Africa Is a Country

Africa 3.0

Africa 3.0

By
Tom Devriendt

Another month, another special Africa issue. This one is by French weekly newspaper Courrier International (part of Le Monde group), edited by Isabelle Lauze and Ousmane Ndiaye. Many of the articles have appeared elsewhere but are published here for the first time in French. Features and profiles include those on Congolese photographer Kiripi Katembo, Angola’s “indignados”, Senegalese collective Y’en A Marre, Nigerian Nollywood, Ghanaian journo Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Ethiopian entrepreneur Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, a very short introduction to Francophone Hip-Hop, etc. Full table of contents here. The cover photo is lifted from Omar Victor Diop’s 2012 series “The Studio of Vanities”. It’s not clear why they decided to focus only on Sub-Saharan Africa. That said, they’ve used excellent sources.

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.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.