It takes a team to raise an athlete
Race, class and the story of struggle and sacrifice in the making of South Africa’s next generation of track and field athletes.
Blog
What’s the matter with private equity in Africa?
The nature of the business makes it hard to hold investors accountable when they do wrong.
Navigating queer utopia
A new book presents an empirical challenge to the myth of South Africa as the “pink capital” of Africa and contributes to building an archive of queer, African, and religious narratives.
When Egypt was Black
Pharaonism, a mode of national identification linking people living in Egypt today with ancient pharaohs. It emerged partly as an alternative to colonial British efforts to racialize Egyptians as people of color.
The body in flight
The 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale puts up the first significant survey of Senegalese artist El Hadji Sy’s work in the city.
Africans in China are on the move
Discriminatory COVID policies, increasing cost of living, and diminished purchasing power in China have pushed some Africans to return home, but others are not leaving just yet.
Milking the dream
The 2022 Venice Biennale shows that despite the lack of investment from African nations or the occasional hijacking by mercenary curators, African artists are finding ways to be seen.
Where, and why, is North Africa?
The centrality of race, colonialism, political projects around transnational identities, and the social sciences, all had effects on how the Middle East as a region came to be.
Colonial Vice at the Venice Biennale
At the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, all is not well when it comes to relative newcomers from the African continent.
The political economy of “decolonization”
Decolonization in Kenya may be permitted in its universities if the Kenyan government receives a grant to promote it, or if foreign donor will sponsor it.
A crop that changed the world
The story about peanuts, and the people who grew it at the margins of an empire in 19th century West Africa, then the most abundant source of the world’s most important oilseed.
Stellenbosch University’s intractable racism problem
The University of Stellenbosch in South Africa treats racism as an issue that must be soft-soaped to avoid alienating white people.