A colonizer, Albert Memmi argued in 1957, cannot help being privileged, by his passport, his skin, and his mere presence in the colony, whether he asks for it or not. In this episode, we continue our trilogy on colonialism with Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur, published in English simply as The Colonizer and the Colonized.

Memmi was Tunisian and Jewish, colonized like his Muslim compatriots, yet French-educated and structurally closer to the colonizer than most of them. It is a vantage point none of our other authors have written from: someone who claimed to know the colonizer almost as well as he knew himself.

Because of that position, he could map, with brutal honesty, exactly how colonizer and colonized are locked together, and why neither charity, nor reform, nor full assimilation could ever set either side free. We trace his argument from the myths colonial society built about the colonized, through assimilation’s dead end, to his final demand: not reform, not compromise, but total revolution, what he calls breaking an iron collar. It is the exact demand Frantz Fanon picks up next.

Below are few of the sources we used for this episode to dig deeper:

⁠https://orientxxi.info/from-anticolonialism-to-zionism-the-variations-of-albert-memmi,4072⁠ 

⁠https://www.yadmizrahmag.com/p/looking-back-with-albert-memmi⁠

⁠https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Memmi⁠

⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_First⁠

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What shocked Europe about Nazism, Aimé Césaire argued in 1950, was the fact that methods long reserved for colonized peoples had finally been turned on white Europeans themselves.

In this episode, we open a small trilogy on colonialism and its enduring legacy with one of the most explosive anti-colonial texts ever written: Discours sur le colonialisme, and a companion speech, Discours sur la Négritude, delivered nearly four decades later.

Césaire was Martinican by birth — from a Caribbean island still legally part of France today. But his intellectual journey was inseparable from Africa's. So we bend our rules a bit and include him here. Because he cofounded the Negritude movement, gave a generation of colonized Africans a language for what had been done to them, and spent decades dismantling the myth that colonialism had ever brought civilization to anyone.

We trace his argument from the colonial lie all the way to a surprising evolution: by 1987, Césaire had loosened Negritude from skin color entirely. He redefined it not just as Blackness, but as a shared condition of having been dispossessed, marginalized, and refused.

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Migration is often discussed through numbers, policies, and borders. But what happens when we follow the journey of a single person?

In this episode of Threads of Ifriqiya, we explore Little Brother, a remarkable collaboration between Ibrahima Balde, a Guinean refugee, and Amets Arzallus Antia, a Basque writer and bard who helped transform his testimony into literature.

What begins as the story of a boy growing up in Guinea becomes an extraordinary search for a missing brother. Along the way, Ibrahima crosses the Sahara Desert, survives traffickers, prisons, forced labor, and some of the most dangerous migration routes in the world.

This story is about family, responsibility, sacrifice, and the lengths a human being is willing to go for someone they love.

Through Ibrahima’s journey, we reflect on healthcare, education, trans-Saharan migration, human trafficking, resilience, and ultimately, what a refugee’s journey can reveal about human nature itself.

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Some books become famous across the world. Others remain quietly cherished within the places that raised them.

We are back with season 2 of Threads of Ifriqiya, and in this episode, we explore Les Frasques d’Ebinto by Ivorian writer Amadou Koné — a short but unforgettable coming-of-age novel that many francophone West Africans know intimately, yet much of the world has never encountered.

Set in 1970s Côte d’Ivoire, the story follows Ebinto, a teenager discovering love, desire, regret, and the painful weight of actions understood too late.

Through this deeply emotional novel, Amadou Koné reflects on romantic love, friendship, premature marriage, and perhaps most powerfully, forgiveness — the kind that survives even after profound hurt.

Link to the interview with the Author: https://youtu.be/klhDolqouJU?si=WMKUZhNt7H7sOTLs

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00:00 Intro

02:00 Book Intro and Synopsis

10:55 The Author

17:30 Love

35:45 Foregiveness

50:30 Outro

In this episode, we explore Jacaranda, a novel by Gaël Faye, a Rwandan-French writer and musician whose work moves between memory, exile, and inheritance.

Set between France and Rwanda, the novel follows Milan, a young man born in Europe yet pulled persistently toward a history he was never fully told. From televised images of the 1994 genocide to the open-air Gacaca courts, from family silences to generational transmission, Jacaranda asks what it means to grow up in the shadow of a past you did not live, but still carry.

Structured around three threads - African parenting, the search for purpose, and the enduring memory of the genocide - this episode is less a plot summary than a reflection on silence, identity, and the weight of history across generations.

As in many of our previous conversations on Africa’s story, this reading reminds us that memory does not disappear with time. It evolves, circulates, and shapes lives in quiet but decisive ways.

Tune in as we reflect on Jacaranda, and ask: when comfort is possible, why do some still choose the questions?

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00:00 Intro

01:31 Book Intro and Synopsis

07:49 The Author

13:34 African Parenting

33:49 The Search for Purpose

40:07 The Genocide

In this episode, we explore Without Prejudice, a memoir by Tidjane Thiam,  one of the most influential African figures in global finance, whose life has unfolded at the crossroads of power, race, ambition, and belonging.

From a rare, privileged, yet at times deeply challenging childhood in post-independence Africa, to elite education in France, to the highest executive roles in global finance, and finally to a contested entry into politics, Thiam reflects on risk, responsibility, and the invisible barriers that persist even at the very top.

