The Two Sudans
During the Cold War, Khartoum was very successful at frustrating solidarity by other Africans for South Sudan's independence struggle.
South Sudan
Silencing the national anthem
Last month the government of South Sudan passed a decree that the national anthem could not be sung not in the presence of the President. What could be behind this decision?
Revolutionary political thought in South Sudan
Once upon a time, South Sudanese exiles in Khartoum—inspired by, among others, Charles Dickens and Malcolm X—had a radical vision for their new country.
Two trips to Juba
Youth activism and the politics of violence in South Sudan.
The Seattle Afrikan Premier League
Collecting football stories that highlight the world – the African world, in this case – and making the Seattle game global in the process.
Who gets to define borders?
What will the renewed land debate in South Africa mean for the border woes of neighbors such as Lesotho?
#MeToo, Africa too?
Do online movements such as #MeToo #HerToo and #TimesUp do enough to address the experiences of all victims of sexual violence?
With friends like these
Few places in the world have taken a beating like South Sudan. How did it come to this?
South Sudan: the second time as tragic farce
The largest South Sudanese rebel movement is now in a leadership dispute proving more pernicious than Khartoum’s counter-insurgency strategies.
Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead
Their voices, sharp and angry, shook me from my slumber. I didn’t know the language, but I instantly knew the translation. So I groped for the opening in the mosquito net, shuffled from my downy white bed to the window, threw back the stained tan curtain, and squinted into the light of a new day […]
Should the African Union Run a Country?
The AU seeks an increased role in emergencies like the Ebola crisis in West and Central Africa and the civil war in South Sudan.
African Cup of Nations memories
We've teamed up with brand new soccer kit supplier AMS (like them on Facebook) to give you the chance to win a Sierra Leone or South Sudan kit.
The closest thing to real life
The documentary film. “Zoran and his African Tigers,” shows how harsh and unforgiving international football can be.
Literary Sudans
The online retrospective, “Literary Sudans," is intended to highlight the two Sudans as sites of literature and culture.
The Two Sudans
On July 6 2011, the world’s diplomatic elite flocked to one of the globe’s most underdeveloped regions to bask in the warm glow of the birth of a new nation. That South Sudan’s struggle for independence had claimed the lives of an estimated 2million people, and that the majority of its inaugural citizens had been […]
Women and rural gentrification in Ethiopia
Ethiopia forcibly relocates rural populations, often at gunpoint and never with any consultation, so the land can become "more productive."
A road accident doesn't make a revolution
Recent demonstrations in Sudan’s capital Khartoum over road conditions and traffic signals have led some observers in the West to speculate about the possibilities of a Egypt-style revolution there (see FT, BBC and Al Jazeera English, for example; Sudan-specific blogs, like Making Sense of Sudan, are silent on the protests). For our sake, I asked a […]
Bwana Saves Africa
Today’s New York Times Magazine carries a fawning profile of John Prendergast, the force behind the Enough Project (reference: Congo, Darfur and now southern Sudan). Prendergast is described by reporter Daniel Bergner as “America’s most influential activist in Africa’s most troubled regions.” A former Clinton White House official, Prendergast probably wrote the book on how to utilize […]
‘The media and war-mongering’
Journalist Maggie Fick is covering South Sudan’s self-determination referendum for the AP. She’s only one of hundreds of other reporters who have set up camp, for what The New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman described earlier this week as “Africa’s big divorce.” (Yes, he did.) Not surprisingly, the bulk of “foreign correspondent” reporting on the […]