more than 60 years post-independence.
After we have grown too tired of jumping
The Ghanaian game, Ampe, is an education in Blackness and womanhood.
What needs to fall to what needs to rise?
The video playlist from our one-day symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the Marikana massacre—funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—is now on YouTube.
Character assassin
Author RW Johnson’s latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders.
World Cup 2022
As Iran withstands one of its greatest existential challenges, its men's national team would be forced to carry the weight of a nation’s despair on the field.
The reality of any society, any nation, and of our world, is much messier than picking a soccer team.
Culture
The gods of liberation
The imperative to tell the untold stories of Zimbabwean freedom fighters during that country’s liberation war, especially their engagement with spirituality.
Selling fencing as freedom
What happens when companies start to sell the idea of a frictionless consumption that helps people at the same time?
The value of holding on as we imagine an escape
As Iran withstands one of its greatest existential challenges, its men’s national team would be forced to carry the weight of a nation’s despair on the field.
Belonging is not a sport
The reality of any society, any nation, and of our world, is much messier than picking a soccer team.
The (African) Arab Cup
Morocco’s World Cup heroics are forging a new, dissident Third-World solidarity, reflecting the multifaceted nature of Moroccan identity itself: simultaneously Arab, African, and Amazigh.
Ousmane Sembene
Sembene’s Africa is everyone’s Africa
If someone had to hold the title of father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembéne would be the most compelling candidate.
The haunting draw of the West
To be African means at some point to desire to leave. African cinema can provide solace for our tortured relationship to the West and our own continent.
Two tales against neocolonialism
Working-class men try unsuccessfully to integrate themselves into new economies in the films of Ousmane Sembene and Mrinal Sen.
Ousmane Sembene invented a new cinema for Africa
An interview with Samba Gadjigo, the late Ousmane Sembene’s longtime friend and official biographer about the resurgence of Sembene’s work.
Politics
The labor of land
In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.
The external domination of Africa’s agricultural future
The changing structure of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) threatens the food security of the Global South.
The entitlement of Bola Tinubu
The Nigerian presidential candidate’s claim of ’emi lokan’ (it’s my turn) reveals complex ethnic politics and a stagnated democracy. Most responses to it, humor and rumor, reflect how Nigerians enact democratic citizenship.
A city divided
Ethnic enclaves are not unusual in many cities and towns across Sudan, but in Port Sudan, this polarized structure instigated and facilitated communal violence.
Colonialism and the war in Ukraine
What can historians of Eastern Europe learn from Ghanaian responses to the Russian invasion?
RADIO
On the last episode of our sports and music series on Africa Is a Country Radio, we visit with Sean Jacobs and Tony Karon of the Eleven Named People podcast to preview the 2022 men’s World Cup football tournament.