Long / #MustRead
"The convergence of Trump’s tariff nationalism and Musk’s corporate-driven agenda lays bare a hard truth: Africa’s economic fortunes are still far too subject to decisions made elsewhere, for interests other than Africa’s own."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/06/between-washington-and-beijing
The resurgence of Benin sound
[Don't mix the Beninese Republic, with Benin CIty in Edo State in Nigeria]
Read: Musical traditions and language from Edo State have moved from the margins of Nigeria's national (and international) culture to the center.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/06/the-resurgence-of-benin-sound
Listen: Respect Ur Elders By 2Rymce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdVbvvH92wo
On AMF: Edo Funk Explosion https://amf.didiermary.fr/edo-funk-explosion/
The global gateway to nowhere
"[...] as European nations slash already underfunded development budgets and instead prioritize military spending, migration management, and the “competitiveness” of their clean technologies, the Global Gateway is gaining increasing traction as a new tool for pursuing European geopolitical interests, disguised as development finance."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/the-global-gateway-to-nowhere
Four Days in Faso - Kwame Brenya & Legon Palmwine Band
Read: On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/a-migrants-tale
Listen: Poetry, Storytelling, Drama & Music https://kwabrenyame.bandcamp.com/album/four-days-in-faso
Discussing African border issues through Palmwine music, based on true life experiences.
Afropolitans and the fantasy of a digital nation
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/afropolitans-and-the-fantasy-of-a-digital-nation
"Web3 utopians promised a sovereign future for the African diaspora—but what they delivered was a networking club for elites, wrapped in crypto-libertarian hype and Afro-futurist aesthetics."
Cape Town’s digital nomads chase cheap luxury and scenic backdrops—but behind the matcha lattes and “social impact days” lies a deeper story of economic power, displacement, and global inequality.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/south-africas-american-refugees
"The digital nomad is purely a consumer class, while adding nothing of value to the economy or the country they inhabit (their whole schtick is working for some international company from the comfort of another country)."
From the vault: 2015
Does the Gates Foundation do more harm than good?
When you have as much money as the Gates Foundation, you can buy your way into some pretty powerful places.
"[In the book, the sociologist Linsey] McGoey reveals that the new religion of ‘philanthrocapitalism’ – applying business models to giving – is nothing new."
https://africasacountry.com/2015/12/does-the-gates-foundation-do-more-harm-than-good/
Green hydrogen, old colonialism
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/green-hydrogen-old-colonialism
The EU’s hydrogen push in North Africa is sold as climate progress, but beneath the green gloss lies a familiar story of extraction, debt, and dispossession.
From the vault: 2016
The ‘Big Man’ Syndrome in Africa
Why do so many African leaders overstay their welcome or break electoral rules?
"There is a joke about Angola: 'Who is the public in Angola?' 'The President.' 'Where does all the money go?' 'To the public.'"
https://africasacountry.com/2016/03/the-big-man-syndrome-in-africa/
From the vault: 2016
The Ghost of the IMF’s Past
The IMF’s latest tussle with the government of Mozambique and Voodoo Economics
https://africasacountry.com/2016/05/the-ghost-of-the-imfs-past/
If you want to read some examples explaining the continent's state...
The end of US empire is not the end of the world
"We must contend with a sobering reality: The US may be willing to destroy the world before it surrenders its imperial self-image. This suicidal impulse—visible in its economic warfare and cultural nihilism—should not be underestimated. If empire cannot imagine a future in which it does not lead, it may instead choose to make that future unlivable for everyone else."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/05/the-end-of-us-empire-is-not-the-end-of-the-world
"Aid is more than a line item in a budget—it is a system of power."
As aid ends, empire endures
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built—rooted in control, dependency, and depoliticization—still shapes Africa’s development.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/as-aid-ends-empire-endures
#Africa #Colonialism #AIAC #USAid #NeoLiberalism #Development
DJ Dadaman & Moscow Dollar – Ka Gaza (Nyege Nyege Tapes LP/DL) https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/ka-gaza #newrelease #BacardiMusic #Kwaito #Amapiano #dancefloor – In order to contexutalise this album with music from the early 2000s in South Africa, Thembi Ngubo’s 2025 article “The politics of South African sound” published on the excellent Africa is a Country-blog is highly recommended. https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/the-politics-of-south-african-sound #SouthAfrica #AfricanMusic #AIAC
Africa and the AI race
At summits and in speeches, African leaders promise to harness AI for development. But without investment in power, connectivity, and people, the continent risks replaying old failures in new code.
Will the future of food be genome edited?
What will we eat in the future—and who gets to decide? From lab-grown meat to agroecology, the politics of food in Africa are being shaped by tech dreams, corporate agendas, and grassroots resistance.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/will-the-future-of-food-be-genome-edited
A powerful storytelling tradition
The last great Fang bard, Eyí Moan Ndong fused myth, music, and sci-fi to create epic performances that defy Western categories—and demand global recognition.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/a-powerful-storytelling-tradition
In search of Saadia
"Over the years of fighting anti-blackness in Tunisia, Mosbah has herself become a living archive of the stories of suffering and humiliation faced by those racialized as black."
Journey through the afterlives of a colonized Africa
In a hauntingly sincere recollection of her childhood and evolution into the ‘Most Dangerous woman in Africa,’ Andrée Blouin reintroduces herself while taking readers alongside an intimate ‘Africa Tour.'
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/journey-through-the-afterlives-of-a-colonized-africa
If you already watched "Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat", or want to, this is a #MustRead interview with Johan Gimonprez
Making films against amnesia
"The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently."
https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/making-films-against-amnesia
The politics of South African sound
From #Kwaito to #Amapiano, South African music is a bridge between past and present, where cultural memory, resistance, and reinvention collide on the dancefloor.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/the-politics-of-south-african-sound
