Identity and displacement in Nigeria
Director Abba T. Makama's 'The Lost Okoroshi,' attempts to unpacks identity through masquerades in an increasingly ethnocentric Nigeria.
Blog
Refugee debates have an African history problem
Despite increased global debate over refugee issues, few discuss these issues in terms of refugee histories, especially histories of Africans seeking refuge in and beyond the continent.
Uhuru Kenyatta can’t have his cake and eat it too
The current leadership in Kenya is made up of individuals whose personal interests run through virtually every sector of Kenya’s economy. Including when they negotiate trade deals.
The academic game
African Studies scholars write for the gate-keepers, to prove our own legitimacy, for the stimulation of conferences and the relief of rising recognition by algorithms.
Lagos gone to seed
The Nigerian drama 'Òlòtūré,' about sex work and sex trafficking in the country’s commercial capital, which premiered on Netflix, is mostly uncomfortable. And not in a good way.
The politics of influence
Influence exhilarates. It also makes people nervous. Writers, artists, scholars, researchers—we all seem to want to be “influential.” Less often do we want to admit to being “influenced.”
Like an infant in a suffocating hold
The stories of African immigrants to the United States tell vivid tales of unimaginable anti-Blackness through foreign terrains.
Lessons from Africa’s past to cope with COVID-19
How managing COVID-19 and other crises necessitates Africa’s structural transformation, and what we can learn from the early post-independence development projects.
The emptiness of anti-corruption politics
This week on AIAC: Wangui Kimari and Benjamin Fogel on the politics of anti-corruption, and then the particular case of Tanzania with Sabatho Nyamsenda and Elisa Greco. Subscribe to our Patreon for the podcast archive.
The grand plan to save forests has failed
Communities that live and work in African woodlands must become central to conservation efforts.
The soft, patriarchal underbelly of Kenya’s Parliament
Kenya's 2010 Constitution put limits on men's dominance of public institutions, including parliament. Since then, men have done everything to sabotage it, but also to scrap it altogether.
Johannesburg cannot police its future
South Africa’s biggest city is ground zero for debates about the long-term effectiveness and constitutionality of militarized urban policing and how we imagine the post-COVID city.