Bookends: Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
The author of 'The House of Rust' tells us all the little things (from foods to films) that get her imagination going.
Kenya
What is it about the Kenyan postcolonial state?
The lesson from political economist Rok Ajulu’s academic work and activism: it’s not enough to change the “tenants,” but fight to change both the “state” and all of its houses.
Inhabiting the shapes and sounds and patterns of other people
May 21 marks the anniversary of the writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina’s untimely death in 2019. He was 48.
A man of few words
Late Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, could be a political heartbreaker and a great disappointment when he moved smoothly on from a cause.
Sanitizing the Kenyattas
Why are Kenya's ruling family trying to reinvent themselves as friends of Mau Mau so many years later?
Nairobi’s incendiary displacements
Urban displacements greatly diminish the living conditions of already desperate populations living on the brink of poverty in Kenya's capital.
An election about nothing
The leading political formations in Kenya's 2022 elections are born of each other, the result of many profound compromises, and this in part explains the blankness.
The young ones
Voter apathy among young people in Kenya reveals fundamental flaws in Kenya’s democratic politics.
The ideological vacuum in Kenyan politics
The Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network wants to challenge the vague manner elites there deal with the past and take on the challenges of the present.
Worshipping other people’s gods
Kenyan filmmaker Jim Chuchu explores the struggle between indigenous cultural practice and Pentecostal Christianity.
Pio Pinto’s legacy for the Kenyan left
This week on AIAC Talk: Pio Gama Pinto was Kenya’s first post-independence martyr. Why does he matter today?
The humanization of public monsters
Charles Njonjo's legacy is as member of a powerful group of Kikuyu chauvinists who surrounded Jomo Kenyatta and corrupted the state.
Back to the future
The grievances of this generation in Kenya are disturbingly similar to those of the generation of the 1940s who took up arms in the Mau Mau movement. For both, it is about land and freedom.
Music makes the past alive
Africa Is a Country Radio is back with a new season. Each show will be inspired by the work of a different African author. First up, we explore the Ethiopian Tizita with Mukoma Wa Ngugi.
Simply filming people’s lived experiences
How the film, 'I am Samuel' about a gay Kenyan couple was banned by the Kenya Film Classification Board.
Kenya is Europe’s dumpsite
On the back of a failed COP26 climate conference: how e-waste dumping by European countries in Africa contribute significantly to climate change.
Organic intellectuals
In the last video for our Nairobi edition of Capitalism in My City, we meet the Organic Intellectuals Network.
The second Scramble for Africa
How the International Union for Conservation of Nature Congress continues be a farce, and perpetuates a fake conservation in Africa: basically the interests are just commerce.
The lives of refugees
Somali refugees in Kenya are held hostage by political disagreements between their governments. Under international law, Kenya has a duty to protect them.
Capitalism Mtaani at the Dandora dumpsite
In the third video for our Nairobi edition of Capitalism in My City, Gacheke Gachihi visits a site of environmental injustice.