Eating Nando’s in Gaborone
One of the most striking features of Botswana's capital city, is its malls.
Culture
Winter Reading List
A sample of Africa Is a Country editors and contributors list the books keeping them warm this winter.
Blackface Fish
Fresh as the sea and funny, or tired, racist bull?
This man is Afrikaans
On a visit to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, academic Herman Wasserman gets reminded of home and how people perceive him.
Three Books on Nelson Mandela
The American public radio network, NPR, asked me, in anticipation of Nelson Mandela's birthday, to recommend 3 books its listeners could read on his life and legacy.
My Favorite Photographs N°17: Thina Zibi
Thina Zibi demonstrates with her images the incredible innovation evident in contemporary South African design and style.
Summer Reading List
What are some Africa Is a Country editors and contributors reading during their northern hemisphere summer break?
Whose “new African writing”?
Finding more multilingual literary pathways will benefit all of African—and world—literatures.
An environmental calamity
The South African photographer Gideon Mendel's images of people affected by flooding in seven sites, including Nigeria.
Weekend Music Break 44
Here’s your weekly round-up of new videos and tunes to get the weekend started. First up, Gaël Faye giving us another video off his “Pili Pili sur un Croissant au Beurre” record, and reminding us of everything that’s good in Bujumbura. Pick your dish: ‘Burning’ is the lead single off Silver Bullet’s “Afrikans in Denmark” EP, featuring Afrikan Boy: From […]
Angola’s Biennale
It is hard to find critics asking what Angolan artist Edson Chagas’s work does, the context through which it was produced, or the social conditions it draws attention to.
Rick Ross is a Country
Rick Ross has since deleted a tweet about landing "in the beautiful country of Africa." He deserved all the scorn. He's been to three African countries already and should know.
A Senegalese Citizen
Bousso Dramé, a young Senegalese winner of a French prize tells the organizers of a prize to shove it.
Weekend Music Break, N°43
It’s been far too long since we had a music break. So without too many words, we’re going to jump right in with what’s been on our radar for the last couple weeks. In a fascinating illustration of cultural appropriation, Ugandan artist Vampino presents himself as a powerful Dracula-figure, surrounded by obedient disciples. Unstoppable in […]
The flag-bearers of dub in South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa, has been undergoing somewhat of an electronic music revival over the past five years. The initial boom happened in the early 2000s when, aided by the pioneering African Dope record label, artists such as Felix Laband and The Constructus Corporation (an earlier incarnation of Die Antwoord) suddenly found themselves at the […]
Your truths are self-evident. Ours are a mystery
In her work, Ellen Gallagher defiantly challenges linear perspective to redress what fellow African-American artist Theaster Gates has called "the African non-archive."
On New African Writing
What precisely is new about new African writing and what makes it different from what we have seen before?
Black History in Amsterdam
Discovering that history lessons are best learned when you look up whilst walking through the small streets of the Netherlands' commercial capital.
The District on Cape Town’s “Fringe”
What it means to belong in post-apartheid urban space and how to reckon with history.
Meeting Sembène
An Interview with Abderrahmane Sissako, director of films like 'La Vie Sur Terre,' 'Rostov-Luanda,' 'Waiting for Happiness' and 'Bamako.'