The Black Bill Gates
Beyonce offered me escapism in my childhood. But now I see the contradictions and shortcomings in her claimed radicalness.
Americas
Beyond African royalty
Beyoncé, 'The Lion King,' 'Coming to America,' and the complicated politics of African representation in Black American cultural production.
How to curate a pandemic
Three prominent curators on how they are (re-)situating their respective curatorial practices in relation to the political moment.
The pitfalls of African consciousness
It took time to digest Beyonce's Black Is King. Conclusion: it fails to deliver us. Instead, it's just another capitalist construction of the world.
How not to save the planet
In this, the first of a series of posts, we critically look at the implications of climate policy in the most powerful Western country for Africans.
Structural adjustment comes home
Americans could learn a thing or two from Africans’ history of resisting structural adjustment policies.
In the jungles of the Congo
The book 'Emerald Labyrinth' explores American and Congolese efforts to document species biodiversity.
Race, caste and Kamala
Kamala Harris should be critiqued or celebrated not according to a faulty and disingenuous understanding of her lineage, but on the basis of her actual policy positions and future governing vision.
African literature is a country
What if you survey African literature professors to find out which works and writers are most regularly taught? Only a few canonical ones continue to dominate curricula.
GMOs for Africa?
Rather than addressing food scarcity, genetically modified crops may render African farmers and scientists more, not less, reliant on global markets.
Des OGM pour l’Afrique?
Plutôt que de pallier l’insécurité alimentaire, les cultures génétiquement modifiées risquent de rendre les agriculteurs et les scientifiques africains plus, et non moins, dépendants des marchés mondiaux.
Toppling statues as a decolonial ethic
The blitz on monuments signifies not the abandonment of history, but rather the rejection of a narrative of modernity created by the heirs of global plunder.
Essential workers
When a young Ethiopian, Haile Gerima, made a film about the exploitative nature of American college sports and the role of Black athletes in society.
Black Atlantic Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter protests build on a long history of anti-racist solidarity and struggle across the Atlantic.
Independence Day
The labor and political organizing of Somali immigrants in the US Midwest should inspire more Americans to join the broader movement for worker rights and racial equality.
‘We have no Harlem in Sudan’
The current global discourse on Black Lives Matter does not yet adequately include anti-black racism beyond how the West experiences it.
The blankest spot on Trump’s world map
In his new book of his time in the Trump White House, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton shares Trump’s very few thoughts on Africa.
The book of his life
Father's Day reflections for the time of COVID-19.
Pandemic in the city
How African immigrants in New York City’s Manhattan borough coped with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The class character of police violence
Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?