Africa

By  
Abdi Aden Abdi,
July 29, 2021
These flash fiction pieces were created in the course "Writing African Futures," taught by Kerry Bystrom (Bard College Berlin) and Aedan...
By  
May 26, 2021
May 25th. Now, a date for global Black calendars. George Floyd's murder one year ago today ignited and expanded a movement, and on this day...
By  
Abraham T. Zere
December 24, 2020
Eritrea’s direct involvement in the ongoing Ethiopian civil war has been highly contentious for many observers. Tigray People’s Liberation...
By  
Warscapes
November 14, 2020
Urgent Call and Appeal for Peace in Ethiopia from Citizens of the Horn of Africa We, the undersigned citizens of countries of the Horn of...
By  
Soreti Kadir and Ayantu Ayana
July 20, 2020
The last three weeks in Ethiopia have been full of tragedy . Beloved Oromo musical powerhouse and political activist Haacaaluu Hundeessaa...
By  
Warscapes
June 2, 2020
As African writers without borders who are connected beyond geography with those who live in the United States of America and other parts...
By  
Nathan Suhr-Sytsma
May 28, 2020
On encountering ‘Gbenga Adeoba’s poems in 2018 I was struck by the tonal restraint with which his poems took up the urgent subject of...
By  
Kevin Mwachiro
May 27, 2020
I miss the night. I long for its nocturnal freedom. The cover of the twinkle and sparkle of the stellar blanket. Before you think that I...
By  
Valérie Gruhn
April 19, 2020
Valérie Gruhn's compelling "Ebola Journal" from a February 2019 deployment treating patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was...
By  
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
April 19, 2020
I know, I know, It threatens the common gestures of human bonding The handshake, The hug The shoulders we give each other to cry on The...
By  
Lutivini Majanja
April 2, 2020
I got my copy of Makena Maganjo’s South B's Finest a few days prior to Kenya's first Covid-19 case. Reading it now, a few days into this...
By  
Christopher J. Lee
March 25, 2020
Can African literature offer a sense of guidance through the current pandemic of COVID-19? Articles have circulated online about “ pandemic...
By  
Warscapes Literary Salons
March 10, 2020
Warscapes magazine launched their literary salons titled "Nairobi: Maps of Exile" in November 2019. These salons are an attempt to reframe...
By  
Susan Nalugwa Kiguli
March 7, 2020
TO WAR MONGERS EVERYWHERE Tell us Did you start a war So our women Could be sold to public shame? Our girls everyday Stripped bare of...
By  
Robtel Neajai Pailey
February 9, 2020
I feel like an imposter. Out of place and exposed. Monsoon-like rains have subsided and the dry season air is thick and balmy in Monrovia,...
By  
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
July 12, 2019
Dear Mr. President, Peace and blessings of Allah be unto you! I congratulate you for winning the elections and pray to Allah to help you...
By  
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
July 12, 2019
In my country’s first peaceful transition of power since independence from France in 1960, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani - a retired general and...
By  
Jama Musse Jama
May 11, 2019
Lama helo wadaadow, waxaan cidi ku hawsheene! (Ohi my people! nothing good is got for free) – A poem by Cabdillaahi Suldaan Timacadde, 1960...
By  
Ali Jimale Ahmed
April 7, 2019
I like shrinks, she said, chuckling, her face twitching. She should know. For over two years now, she has been in the care of an alienist...
By  
Monica Popescu
December 27, 2018
If Romanian and Western African musical traditions were blended together, what sorts of new sounds and aesthetics might it generate? The...
By  
Zahra Moloo
December 19, 2018
Target Malaria’s planned release of gene drive mosquitoes in parts of Burkina Faso is a high-risk technology aimed at the elimination of...
By  
Zahra Moloo
August 15, 2018
Radha D’Souza is an organizer, academic and writer. After practicing law in India, she taught in New Zealand and currently teaches public...
By  
Raphaël Thierry
June 3, 2018
I recently had the privilege of meeting British-Nigerian writer and professor of literature Sarah Ladipo Manyika at an African literature...
By  
Ali Jimale Ahmed
February 6, 2018
The transcript of the speech titled "African Solutions for African Problems: Limning the Contours of a New Form of Connectivity" delivered...
By  
Ismail Einashe
December 21, 2017
In early December, I was in Morocco’s charming capital city, Rabat, which rests along the shores of the Bouregrer River and the Atlantic...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
October 22, 2017
On Saturday October 14, at 4:13pm, my cellphone lit up. “Big explosion…at the Zobe Junction,” the first WhatsApp message announced. For...
