• Marilene Felinto

Who is the black John Kennedy? A Brazilian footballer.

• Kristof Titeca

In Kampala, Nasser Road has become an iconic site of entrepreneurial printing, most famously, its ubiquitous posters of notorious political figures like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

• Amber Bal

Fatou Cissé’s directorial debut meditates on the uncertain fate and importance of Malian cinema amidst the growing dismissiveness towards the humanities across the world.

• Job Tapera

From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.

• David Tonghou Ngong

A new Brazilian film shows the role memory plays in African spirituality and dreams of liberation.

• Fungai Machirori

Zimbabwean cricketing legend Heath Streak’s career mirrors many of the unresolved tensions of race and class in Zimbabwe. Yet few white Zimbabwean sporting figures are able to stir interest and conversation across the nation’s many divides.

• Afolabi Adekaiyaoja

After winning Italy’s Serie A with Napoli, Victor Osimhen has cemented his claim to being Africa’s biggest footballing icon. But is the trend of individual stardom good for sports and politics?

• Gilson Lazaro
• Luca Bussotti

Academics in Angola’s public universities are on strike. But instead of only being concerned with the decay of higher education, they are connecting with the struggles of Angola’s working class.

• Matthew J. Smith

Chris Blackwell’s long-awaited autobiography shows him as a romantic rogue; a risk taker whose life compass has been an open mind and gift to hear and see slightly into the future.

• Suren Pillay

Contemporary approaches to the legacy of colonialism tend to narrowly emphasize political agency as the solution to Africa’s problems. But agency is configured through historically particular relations of which we are not sole authors.

• Haythem Guesmi

In the latest controversies about race and ancient Egypt, both the warring ‘North Africans as white’ and ‘black Africans as Afrocentrists’ camps find refuge in the empty-yet-powerful discourse of precolonial excellence.

• Brahim El Guabli

It is burgeoning field that intersects with Arabic, Francophone, Middle Eastern and African studies. But why is Amazigh Studies absent in Anglophone academia?

• Madosini

The South African musician known as Madosini passed away in 2022. She was one of the last of a generation who learnt to play traditional Xhosa instruments, in so doing sharing the spirituality, dignity, and joy of Xhosa culture through her inimitable song.

• Sheila D. Collins

American civil rights activist George Houser was also active in Africa’s anti-colonial struggle. To write his biography, Sheila Collins widely read 20th century African political history.

• Rama Salla Dieng

The fiction of Senegalese writer and filmmaker Khady Sylla not only used speech to create worlds and ways of being in the world, but used speech as a world and a character in its own right.

• Maya Schkolne

The struggle in Israel-Palestine lacks a sense of inclusivity, like in South Africa, that aims to take over and transform the state into a democracy for all its citizens.

• Arpita Mandal

Leila Aboulela’s historical novel of nineteenth century Sudan tells the story of one of Africa’s first successful, anticolonial uprisings.

• Désọ́lá

For black women in particular, the individual pursuit of a soft, consumption-driven life is a fragile approach to securing social justice.

• Khwezi Mabasa

Chris Hani’s legacy is often reduced to debates about his assassination in April 1993, but his significance goes beyond South Africa’s democratic transition.

• Valmont Layne

A new film by French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis uncovers how American jazz giant, Thelonious Monk, was disrespected by French media at the end of his European tour in 1969.