Africa Is a Country

TV Heads

TV Heads

By
Tom Devriendt

‘Kichwateli’ (‘TV head’ < Swahili) is one of the many chapters in the BLNRB project. Contributors are Just A Band (read Siddharta Mitter’s profile of the Kenyan trio here), street collective Maasai Mbili and the German electronic artists Modeselektor. The video was created by Bobb Muchiri (around the 5:00 mark neatly juxtaposing Nobel peace prize winner Obama’s statement on the killing of bin Laden with the image of the late Kenyan Wangari Maathai — you connect the dots). No, TV Head’s Kibera doesn’t quite have the air of More’s Utopia yet, referenced in the introduction, nor does Nairobi’s CCTV monitored city center.

Further Reading

Fuel’s errand

When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.