AFCON and the politics of Africanhood
In Morocco, football has become a site for the slow re-Africanization of the country’s national identity.
Culture
The myth of Nigerian football exceptionalism
The Super Eagles don’t suffer from a shortage of talent, but represent a country unwilling to admit that greatness is not a birthright.
Salah in isolation
Distanced at club level, and scrutinized at home, there is no player with more to prove at this Africa Cup of Nations than Mohamed Salah.
The boys are back in town
Bafana Bafana’s resurgence has been forged where South African football always lives—between brilliance and the bizarre.
A giant chance
An African Cup of Nations at home for red hot Morocco is a chance to put past trauma aside and charge on to the world stage.
On the pitch
This year, instead of taking a publishing break, we will be covering the African Cup of Nations. To transition, we consider why football still matters in an era of enclosure, mediated presence, and thinning publics.
What does a museum mean here?
A dispatch from Benin City tells the unfinished story of the Museum of West African Art.
Has digital feminism peaked?
The scandal around Ezra Olubi has exposed the contradictions of Nigeria’s middle-class, online feminism.
Mapping Johannesburg’s wounds
In his latest exhibition, Khanya Zibaya charts the psychic and spatial terrain of a city where homelessness, decay, and human resilience sit uneasily together.
Whose museum is it anyway?
The dispute over Benin City’s museum project shows that returning stolen art does not settle the question of ownership.
Minnesota was promised to us
Somalis have answered Trump’s latest racist tirade not with outrage but with a tidal wave of trolling.
The golden light of Pops Mohamed
From Actonville to global stages, Pops Mohamed blended tradition, futurism, and faith—leaving behind a musical archive as luminous as the spirit he carried.
Pints and powerpoints
From IMF history to astrophysics, Nairobi’s Drunken Lectures turn casual drinkers into an engaged public.
Calling Trump’s bluff
As the White House hypes “Christian genocide” and floats military action, northern Nigerians are responding with satire.
Davido’s jacket
Davido’s appearance at 'Amapiano’s biggest concert' turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.
Empty riddles
Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.
Heritage on horseback
A photo essay on Nigeria’s Durbars and the power of royal pageantry.
How much does a Nigerian intellectual cost?
The country that once produced some of Africa’s fiercest moral voices now struggles to sustain independent thought.
The sound of what remains
Jean Maxime Baptiste’s latest film listens to how grief and history reverberate across generations in French Guiana.
Who cares about African heritage?
While the world debates restitution, Africa’s own heritage institutions are collapsing. The question is no longer who took our past, but who is keeping it alive.