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.
Senegal
The dreamer
As Africa’s first filmmakers made their unique steps in Africanizing cinema, few were as bold as Djibril Diop Mambéty who employed cinema to service his dreams.
Out of the fire
Senegalese art historian El Hadji Malick Ndiaye on curating one of the two longest-serving biennales on the African continent.
Stories untold
How a Senegalese trade unionist inspired one of the continent’s greatest filmmakers.
Diomaye’s first weeks
The challenge for the new Senegalese government is how to translate promises into policy.
Les femmes dans la nation sénégalaise
Le gouvernement du plus jeune président de l'histoire du Sénégal semble déjà incarner une vision rétrograde des femmes.
Between woman and nation
The government of the youngest president in Senegal’s history already seems to embody retrograde views about women.
The people’s coup
Incoming Senegalese president Bassirou Diomaye Faye is as much outgoing President Macky Sall’s creation as he is Ousmane Sonko’s.
Unearthing indigenous knowledge
If savanna West Africa is a new corporate mining frontier in the 21st century, it's because it is also home to the world’s longest-standing indigenous gold mining economy.
Cette université sacrifiée par une élection
Fermée depuis juin 2023, l’université de Dakar est devenue le symbole de l’effondrement de la démocratie sénégalaise.
Elections on, university off
Closed since June 2023, the University of Dakar has become a symbol of the collapse of Senegalese democracy.
Whose land is it anyway?
What contestations over land in urban Senegal tell us about political economy in the post-colony.
Loving, living, and communal duty
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s directorial debut is not only a love story about two star-crossed individuals, but about the whimsical landscapes of the place where they fall in love.
Underground politics under Senghor
In the 1970s, young left-wing activists fought clandestinely for Senegal’s democratization under Senghor’s brutal regime.
Reading List: David Tonghou Ngong
Ahead of the publication of his new book on Leopold Senghor and African political theology, the author selects books that inspired his writing process
Sweet beauty
In Senegal, women's bodies are weaponized as political objects in electoral battles.
Keeping the narrative straight
Although Senegal’s protests are riven with contradictions, they testify to its people’s willingness to defend their democratic rights and freedoms.
A slow emancipation
What peanut trading in late 19th century Senegal tells us about the fine line between slavery and freedom.
The empire of words
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.
An invitation to join a pilgrimage
If a better world is possible, let us meditate on its constituent parts—the institutions, communities, and relationships, argues Felwine Sarr.