Transcript of the interview

Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of ideas, culture, and systems thinking, with a commitment to making complex theories accessible through books, essays, public speaking, and creative projects.

She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins, 2025) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing also appears in numerous anthologies and educational publications exploring feminism, African philosophy, media, and cultural criticism.

Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Ideas Letter, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, and she has delivered talks at global institutions including TEDx, the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the European Commission, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Yale, and Singularity University at NASA.

Salami was the creative director of the short film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis, which won the Silver Award for Public Service and Activism at the 2024 Lovie Awards.

From 2019 to 2022, she co-directed Activate, an intersectional feminist movement that supported minoritised women in politics and community organising through visibility campaigns, mentoring, and fundraising. The initiative played a key role in shifting narratives and resources toward a more inclusive political landscape in the UK.

She has also worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, advised governments on gender equality, developed national school curricula, and curated cultural events at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Her blog, MsAfropolitan, launched in 2010, has reached over a million readers and remains a platform for exploring feminist and African-centred approaches to contemporary life.

Salami is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves on the advisory boards of the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State University and Public Humanities at Cambridge University Press, as well as the council of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Links to References:
Apart Together – essay on Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire’s radical vision for the world

Africa’s Populist Trap for The Ideas Letter

The Niger River and the Dearth of History: Deconstructing the Myths of Mungo Park by Ezenwa E. Olumba

China's rapid ascent from rural poverty to industrial superpower reshaped the global economy and established a new center of gravity for manufacturing. Today, Chinese factories anchor much of the world's supply chains, producing goods at a speed and scale that few countries can match.

Behind this transformation is a system that author Dan Wang describes in his new book "Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future" as the "engineering state," a model defined by massive investments in infrastructure, strategic planning, and so-called "process knowledge" gleaned from the country's rapid industrial development.

Now, more and more, the Chinese government touts this development model as an example for other countries in the Global South to emulate.

Dan joins Eric to discuss whether the so-called "engineering state" is replicable elsewhere or if it's a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

• Setting the Stage – China's rise from rural poverty to industrial superpower • The Engineering State – How China builds, plans, and organizes at a massive scale • Roots of the Model – East Asian development traditions and Soviet legacies • Infrastructure as Strategy – High-speed rail, bridges, airports, and the costs behind them • Industrial Capacity – Manufacturing clusters, supply chains, and process knowledge • The Speed Advantage – Why Chinese firms move faster than global competitors • Tech Transfer Debates – Joint ventures, old IP, and myths about forced transfers • Subsidies and Support – What Chinese industrial subsidies do—and what they don't • Exporting the Model – Limits of replication in Africa, Asia, and the Global South • The China Price – How scale, logistics, and workforce learning lock in dominance • Internal Tensions – Debt, underused infrastructure, and diminishing returns • Shifting Priorities – Xi's push away from consumer tech and toward strategic industries • Global Backlash – Overcapacity, trade pushback, and rising protectionism • Future Crossroads – Why China's development engine is losing momentum • Lessons for the Global South – What countries can adapt—and what they must avoid

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 Simon Enoch from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives joins me to talk about how neoliberalism reshaped Canadian policy and what privatization has done to public services. We cover the rise of corporate think tanks, the loss of economic democracy, and why evidence-based policy still matters.

Links:

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/ https://bsky.app/profile/simonenoch.bsky.social 

https://linktr.ee/Skepticalleftist

Several fuel tankers were destroyed in Mali after al Qaeda-linked insurgents, who had declared a blockade on fuel imports to the country, attacked a convoy of more than 100 vehicles. That's according to local reports. A fuel supply blockade initiated by the militant group, JNIM, has been in place since early September. The militants had threatened fuel importers and drivers that they would be targeted while bringing products into the country. Mali's Prime Minister Maïga said, "the damage caused clearly demonstrates that armed groups in the area are desperate and have adopted a new operating method, causing panic in certain places." We hear analysis.

Also, there's concern in Ethiopia after 92% of grade 12 students who sat national examinations, failed. It's the third year in a row for bad results in the country. Why are students failing?

And who benefits from the continued growth of the Mandarin language on the continent?

Presenter: Charles Gitonga

In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge UP, 2025) unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces that organize and circulate journalistic narratives in Africa to show that something complex is unfolding in the postcolonial context of global journalistic landscapes, especially the relationships between cosmopolitan and national journalistic fields.

Departing from the typical discourse about journalistic depictions of Africa, j. Siguru Wahutu turns our focus to the underexplored journalistic representations created by African journalists reporting on African countries.

In assessing news narratives and the social context within which journalists construct these narratives, Wahutu captures not only the marginalization of African narratives by African journalists but opens up an important conversation about what it means to be an African journalist, an African news organization, and African in the postcolony.

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Indonesia’s 17,000-plus islands boast the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, home to endangered species and Indigenous communities, and a vital shield against climate change. Yet in 2024, the country lost 261,000 hectares of forest—its worst single-year decline since 2021. Why has deforestation surged just as earlier trends seemed to improve? Beyond palm oil, the pressures now include pulpwood plantations, nickel mining, and large-scale food-security schemes that risk draining peatlands, razing mangroves, and displacing communities. Now almost a year into President Prabowo Subianto’s new administration, will Jakarta finally take forest protection seriously—or will it be business as usual? What reforms could steer investment toward already-cleared land, curb land speculation, and protect habitats close to collapse? And how can accountability thrive when so many lawmakers hold stakes in extractive industries? Multi-award winning forest conservationist Farwiza Farhan, and seasoned Asia Institute Indonesia watcher Dr Charlotte Setijadi, join host Sami Shah to examine the forces reshaping Indonesia’s landscape. An Asia Institute podcast. Produced and edited by profactual.com. Music by audionautix.com.

Bad Bunny, one of the most-streamed artists on the planet, is in the middle of his 30-concert residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico titled No me Querio Ir de Aqui, or "I don't want to leave here". Much like his latest album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, it is both a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and heritage but also a statement against the political and economic forces that have worked against the well-being and livelihoods of people on the island.

With Petra Rivera Rideau, Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College and the author of Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, we take a look at the message of Bad Bunny's album and concert residency, the political and historical context behind the work and how he fits into a generation of young Puerto Ricans hungry for change.

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