AfricaIs aCountry

Shameless Self Promotion

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Shameless Self Promotion

By
Sean Jacobs


Since Herman is too modest, I’ll do it: A new book he edited on media politics in Africa, and to which I contributed a chapter, just came out from Routledge in London. Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa has contributions from some of the continent’s best media scholars (and I am smart not to include myself among that set). The book “… asks critical questions about the potential of popular media to contribute to democratic culture, provide sites of resistance, or, conversely, act as agents for the spread of Americanized entertainment culture.” It is part of a book series on “Internationalizing Media Studies” edited by UK media academic Daya Thussu for Routledge.

Buy it here.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.