The AIAC Podcast

Our most recent recording features the celebrated Nigerian poet, psychiatrist, and music critic Dami Ajayi. The major thread of discussion centers on the evolution of Afrobeats—its origins, global rise, and current uncertainties. Ajayi argues that what is now called “Afrobeats” emerged through a mix of local innovation, diaspora influence, and global market forces, rather than a clean lineage from...

In June 2025, Africa Is a Country held its inaugural Festival of Ideas in Nairobi—a week of screenings, workshops, panels, and long, searching conversations about the future of political and cultural life on the continent. As part of the trip, our editorial team sat down with Joe Kobuthi of The Elephant , one of Kenya’s leading platforms for critical commentary and analysis. Kobuthi has long been...

In September 2025, Nepal experienced one of the most significant waves of political unrest in its recent history. Led largely by Gen Z protesters, the movement brought down the governing coalition and forced a national reckoning with the failures of a political class that had long promised transformation but delivered little. Coming nearly two decades after the end of the Maoist civil war and the...

On June 25, 2024, Kenya entered a new political era. Sparked by opposition to the Finance Bill—a package of regressive taxes pushed by President William Ruto’s government—the protests that began in Nairobi quickly spread nationwide, escalating into a mass rebellion against austerity, elite impunity, and the hollowing out of democratic life. Dozens were killed, hundreds detained or disappeared. Wha...

Discussions about ongoing attempts to move beyond the US dollar as the hegemonic currency of world trade often focus on the official policies of nation-states. Frequently referenced in such debates, for instance, are attempts by central banks to issue digital currencies, the recently mooted BRICS currency, and various measures taken by countries in the Global South to hold larger shares of their f...

This episode was recorded in the wake of the recent public controversy surrounding the suspension of Nigerian Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, following sexual harassment allegations she leveled against Godswill Akpabio, the current president of the Nigerian senate. Nigerian public commentary has been polarized by the controversy, reflecting a deeper division that is characteristic of debates abou...

Recorded on the anniversary of the coup that removed Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, and in the wake of Ghana’s recent presidential inauguration, this episode examines Ghana’s political economy to make sense of its democratic present.  A three-decade-long tradition of electoral alternation between two dominant political parties has earned Ghana a reputation as a bastion of democracy in co...

Recorded as Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu arrived for bilateral talks with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, this episode explores the dynamics of the Nigeria-South Africa relationship. At first glance, the warm visuals emerging from their meeting might lead an uninformed observer to believe that these two nations, represented by their amiable leaders, are the best of friends, unit...

In an unprecedented election year, more voters than ever in recorded history will have headed to the polls by the end of 2024—in at least 64 countries, with over half of the world’s population involved. In the last six months alone, pivotal elections have occurred in India, South Africa, Mexico, the UK, France, and the European Parliament. In two weeks, the US heads to the polls for a historic pre...

Despite being one of the world's major crude oil producers, Nigeria has depended for decades on imports of refined petroleum products to meet its domestic energy needs. While Nigeria exports “Bonny Light,” a variant of “Light sweet crude oil” considered more desirable due to its low sulfur content, the refined petroleum Nigeria imports from Europe is more polluting and toxic than “black market fue...

On September 7, 2024, Algeria’s incumbent president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was re-elected for a second five-year presidential term with 94.65 percent of the vote. Tebboune came into power in 2019, replacing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who ruled the country for 20 years and planned on running for a fifth term until widespread protests for radical change ended his rule. Data from Algeria’s National Indepe...

On July 7, France heads to the polls in the second round of a legislative election widely viewed as a referendum on the country's future. The results of the first round boasted a strong showing for the far-right party, Rassemblement National (National Rally), which won 33% of the popular vote. The leftist alliance, Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front), won 28% and President Emmanuel Macron’...

Over the last two weeks, Kenya has been rocked by widespread protests against a controversial law that aims to raise taxes. The 2024 Finance Bill sought to amass at least $2.7 billion in funds, primarily for the purpose of repaying creditors and stabilizing the country’s ballooning budget deficit, with public debt standing at 68 percent of GDP—which exceeds the 55 percent that the IMF and World Ba...

