More French than Algerian
This week, Kamel Daoud became the first Algerian to receive France’s most prestigious literary honor. Yet, in Algeria, no one seems to care.
Culture
Between Harlem and home
African postcolonial cinema serves as a mirror, revealing the limits of escape—whether through migration or personal defiance—and exposing the tensions between dreams and reality.
The aftertaste of the ocean
Mati Diop’s 'Dahomey' isn’t solely concerned with the subject of repatriating Beninese artifacts, but with returning the debate to the Beninese themselves.
Museum of memory
An eye-opening documentary on African literary titan Wole Soyinka wants us to laud his “politics” without ever having Soyinka himself talk about them.
Writers for a new world
The debacle around Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest book shows us that no matter a writer's individual acclaim, the liberal media establishment will never tolerate anything that fundamentally challenges its racist edifice.
Girl on the internet
Nicknamed the “Candace Owens of South Africa,” Siphesihle Nxokwana is an anti-feminist influencer playing to crowds already on her side.
Rebuilding a destroyed garden
South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa returns to places of pain and beauty to reinterpret the landscape and, in turn, discover something new about himself.
African contradictions in the world of science
African contributions to the globalized world cannot be celebrated while the place occupied by African peoples remains on the periphery.
Contradições africanas no mundo das ciências
A contribuição africana no mundo globalizado não pode ser celebrada enquanto o lugar ocupado pelos povos africanos for o da periferia.
Integrity should be integral
Samthing Soweto and DJ Maphorisa’s clash over a song credit raises the question of whether numbers trump respect in the Amapiano music scene.
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.
Sudan’s cultural devastation
How the UAE-backed RSF looted Sudan's National Museum.
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.
Animating the oral tradition
A new Disney short film series dramatizes traditional African storytelling for the big screen. Does it succeed?
From Cairo to Cornell
The Malcolm X effect of Gambian-British activist Momodou Taal.
The freedom to move
Hiking as Kenyans in Kenya is pathbreaking, both literally and metaphorically.
From Naija to Abidjan
One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d'Ivoire today.
De Naïja à Abidjan
Un pays est anglophone et l’autre est francophone. Quoi qu'il en soit, entre 1 et 4 millions de personnes d'origine nigériane vivent aujourd'hui en Côte d'Ivoire.
Zau is a mirror
Inspired by a tapestry of Bantu folk stories, the video game 'Tales of Kenzera: Zau' is rich with mythology that many Africans know as our heritage.