By  
David L. Lukudu
September 19, 2017
“I must eat a decent meal today!” Ahmed Suk Suk said to himself, as he woke up and sat on the bed. “I haven’t had some warm food with salt...
By  
September 12, 2017
Forty years ago today, South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was murdered in prison. "The Life and Death of Steve Biko" aired on...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
April 2, 2017
On the night of March 16, 2017, fifty kilometers off the coast of Hudaydah in Yemen, thirty-two innocent refugees and migrants fleeing for...
By  
Philipp Schulz
February 28, 2017
During the conflict in Northern Uganda, more than 60,000 children and youths were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and some 8,...
By  
Michael Paye
February 24, 2017
The only prospect more enthralling than a last stand is a Hollywoodized version of it. Zulu (1964) portrayed the 1879 battle at Rourke’s...
By  
Scott Ross
January 17, 2017
“This trial is about the violence and misery that blighted the lives of millions of people living in northern Uganda.” This was how Chief...
By  
January 17, 2017
Transcript coming soon...
By  
Mary von Aue
December 20, 2016
When Boubacar Traoré first achieved fame in the 1960s, it was tethered to a social responsibility. Hits like Mali Twist were immediately...
By  
Deddahi Ould Abdallahi
December 19, 2016
“Waiting on torture is worse than torture.” It’s an old Arabic proverb, quoted by Mohamedou Ould Slahi in his bestselling memoir,...
By  
Mohamedou Ould Slahi
December 19, 2016
The third week of October – 14 years, two months and ten days after he arrived at Guantánamo as prisoner #760 – a US military escort team...
By  
Alexander Dawson
November 30, 2016
With simple elegance, Scholastique Mukasonga etches a dedication at the beginning of Cockroaches that ensures the subjects of her memoir,...
By  
Jessica Ling
October 11, 2016
Upon being met by a group of armed men in his own office on October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara raised his arms in surrender. He died that...
By  
Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor
September 26, 2016
I The mother, in short tight clothes, smudgy-eyed and lank-haired, wasted from taking more than her usual count of men, and, smiling a wry...
By  
Ermias Ekube
September 20, 2016
A seeing person reads two main things on the street, suggests Ermias Ekube : road signs and human faces. The former, he describes as some...
By  
Ts'eliso Monaheng
September 14, 2016
"There's way hipper, trendier shit happening in spaces unsafe for lily-white skinned people's privilege." Ts'eliso Monaheng interviews...
By  
Ismail Einashe
September 8, 2016
“I wanted to break down the fear. I wanted independent media in Ethiopia.” This, said Endalkachew Chala, is why he co-founded Ethiopia’s...
By  
July 29, 2016
Hisham Matar’s new memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between is several books at once, depending on which way you hold it to...
By  
Edward Eremugo Luka
July 11, 2016
After being a refugee for five years, Johnny returns to Juba, South Sudan on the day of its independence. But his homecoming is marred by...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
July 8, 2016
For over a week, social media has been ablaze thanks to a memoir written by a Scottish actress by the name of Louise Linton. It all started...
By  
Kai Krienke
July 7, 2016
In an interview given to Le Monde in 2010, Algerian historian Mohammed Harbi declared that “[s]ince [Algerian] independence, history is...
By  
Melissa Smyth
May 18, 2016
Most maps made of the Horn of Africa today do not represent Somaliland on its northern limb, reflecting the subjectivity of a world that...
By  
Sverker Finnström
May 12, 2016
With the help of Erin Baines’s careful and knowledgeable editing and pertinent contextualization, Evelyn Amony has written a remarkable...
By  
Adolf Alzuphar
May 7, 2016
I was instructed by Vieux Farka Toure’s manager to call Vieux Farka Toure sometime before 6pm EST. He would be in Bamako when I was...
By  
Michael Busch
May 6, 2016
In late 2013, South Sudan erupted into civil war. The fledgling government, which had taken power just two years earlier during the formal...
By  
Elizabeth Senja Spackman
April 20, 2016
After a period of escalating political violence in Burundi, rebels attacked several army bases near Bujumbura on December 11th, 2015...
By  
Steve Shaw
March 26, 2016
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been commended for a landmark conviction that found the former vice-president of the Democratic...
By  
Scott Ross
March 2, 2016
When Dominic Ongwen stood before the International Criminal Court on January 21, he confronted a team of prosecutors and judges presenting...
