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 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.

https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/africa-and-the-ai-race

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lq0ToixpJo

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."

https://africasacountry.com/2025/04/in-search-of-saadia

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

From Nkrumah to neoliberalism

How did Ghana go from Nkrumah’s radical vision to neoliberal entrenchment? Gyekye Tanoh unpacks the forces behind its political stability, deepening inequality, and the fractures shaping its future.

https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/from-nkrumah-to-neoliberalism

" [...] today, there is no progress before the decline even begins."

How not to report on Eastern Congo

Western media coverage of the DRC conflict is riddled with inaccuracies, oversimplifications, and racial bias—reinforcing dangerous narratives rather than informing the world.

https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/how-not-to-report-on-eastern-congo

"We can have different perspectives on the conflict and opposing theories about the geopolitics of the region, but these should be grounded on verified facts rather than sloppy coverage."

New route for old exploitation

A US-backed infrastructure project [the Lobito Corridor] in the DRC is framed as development, but history suggests it’s just another pipeline for foreign powers to profit from Congo’s riches.

https://africasacountry.com/2025/03/new-route-for-old-exploitation