Nigeria has a corruption problem—this is hardly breaking news. Less often acknowledged, however, is the fact that Nigeria has long had a vibrant and sometimes powerful anti-corruption movement. What are the origins of this movement? What has it achieved? Can it be rescued from the perennial limitations of anti-corruption (anti-)politics identified elsewhere in Africa and across the world? This epi...

On this episode of Just Us Under A Tree, Dan Mafora, Elisha Kunene, and Tanveer Jeewa discuss the recent slew of litigation and controversial matters relating to South Africa’s  2024 elections. In particular, they unpack the latest Constitutional Court judgment that disqualified former President Jacob Zuma from contesting the elections with the M.K party (uMkhonto weSizwe, named after the A.N...

Africa is a Country is happy to announce our new collaboration with The Nigerian Scam podcast , which focuses on examining how episodic iterations of audacious fraud in Nigerian history and contemporary politics intertwine with the ongoing struggle for African independence in the intricate web of global capitalism. In the first syndicated episode, Sa’eed Husaini, OAG, and Emeka Ugwu consider the u...

Africa Is a Country is proud to present a new collaboration with the South African podcast Just Us Under a Tree. Once a month we will host an episode of the podcast, which is (mostly) about the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Returning from a long hiatus, its goal is to make it easier to talk about the law and read the news. On this episode, Tanveer Jeewa, Dan Mafora, Johan Lorenzen, and Eli...

In late September, Egypt’s Electoral Commission announced that the country will hold presidential elections in mid-December of this year. On Monday, October 3, incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced that he would run for a third term. A constitutional referendum in 2019 changed presidential term lengths from four years to six years, and handed Sisi a clean slate, permitting him to run...

Last week, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced the hosts for the 2025 and 2027 African Cup of Nations. Morocco won the right to host the 2025 tournament, while the triumvirate of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda will host the 2027 edition. Meanwhile, the 2023 edition of the biennial competition, was originally meant to happen in June/July of this year in Côte d'Ivoire but was postpone...

Sierra Leone will elect a president and parliament on June 24, its fifth election since a devastating 10-year civil war ended in 2002. Incumbent Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is seeking re-election in a two-horse race against Samura Kamara of the All People’s Congress (APC). The contest is a re-match of the 2018 vote, when Bio won 51.81% of the vote to Kamara’s 48.19%....

For nearly two months, fighting has continued in Sudan between two factions of the country’s military government—the Sudanese Armed Forces, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.. Fighting has been concentrated in the capital Khartoum and Sudan’s Darfur region, with more than 1,500 people killed.  The conflict originate...

Across the world, renewed social unrest—from public sector wage strikes in the United Kingdom, to protests against pension reform in France—are being read as a repudiation of austerity. The inflationary crisis afflicting the global North has had the knock-on effect of precipitating a debt crisis in the global South as the cost of servicing debt increases. “Repayments on public debt owed to non-res...

In December, one of the most right-wing governments in Israeli history came to power. Led by Benjamin Netenyahu—who serves as Prime Minister for the sixth time—the coalition includes figures such as Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler and one time supporter of the terrorist group Kach (Ben Gvir is also known to have hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein in his living room. Gold...

South Africa is currently being gripped by a devastating energy crisis with homes and businesses suffering blackouts for up to sixteen hours a day. The failure of the country’s national power utility—Eskom—to meet electricity  demand has been ongoing since 2007, and is now in its worst period. Many reasons are proffered for how this predicament arose, prominent among them being the widespread...

On February 25, Africa’s largest democracy and economy will elect its president and parliamentary representatives. This will be Nigeria’s seventh electoral cycle since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999. In its fourth republic, the People's Democratic Party has won every multi-party contest until 2015, when the All Progressives Congress led by incumbent Muhammdu Buhari clinched two succ...