By  
Andrew Miller
February 29, 2016
Andrew Miller and Gushwell Brooks chat about the career boosting ironies of the Oscar Pistorious trial... The Oscar Pistorious trial was a...
By  
Chris Abani
February 29, 2016
Chris Abani is easily one of most important voices in literature today. He has published over a dozen books and is the recipient of the PEN...
By  
Raksha Vasudevan
February 25, 2016
Last week’s presidential elections in Uganda had a foregone conclusion: “Museveni again…” as one local television station summed it up,...
By  
Jessica Rohan
February 2, 2016
Eric Reidy is the lead reporter for Ghost Boat , a project produced by Medium investigating the disappearance of 243 Eritrean refugees en...
By  
Chika Unigwe
January 28, 2016
Their life in Belgium already seemed like something that happened to someone else. Sometimes, Agu and Prosperous spoke of it, not of...
By  
Andrew Miller
January 7, 2016
Layziehound has a bit of Muhammed Ali about him. He towers over most humans, for one thing. He's also a compulsive self-narrator—when he’s...
By  
Hussein Mohamud
December 16, 2015
“ Waan u maaleynayaa, markaad dhameysey hadalkaaga guumaysiga ku sabsan ayaad dib u noqon kartaa qabyaaladda soomaaliyeed iwm." (“I would...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
December 10, 2015
Something terrible happened on Thursday April 16, 2015 in the foothills of Mount Sumi in central Angola. Exactly what transpired and how...
By  
Corinna Mullin
December 7, 2015
untitled.png French President Francoise Hollande and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi in commiseration embrace. 14 November 2015...
By  
Chandra Frank
November 18, 2015
African futures, travelling diasporic sounds and writing by Africans for Africans are at the core of the Chimurenga Library exhibition on...
By  
Zoé Samudzi
October 27, 2015
Beasts of No Nation poses some complicated questions about Hollywood’s treatment of black masculinity. While the movie based on the 2005...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
October 26, 2015
The Africa Report called Lara Pawson’s book In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre , “a thorough examination of a confusing...
By  
Juliane Okot Bitek
October 26, 2015
Early this year I returned to northern Uganda during the dry season and was reminded of the pervasive nature of dust, the way it defines...
By  
Warscapes
October 16, 2015
In a matter of days or even hours, Rwandan Professor Leopold Munyakazi will be placed on a plane from a detention facility in Baltimore and...
By  
Raphaël Thierry
September 17, 2015
Translated from the French by Bhakti Shringarpure. There is a peculiar situation in the Francophone world in which books only travel from...
By  
Megan Krementowski
September 12, 2015
“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures...
By  
Ts'eliso Monaheng
September 2, 2015
“Because it was a competition thing, I never got to sign off on the book,’ says author Andrew Miller in response to why he chose the name...
By  
Mohammed Kahiye
August 31, 2015
Suicide bombings and political instability has long been the news coming out of Mogadishu, Somalia. But for three days in late August, it...
By  
Sieraaj Ahmed
August 20, 2015
A Muslim, gay, ‘Coloured’ South African examines how much has really changed in Mandela’s beloved Rainbow Nation. It’s not an easy time to...
By  
Elizabeth Senja Spackman
August 8, 2015
The Hargeysa International Book Fair takes place yearly in August with writers from Somaliland, Somalia and the far-flung Somali diaspora...
By  
Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
August 7, 2015
What a pity that the pastoral interlocutors had apparently never heard of that British wizard of words, named Shakespeare! If they could...
By  
Intagrist El Ansari
July 27, 2015
Translated by Barbara Dent The Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), representing five Toureg-led rebel groups in Mali, signed the peace...
By  
Sérgio Manuel Dundão
June 9, 2015
Ondjaki’s book, Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret is an homage to the author’s childhood memories. However, the author does not use...
By  
Noosim Naimasiah
June 5, 2015
Twenty-one years after the Rwandan genocide, as wounds are reexamined for traces of healing, new miseries begin to take shape across the...
By  
Jessica Rohan
May 30, 2015
Jenna Baron is the curator of Twasonga , an exhibition of photos and interviews with members of Kenya ’s disability rights movement. The...
By  
May 21, 2015
What I should tell you is this: Read African Titanics tomorrow, read it yesterday, but don’t read it today. After all, the relationship...
By  
Preethi Nallu
May 20, 2015
Paris, France: Despite an official end to hostilities in 2003, Eastern Congo has remained susceptible to proxy wars with continued fighting...
