What does Africa want?
To navigate multipolarity, the continent needs a common narrative that strategically mediates its conversations with China and other world powers.
Continental
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.
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.
Animating the oral tradition
A new Disney short film series dramatizes traditional African storytelling for the big screen. Does it succeed?
Imperialism does not localize
In 1973, Josie Fanon interviewed then-ANC president Oliver Tambo about Israel and apartheid South Africa. Originally printed in French, it is now available in English for the first time.
L’impérialisme ne localise pas
En 1973, Josie Fanon a interviewé Oliver Tambo, alors président de l’ANC, à propos d’Israël et de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Il est désormais disponible pour la première fois depuis sa publication originale.
On Safari
On our annual publishing break, we ask: if the opposite of “weird” is normal, what if normal is equally problematic?
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.
Reading List: Mara Kardas-Nelson
How did microfinance become a craze championed by bleeding-heart progressives to Global South economists, American presidents, and business executives?
The mirage of progress in women’s football
Select success stories obscure the intentional underdevelopment of women’s football in Africa.
Rooting for everybody black
The Olympics, with its provocative patriotism, are the perfect forum for using a broader diasporic focus to push back against hypernationalism.
Who are the Olympics for?
Beneath the image of togetherness, the world’s biggest athletic spectacle is still beset by discrimination and exclusion.
Who dreams of sunrise?
Siddhartha Deb’s latest book asks readers to consider incarceration as both a metaphor and fact of life in India today.
The puzzle as propaganda
At the height of African decolonization, radical writers turned to interactive features like competitions and quizzes to engage their audiences.
The psychology of oppression and liberation
What would Fanon say about the ongoing genocide in Palestine?
Authoritarian India in retreat?
The BJP’s surprise underperformance in India’s general elections is a setback for the global right.
Heeding the call
At the 31st New York African Film Festival, young filmmakers set the stage with adventurous and varied experiments in African cinema.
The sound of identity
The producer of a BBC podcast on West African identity in Britain discusses her experience making, and the impetus for creating the series.
Seeking fantasies across the sea
By centering the African migrant perspective, a new film challenges Western images that cast hundreds of thousands of individuals into the generic role of desperation.
Children are the first to die
There is a particular historical pattern of colonial settler genocide that links Africa to Palestine.