Goodbye B.B. King. Here he is playing live in Kinshasa, then Zaire, 1974
Hamba kahle, B.B. King (1925-2015)
Further Reading
When justice means impunity
Twenty-one years after Liberia’s political elite acquiesced to “negative peace,” the US now champions the fight against impunity. Except when their own companies are involved.
The mine dumps of Silicon Valley
While it might be cathartic to compare Elon Musk’s tech firms to apartheid-era mines, the connection between ex-South Africans and American capitalism is complicated.
What does Africa want?
To navigate multipolarity, the continent needs a common narrative that strategically mediates its conversations with China and other world powers.
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.
Africa’s first children problem
No matter where they are, the children of African heads-of-state live lives comically far-removed from those of the average citizen in their home countries.
Beyond humanitarian aid
The war in Sudan shows how during conflict, the internet is as critical as food or medicine.
Marketplace of failure
South Africa’s pivot to electricity markets will be socially regressive, whether green or not.
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.
Shadowy interventions
The EU’s military involvement in West Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, South Sudan, and East Africa is well-known. But one mission on the continent has gone relatively unnoticed.
Intervenções sombrias
Todos sabem do envolvimento militar da União Europeia (EU) na África Ocidental, no Golfo da Guiné, no Sudão do Sul e na África Oriental. No entanto, uma missão no continente passou relativamente despercebida.
The appearance of democracy
The protests against illegal mining in Ghana are revealing how the country’s political class still fears an engaged citizenry.
Sudan’s cultural devastation
How the UAE-backed RSF looted Sudan’s National Museum.
Warring with impunity
Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.
The pitfalls of return
While many diasporans speculate romantically about the people we were or could have been, is that speculation mutual?
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.
Chimurenga Maitũ
Decolonial African feminism and the revolutionary lives of three mothers of Kenya.
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.
Animating the oral tradition
A new Disney short film series dramatizes traditional African storytelling for the big screen. Does it succeed?
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.