By  
Jason Huettner
May 7, 2015
On May 6, The Greene Space in New York hosted the PEN World Voices Festival's "Queer Futures" panel featuring artist Zanele Muholi, writer...
By  
Emna Zghal
May 4, 2015
I visited the Bardo Museum in Tunis as a child, dragged by well-meaning adults, returning later as an interested art student. But never did...
By  
May 1, 2015
On 24th April, 2015, we held the second event of the Warscapes Public Lecture Series in collaboration with the Humanities Action Lab of The...
By  
Ghirmai Negash
April 28, 2015
Time has come. Today, we mourn our loss as we celebrate his life and honor his legacy. With deep sadness, we say farewell to Tesfamariam...
By  
Kenneth Harrow
April 15, 2015
I enjoyed attending this year’s Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision...
By  
Warscapes
April 14, 2015
African Literature...Says Who? The Last 50 Years with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Kenyan born and internationally acclaimed, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is the...
By  
April 9, 2015
Algiers On this morning cracked with disappointments when blue has left the sea to invade the hill in a uniformed chain tightening on the...
By  
Safia Aidid
April 1, 2015
It is with grave concern that we, the undersigned Somali academics, researchers, students, writers, activists, community members and our...
By  
Asiya Haouchine
March 19, 2015
Today marks the fifty-third anniversary of the end of the Algerian fight for independence. On March 19, 1962 the seven-year, four-month war...
By  
Elen Turner
March 10, 2015
Gabonese Angèle Rawiri (1954-2010) is recognised as not only the first woman novelist from her nation, but the first novelist per se. Her...
By  
Christine Aziz
March 3, 2015
Author's Introduction: I came to Cairo shortly after the 2011 revolution, and have watched it unravelling ever since. Having been a...
By  
Abdi Latif Ega
February 20, 2015
In the global imagination, the conceptual idea of Somalia derives from the notion of the uncanny, fantastic and primitive savage. The...
By  
Todd Fredson
February 10, 2015
Adam and I arrived in the city of Mankono the last month of 1421—though we did not actually use the Islamic calendar. For us, it was the...
By  
Bhakti Shringarpure
February 7, 2015
It is impossible to encapsulate the life and work of someone as prolific and influential as beloved Algerian novelist Assia Djebar. Her...
By  
Dániel Stemler
February 6, 2015
Hassanna Aalia is young Sahrawi activist who has been living is Spain for more than three years. Born in 1988 in El Aaiún, the capital of...
By  
by Mohamed A. Eno
January 30, 2015
"A Goose at the Graveyard" and "Half-Human Half-Heifer": Two poems from Mohamed Eno's new volume, Vertical Articulation.
By  
Gareth Davies
January 14, 2015
Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun once wrote that in Morocco, “it’s possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.”...
By  
Samira Sawlani
January 13, 2015
As is well known, on Wednesday, January 7, a horrific attack took place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine office, leaving twelve...
By  
Rasna Warah
December 15, 2014
Most people who move to Malindi, a small, sleepy resort town on Kenya’s coast, are exiles of one sort or another. The Italians, who form a...
By  
Gabriella Coleman
December 9, 2014
When reflecting on the major moments of political conflict over the last several years, it's difficult to think of a fight in which...
By  
Samar Al-Bulushi
December 1, 2014
Soon after last Saturday’s gruesome bus attack in northeastern Kenya—an ambush that left 28 people dead—al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab issued a...
By  
Tyler Chau
November 20, 2014
Delfina Foundation in London recently hosted a talk with The Otolith Group, an artist duo comprised of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, and...
By  
Tyler Chau
November 3, 2014
This past October, as the commercial art world converged on Frieze , the second edition of the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair opened in...
By  
Max Shmookler
October 6, 2014
One of the unexpected benefits of preparing an anthology is the chance to read through enough mediocre literature to begin to ask yourself...
By  
Ken Bugul
September 26, 2014
Foreword Ken Bugul, Wolof for “one who is unwanted,” is the penname of Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma. Born in 1947 in Ndoucoumane, Senegal, Bugul...
By  
Agazit Abate
September 18, 2014
The resting place of the dead is respected here. Straight lines, manicured grass, clean concrete and untouched graves. Everything has its...
By  
Juliane Okot Bitek
September 13, 2014
In April of 2014, artist and sculptor Wangechi Mutu started a photography project on Instagram in memory of the 20th anniversary of the...
By  
Ts’eliso Monaheng
September 11, 2014
Bongani Madondo is a South African writer who, for the better part of his life, has been tip-toeing around words in search of the perfect...
