Ama Ata Aidoo repositioned women’s writing within a male-dominated canon in African literature during the mid-1960s and her legacy can be seen in the outpouring of African literature in the twenty-first century by women authors who now dominate the field.
In the 1960s, two African nationalist magazines shared a name—but declassified files reveal that they were on opposite sides of a literary Cold War.
Tom Gillespie and Seth Schindler argue that infrastructure megaprojects in Kenya and Ghana have driven rapid urbanisation processes in historically rural areas. Drawing on the concept of rentier capitalism, they show how infrastructure initiatives created opportunities for the appropriation of rents by various actors, contributing to urbanisation without industrialisation. If policy initiatives to socialise and redistribute land rents are to be successful, Gillespie and Schindler conclude, they must be accompanied by political movements to challenge the vested interests that benefit from rentier capitalism in Africa.
There are strong echoes across Africa of the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The reappearance of recession, debt and structural adjustment to the continent reminds us of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent visit to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia is a welcome step in the right direction in the US’s reengagement with Africa. However, the “more aid syndrome” is a disconcerting reminder of how the West has historically engaged with the continent.
Kwame Nkrumah’s ideas about pan-Africanism and African liberation inspired many young scholars to explore global linkages around race and power, to uncover historical connections and forge new ones.
The political liberation and economic emancipation of Africa cannot be a one-country affair. By necessity, it must be a pan-African movement with international solidarity.
Alternatively, there could emerge a leadership that seeks to respect each ambition, and find a happy medium between them, by first addressing the question: what are these cities for, and how will they feed and maintain themselves
How digital capitalism, despite often being framed as potential growth engine, exploits the already marginalized and reproduces inequalities and power-relations between Africans.
In recent months it has felt like election rigging has run riot. Citizens killed, beaten and intimidated and election results falsified in Uganda. Ballot boxes illegally thrown out of windows so their votes for the opposition can be dumped in the bin in Belarus. Widespread censorship and intimidation of opposition candidates and supporters in Tanzania. […]
Nkrumah, Nyerere and Senghor were acutely aware of the need to displace the epistemic conditions of colonization in order to transcend it.
Highlighting the importance of development planning and the central role of the state in facilitating it, Post-Colonialisms Today researcher Akua Britwum offers lessons from her research on planning in Ghana and Tanzania. Produced and edited by Regions Refocus (Cinthia Chen, Editor). Filmed at the Post-Colonialisms Today Intergenerational Dialogue in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2019), by Kijiweni Productions (Amil Shivji, Producer; Wilson Rumisha, Production Manager). Learn more about the project at bit.ly/WhatIsPCT