The AIAC Podcast

In this week's episode we talk to Michelle Chikaonda, a Malawian essayist, who wrote recently about the elections in Malawi for Africa Is a Country, and Jimmy Kainja, a media scholar, about what we can learn about the future of democracy from the Malawi example.

We will also interview legal scholar Sohela Surajpal on reimagining what we mean by feminist justice.

On March 6, 1957, Nkrumah, the newly elected Prime Minister of Ghana, declared, “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.” That night Ghana was celebrating independence from its former European colonizer, Britain. It was the first African country south of the Sahara to win its independence. This week coincides with his birthday, Nkrumah was born on September 21, 1909.

Three years after independence, Nkrumah had promoted himself to President. It was a post he held until 1966 when his enemies in the army overthrew him (as Euro-American powers looked the other way). In Ghana, his ideas and memory were largely marginalized in the 1970s as its successive governments made a turn to the right. He died in Romania in 1972 following exile in Sekou Toure’s Guinea. Today, Nkrumah is making a comeback, and it is the impact of his legacy on today’s generation that we will explore on this week’s show.

September 12th marked the anniversary of the day that Biko, arguably the most exciting leader of his time, was murdered by apartheid police in 1977. Biko’s ideas have continued to resonate long past his death, and have especially shaped the convictions of the new generation of activists emerging from the #feesmustfall and #blacklivesmatter movements.

This week we kick off our inaugural season of our weekly livestream talk show, AIAC Talk, with a discussion on the life and legacy of Steve Biko. Dan Magaziner (Yale University) and an editorial board member of Africa Is a Country joins us for the first half of the show. Magaziner will talk about his book, "The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968-1977."

Two young South African activists and thinkers will join us in the second half of the show to talk about what Biko means today: pan-Africanist historian Phethani Madzivhandila and University of Cape Town student activist Alex Hotz.

For more visit http://africasacountry.com

We talk football on today's weekly livestream show, featuring Algerian football writer, Maher Mezahi, South African sports journalist Njabulo Ngidi and academic Martha Saveedra, longtime friend of Africa Is a Country whose most recent collaborative project covered sport and development in Cape Verde, Nepal and Timor-Leste, and African athletic migration to the European Union.

Africa Is a Country founder Sean Jacobs and Staff Writer William Shoki discuss the crisis in Mali with invited guests Madina Thiam, Gregory Mann and Cherif Ag Mohamed Ibrahim. For more visit http://africasacountry.com

Africa Is a Country founder Sean Jacobs and Staff Writer William Shoki discuss Race and International Relations with scholars Samar Al-Bulushi and Oumar Ba.

Join us as we discuss the topics that everyone is talking about (or should be talking about). We speak with guest, award-winning filmmaker Dylan Valley, whose latest VR 360 project "Azibuye - The Occupation" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and more recently at vNAF, the virtual National Arts Festival in South Africa.

Join us for a journey through Nigerian politics with Dr. Sa'eed Husaini.

Will Shoki (Staff Writer) and Sean Jacobs are joined by Dr. Grieve Chelwa and they discuss decolonizing the economics curriculum, amongst other things.

Politics in Kenya with Dr. Wangui Kimari from our pilot season of AIAC Talk.