By  
Dalia Haj-Omar
September 6, 2014
Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka has made identity the central topic of his new documentary, Beats of Antonov , which was mostly filmed in...
By  
Charles Cantalupo
August 3, 2014
I am in a quandary. Why has my translation of a short story originally written in Tigrinya, “The Girl Who Carried a Gun” by Haregu Keleta,...
By  
Rickard Strandberg
July 23, 2014
The last elections in Guinea-Bissau were charged with great expectations both nationally and internationally. After being postponed several...
By  
Allison Pytlak
July 9, 2014
As the Republic of South Sudan approaches the third anniversary of its independence, the young nation has been making headlines again. This...
By  
Hilary Matfess
June 27, 2014
On the night of April 14, a group of militants, dressed as Nigerian policemen and wielding weapons, stormed into a government-operated...
By  
Upasana Dutta
June 26, 2014
The Orchard of Lost Souls is not an easy read. The writing is lucid, the events gripping and the characters, for the most part, delineated...
By  
Hassan Ghedi Santur
June 23, 2014
“As my African Express flight from Nairobi made its slow descent into Mogadishu, I looked out the window of the plane and saw the shores of...
By  
Sérgio Dundão
June 19, 2014
Angola is not less ethnically, culturally and socially diverse than any other African state. Yet there has been little information about...
By  
Bhakti Shringarpure
June 17, 2014
Concerning Violence , a documentary by Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson, opened to a packed theatre at the Sydney Film Festival last...
By  
David Rothstein
June 10, 2014
They come in ones and twos, sometimes more. Some of the patients have fresh bullet holes or machete wounds, while others suffer wounds that...
By  
Ayantu Tibeso
June 5, 2014
Since April 25th, thousands of high school and university students across Ethiopia’s largest region, Oromia, have turned out in peaceful...
By  
John Verlander
June 4, 2014
Originally published in Africa.Redux . The rich melting pot of African, European and indigenous culture permeates nearly every facet of...
By  
Boubacar Boris Diop
April 29, 2014
This article appears in a collection of essays entitled, Confronting Genocide: Dehumanization, Denial and Strategies for Prevention" edited...
By  
Véronique Tadjo
April 29, 2014
Foreword In Far From My Father , a woman must come to terms with what she knows – and didn’t know – about her father after his death forces...
By  
Asim Rafiqui
April 29, 2014
The Norwegian artists Mohamed Ali Fadlabi and Lars Cuzner are recreating, as part of a nationwide commemoration of 200 years of the...
By  
Hilary Matfess
April 27, 2014
On Thursday, April 17, armed youths broke through the gates of the UN Mission in South Sudan and opened fire, killing forty-eight people...
By  
Médecins Sans Frontières
April 21, 2014
“Genocide calls for a radical, immediate response. The only response to date has been first aid. But genocide cannot be stopped by doctors...
By  
Bhakti Shringarpure
April 19, 2014
I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is...
By  
Hilary Matfess
April 15, 2014
“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is...
By  
Alla Ivanchikova
April 4, 2014
In his new book Trash: African Cinema from Below , Kenneth W. Harrow examines trash as a notion that allows him to assume a valuable...
By  
Matt McGregor
March 28, 2014
Nigerians in Space, by Deji Bryce Olukotun, is a transnational mystery novel replete with assassins, abalone poaching and an international...
By  
Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
March 21, 2014
The publication of Clan-cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 by Lidwien Kapteijns has aroused deeply contrasting reactions from...
By  
Naomi Dann
March 6, 2014
A few words from Spanish actor Javier Bardem this week incited a diplomatic row that threatens to challenge the tight bond between France...
By  
Upasana Dutta
March 4, 2014
“People here have washed themselves clean of old ties. You should be doing the same: letting go of old attachments, not pursuing them,”...
By  
Kai Krienke
February 23, 2014
July 5th 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of Algeria’s independence. Albert Camus’s 100th birthday was celebrated a year later, on November...
By  
Amanda Taub and Kate Cronin-Furman
February 10, 2014
It must have seemed like a stroke of brilliance at the time. A few snaps of Downton Abbey’s Lady Cora with photogenic Sierra Leonean...
By  
Franco Galdini
February 6, 2014
Sudan has been back in the headlines in recent weeks. Reports coming out of South Sudan suggest that the world’s newest state is sliding...
By  
David L. Lukudu
January 24, 2014
By afternoon of the tenth day, a column of army trucks and tanks and other machinery advanced towards Toka. Partly cloaked in clouds of...