Structured around three threads - a golden childhood, a brilliant career, and a rocky start in politics - this episode is less a celebration of success than a meditation on its cost: racism, exile, sacrifice, and the limits of meritocracy.

This reading also echoes themes we’ve explored in earlier episodes on Africa’s development -  a reminder that excellence emerges from Africa, in all its complexity.

🎧 Tune in as we reflect on Without Prejudice, and ask what it truly means to rise, and what it means to choose what you rise for.

The FT article we talked about: ⁠https://www.ft.com/content/d3365c78-e93e-44eb-9c62-d43189e70bda⁠

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00:00 Intro

01:30 Book Intro and background

12:31 The Author

14:03 The Rare African Golden Childhood

42:19 A Brilliant Career

01:29:51 Rocky Start in Politics

01:40:48 Outro

What does it mean to reject (or defend) democracy in Africa?

In this episode, we explore Africa Against Democracy: Myths, Denial and Peril, a recent and provocative essay by Senegalese journalist (now Writer), Ousmane Ndiaye.

Unlike the well-established works we’ve discussed so far, this is a debut book - tentative in places, urgent in others - that invites reflection. Structured around three central assertions (myths, denial, and peril) Ndiaye examines how democracy is imagined, dismissed, or placed at risk across the continent.In this episode, we built on our earlier conversations around Axelle Kabou’s What if Africa Was Refusing to Develop? and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind, to extend the thread toward contemporary political debates unfolding in real time in West Africa. An essay. A moment. A set of questions that feel increasingly difficult to postpone.

🎧 Tune in as we unpack Ndiaye’s arguments and reflect on why democracy in Africa remains such a contested, yet urgent, terrain today.

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00:00 Intro

01:40 Book Intro and background

07:12 The Author

08:29 The myths surrounding democracy in Africa

26:20 The denial of democracy

35:41 The peril: imminent danger for Africa

42:00 Outro

What does it mean to “decolonise the mind”?

In this episode, we explore Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s influential book Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature — a work that continues to shape conversations about culture, identity, and creative expression across the continent.

Building on our previous episode on Axelle Kabou’s What if Africa Was Refusing to Develop?, we shift the lens inward. While Kabou interrogated Africa’s resistance to structural transformation, Ngũgĩ invites us to examine the deeper terrain of thought — the languages we use, the stories we tell, and the mental perspectives shaped by colonial education.

We revisit Ngũgĩ’s journey from writing in English to embracing Gikuyu as an act of artistic and political liberation, and reflect on why, despite his global stature, his work has not always been widely read within Africa itself.

Tune in as we unpack the four pillars of Decolonising the Mind, explore the politics of language in theatre, fiction, and everyday life, and consider why these questions remain urgently relevant today.

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00:00 Intro

01:23 Book Intro and background

03:17 The Author

08:05 The main themes

08:46 The Language of African Literature 

22:56 The Language of African Theatre 

30:58 The Quest for Relevance

37:55 Outro

What if Africa is refusing to develop?
This unsettling question lies at the heart of Axelle Kabou’s groundbreaking 1991 book, written originally in French and never translated into English — perhaps because of how provocative it remains.

In Et si l’Afrique refusait le développement?, the Cameroonian author challenges the comforting narratives of victimhood and dependency, urging Africans — especially the elites — to take full ownership of their continent’s destiny.

In this episode, we unpack Kabou’s bold ideas, her critique of postcolonial stagnation, and the deeper question of what true self-determined progress might look like for Africa.

Tune in now to explore the nuances and legacy of What if Africa is refusing to develop?

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00:00 Intro

01:25 Book Intro and background

04:38 The Author

09:13 The main themes

13:34 So why is Africa underdeveloped according to AK?

24:25 The signs of the refusal of development

40:30 The Promise of a Decomplexed Africa… Deferred

51:53 Outro

In this episode, we turn our gaze to one of Africa’s most powerful literary voices, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and her book Dream Count.

This moving work follows four African women — Chia, Omelogor, Zikora, and Kadiatou — each navigating love, ambition, migration, and the harsh weight of injustice. Their stories intertwine into a tapestry of sisterhood, solidarity, and survival.

Adichie herself has said: “Women are socialized with the aim of rivaling and hating one another. That is why, when their relationships are sincere and deep, they resemble acts of courage, of resistance. Revolutionary acts.”

Join us as we explore these revolutionary acts of friendship, and the dreams that sustain — and sometimes betray — the women who carry them.

Here are the resources mentioned in the episode:

• Chimamanda's TED talk: The danger of a single story
• The story of Chimamanda's name: interview
• The essay about Diallo's case: DSK Vs. The Maid: Who Would the Jury Have Believed?

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[Spoiler Alert: This content contains major plot details from the book]

00:00 Intro

01:26 Book Intro and synopsis

08:30 The Author

11:55 Background & motivation for writing the book

18:16 The main themes

20:58 The “African woman’s voice”

22:05 Sisterhood

23:46 Love and partnership

26:30 Motherhood

37:11 Physical pain that women endure and that is ‘taken for granted’

42:45 Sexual violence and justice for women

48:39 To be an African

51:51 Musings around the question of slavery

56:40 Outro