By  
Margaux Benn
December 18, 2013
“Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans...
By  
Matt McGregor
November 7, 2013
In the first story of The Blind Fisherman , a collection of Mia Couto's early stories, an old woman watches her husband dig her grave. “We...
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translated by Annmarie Drury
October 29, 2013
Translator's Preface Euphrase Kezilahabi (b. 1944) is a major Swahili author, a pioneer both in fiction – where his works move from social...
By  
Brenda Marie Osbey
October 15, 2013
Brenda Marie Osbey’s long poem, “History,” from which we have published an excerpt here, comes from her recent collection History and Other...
By  
Alganesh Embaye
September 25, 2013
The city started changing. Sidewalks turned into trenches where soldiers crawled in and out like ants. Every morning, deep throated...
By  
Kamakshi Ayyar
September 18, 2013
The past year has been a difficult one for Mali. A military coup in March 2012 to remove President Amadou Toumani Touré led to nationwide...
By  
Bree Zuckerman and Michael Busch
August 23, 2013
AUG 23rd, 2013: Zimbabwe’s nationwide elections passed without bloodshed last month, but they were not free from controversy. On July 29,...
By  
Geoff Wisner
August 22, 2013
B reakfast with Mugabe by Fraser Grace, directed by David Shookhoff, plays from August 7 to October 6 at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box...
By  
Zachariah Mampilly
August 20, 2013
“Gasi haitoki! Gasi haitoki!” (Gas should not come!) Ten adolescent girls dressed in navy blue school uniforms chant in excitable tones as...
By  
Mike Ekunno
August 5, 2013
“It was the first Christmas after the war. The war during which we lived away from home and moved houses three times, whenever ‘the enemy’...
By  
Ali Jimale Ahmed
July 29, 2013
I first heard of Abdi Latif Ega’s debut novel Guban last November, when, towards the conclusion of an event where I was the discussant of...
By  
Bhakti Shringarpure
July 15, 2013
It is in his bittersweet and touching book on the Asian expulsion from Uganda that one can trace the beginnings of author and intellectual...
By  
Michael Bronner
July 2, 2013
July 2, 2013: Paramilitary troops from Senegal’s rapid intervention force surprised exiled former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré in his...
By  
Aruni Kashyap
June 16, 2013
I live in a small town in Minnesota and for the past few months I have started to get my weekly groceries from a different store. My Indian...
By  
Igiaba Scego
June 1, 2013
Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias (1) Today, Wednesday August 14, 2002, at 9:30 am, something odd happened to me. For reasons of my...
By  
M. Neelika Jayawardhane
May 24, 2013
Okwui Enwezor described the ephemera of Africa that arrived at European docks as “strange cargo”: As it was unloaded from ship to warehouse...
By  
Mia Couto
May 5, 2013
Translator's Preface The Tuner of Silences is one of a number of novels by Mia Couto, Mozambique's most internationally known writer, and...
By  
Troy Blacklaws
April 18, 2013
This excerpt has been taken from Troy Blacklaws' novel Cruel Crazy Beautiful World. It chronicles the parallel lives of two African men,...
By  
Emmanuel Dongala
April 17, 2013
OMG NOOOOOOOOOOO I was still hoping to eventually meet Mr. Achebe at some point by constantly bothering you to introduce me to him so I...
By  
Photo essay by Bar Am-David
March 16, 2013
This venture is about existence. It chronicles the lives of immigrants and refugees in Israel. The present situation is characterized by...
By  
Abdourahman Waberi, Ali Deberkale, Dimitri Verdonck
March 12, 2013
This article was originally published in La Règle du Jeu, Paris. Translation from French to English by Nathalie Fouyer. Click here for the...
By  
Jamal Mahjoub
February 21, 2013
In the Lufthansa in-flight magazine I had read a story about the German Aeropace Center in Göttingen. Founded in 1907, the center had...
By  
Abdi Latif Ega
February 11, 2013
Foreword Whether lauded as a beacon of democracy, or vilified as a failed state overrun by pirates and warlords, Somalia’s narrative, as a...
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Boubacar Boris Diop
February 5, 2013
Senegalese novelist and intellectual Boubacar Boris Diop offers an incisive and complex critique of the French intervention in Mali in this...
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Nomvuyo Nolutshungu
January 16, 2013
On 1 November 2012, in the aftermath of New York City’s devastation following Hurricane Sandy, Staten Island Borough president James...
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Chris Mlalazi
January 6, 2013
Preface Zimbabwe’s history has been punctuated by years of conflict: the first chimurenga, resistance against the occupying white settlers...
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Mahi Binebine
December 17, 2012
Translator’s Introduction On the outskirts of Casablanca, next to a vast, sprawling dump, lies the shantytown of Sidi Moumen, where Yachine...
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Bhakti Shringarpure
December 3, 2012
“War may be serious business, but you would never know it from the casual manner in which African wars tend to be reported in the Western...
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Leila Aboulela
December 2, 2012
They set out early, before sunset. Not the right time for visiting, but it was going to be a long drive and his sister Manaal said she...
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Edward Eremugo Luka
December 2, 2012
In the enclosure next door to where Nyambura slept, the single cock crowed at the usual time. The cold early morning breeze blew through...
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Tarek Eltayeb
December 2, 2012
Translator’s Introduction: New Migrations North in Tarek Eltayeb's Cities Without Palms The son of Sudanese parents, Tarek Eltayeb was born...
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David L. Lukudu
December 2, 2012
It was hardly noon, and Fatna was holding a five-litre plastic jerry can and was bending and pouring for the third time its contents into...
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Jamal Mahjoub
December 2, 2012
The Drift Latitudes is a position of uncertainty. A human condition which is increasingly commonplace. A sense of belonging to more than...
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Francis Deng
December 2, 2012
Francis Mading Deng is currently South Sudan's first ambassador to the United Nations. His prolific career not only includes public service...
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Charles Cantalupo
November 28, 2012
Inside Cinema Odeon in Asmara, no one stood at the marble and mirrored espresso bar. Three students sat amidst the two dozen gold formica...
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Samuel Everett
November 18, 2012
Sixteen years after the French conquest in 1830, unlike Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria had become an integral, legal and administrative part...
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Hannah Swamidoss
November 15, 2012
Fittingly, Alexandra Fuller begins Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness with a story of her vibrant mother, Nicola Fuller, taking...
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Jane Wong
November 8, 2012
Joan Didion writes, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Rachida Madani’s Tales of a Severed Head gets at the very heart of why we...
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Boubacar Boris Diop
October 17, 2012
Senegal’s most celebrated writer, Boubacar Boris Diop and award-winning Rwandan writer, Scholastique Mukasonga agreed to meet online for an...
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Flavio Rizzo
October 15, 2012
Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally...
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Austin Merrill
September 24, 2012
It was late morning when we got to the border post, a wooden shack on a dirt road in the westernmost reaches of Ivory Coast. A gendarme...
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Rachael Johnson
September 20, 2012
Binyavanga Wainaina occupies a prominent place in contemporary African literature. A recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing and...
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Eskinder Nega
September 13, 2012
The piece you're about to read - by Eskinder Nega, one of Ethiopia's most courageous independent journalists – underscores the possibility...
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Courtney McDermott
August 31, 2012
Julie Wakeman-Linn immediately plunges her readers into the chaos and violence of 1990’s Zimbabwe in Chasing the Leopard, Finding the Lion...
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Abdourahman Waberi
August 14, 2012
Translators' Introduction Transit is a succession of monologues by each of the characters: Bashir, a very young veteran of Djibouti’s civil...
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August 6, 2012
The Breadless Parrot of Boulevard Kropotkin.... At the centre of the city that exists under our Côte d'Ivoire, exact in its wonder to that...
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Ts’eliso Monaheng
July 16, 2012
"I do remember some happy moments, yes, but there was always a gaping hole that could not be filled. Sometimes I am attacked by a profound...
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Geoff Wisner
June 26, 2012
In 1990, ten years after Robert Mugabe took power as the leader of an independent Zimbabwe, I spent six months living and working there. I...
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Laura Seay
June 12, 2012
GOMA, June 9: Goma has changed. What just a few years ago was a tense city under frequent rumors of impending invasion by armed groups is...
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J. Victoria Sanders
May 24, 2012
James Baldwin once referred to love as a kind of war that forces you into growing up. In Aminatta Forna’s transcendent novel, love is just...
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Juliane Okot Bitek
May 21, 2012
Recently, Ceasar Acellam, a major general in Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, made news worldwide by surrendering , or being captured...
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Hannah Swamidoss
May 10, 2012
Instead of creating a fairy-tale ending, the discovery of oil in the Niger delta produced a complicated political, social, and...
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Katherine Sauchelli
April 30, 2012
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women, Towakkol Karman of Yemen, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, both from Liberia...
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Issayas Tesfamariam
April 18, 2012
At the beginning of February, twenty-two years ago, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’s (EPLF) liberated the port city of Massawa. The...
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April 13, 2012
These film reviews from the 19th New York African Film Festival were originally published on Africa is A Country . Black Africa, White...
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Michael Adonai
March 26, 2012
Featuring selected works by Michael Adonai, Ermias Ekube and Yegizaw Michael. Michael Adonai was born in 1962, in Asmara. He joined the...
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Fatma El-Mehdi
March 22, 2012
As the Arab Spring spread across several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, American philosopher Noam Chomsky argued that it...
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March 16, 2012
Excerpted from a forthcoming book entitled Corpses on the Menu: Blood, Bullets and Bones Graduate of Clan War Academy Born in the eruption...
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Eiman Abbas El-Nour
March 16, 2012
Three Eritrean students working on their MA degree in Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds in 2001 and 2002, decided to go a bit...
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Dinaw Mengestu
March 12, 2012
In 2006, I flew with a group of journalists and United Nations officials to a remote village in Garamba National Park in eastern Congo,...
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Sami Sallinen
March 2, 2012
The war that erupted between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998 took most Eritreans, Ethiopians and interested observers by surprise, including...
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February 23, 2012
In conjunction with The Center for Place, Culture and Politics , Warscapes magazine presents An Evening of Poetry from the Horn of Africa...
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Mohamed Haji (Ingiriis)
February 15, 2012
Somalia: The New Barbary? Piracy and Islam in the Horn of Africa by Martin N. Murphy, London: Hurst Publishers, 2011. The Pirates of...
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Alemseged Tesfai
February 15, 2012
This reprint has been published with the permission of the publisher, The Red Sea Press In the mid-fifties, Villaggio Paradiso was a lot...
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Sara Hanaburgh
February 10, 2012
The release of Jarreth Merz’s riveting docudrama, An African Election (2011), is a timely and welcome portrayal of renewed hope in...
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Maaza Mengiste
January 29, 2012
In a rare coincidence, two young women authors who originate from the Horn of Africa wrote critically acclaimed debut novels in the same...
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Saad Basir
January 19, 2012
August, during the fall of Tripoli, amid revellers and looters at Qaddafi’s conquered Bab al-Aziziya complex, I came across a rebel group...
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Michael Busch
January 18, 2012
No crisis of economy would be complete without a couple of cents from Jeffrey Sachs. The godfather of shock-turned-bleeding heart advocate...
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A Warscapes Compilation
December 31, 2011
Warscapes asked readers to share titles of books evocative of war and conflict that have made a lasting impact on them – works which...
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Sabahat Chaudhary
December 26, 2011
This March's Libyan spring revealed to the Libyan people and the world the falsity of the regime that Qaddafi had worked hard to hide. Some...
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Geoff Wisner
December 20, 2011
Kinyarwanda , a drama about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath, has won awards from film festivals, collected glowing quotes...
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A poet from Sierra Leone writes about the decade-old war
December 18, 2011
He did not die that day When the tale of the toll Of the war was told In the warmth of our room My husband folded the sleeves of his Ronko...
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Nomvuyo Nolutshungu
December 12, 2011
In an unfortunate twist of fate, the deciding elements of the future of the International Criminal Court will occur almost simultaneously...
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David L. Lukudu
December 7, 2011
Sokiri was dressed in a red shirt and a pair of green trousers. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. His hair was sparse and unkempt. On his...
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Yasmina Khadra's "The African Equation" is reviewed by Gretchen Head.
November 20, 2011
Yasmina Khadra is arguably just as well known for the questions surrounding his identity as for what he has written. The nom de plum e of...
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Rachid Boudjedra's "The Figs of Barbary" is reviewed by Muriam Haleh Davis.
November 20, 2011
The fiftieth anniversary of Algeria’s war of Independence is less than a year away. This war, that became the model of Third Worldism, is...
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Tom McDonough
November 18, 2011
French crime novelist Didier Daeninckx’s most famous book, Murder in Memoriam, opens in the early 1960s at a printing plant located in one...
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Saadi Yacef
November 5, 2011
In conjunction with the first-ever publication of the English translation of Saadi Yacef's original prison memoir, Battle of Algiers ,...
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Emmanuel Dongala
November 2, 2011
It is one thing to be prepared intellectually for violence, but it is quite another to experience the real thing in the form of a gun...
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Saadi Yacef
November 2, 2011
The Battle of Algiers: A Memoir, Dec 1956 – Sept 1957 Chapter 4: Solidarity It would take a long time to describe, in detail, the life that...