Ufahamu Africa

This week's episode opens with a conversation about increasing authoritarianism in Tanzania, the shutdown of an independent newspaper's website in Uganda, fake news ahead of the Nigerian elections, and more. For this week's conversation, Rachel spoke with Dr. Anta Sané and Dr. Ndongo Samba Sylla about the upcoming elections in Senegal. Dr. Anta Sané is a political scientist whose re...

It's Black History Month. We invite you to check out our Black History Month series and stay tuned for a special episode later this month. Our episode starts with what we're reading and learning from the continent, including the premiere of a new feature film shot in Malawi, political developments in Uganda and Nigeria, and the U.S. imposing visa restrictions on Ghana. In this week’s epi...

This week's episode begins with conversation about the Congolese elections, Laurent Gbagbo's acquittal in the International Criminal Court, and political jostling between the president and deputy president in Kenya. Our guest this week is Jaimie Bleck, an Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of No...

This week's episode begins with a discussion of protests and repression in Zimbabwe, the terror attack in Nairobi, Kenya, Senegal's upcoming election, and the re-launch of the Africa Online Digital Library. Our guest this week is Beth Whitaker ( @ bethewhitaker ), an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her research examines migration an...

This week's episode begins with discussion over the contested elections and recent result announcement in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and a coup attempt by junior military officers in Gabon. Our episode features a conversation with Matthew Page (@MatthewTPage), an associate fellow at Chatham House and formerly the U.S. intelligence community’s top Nigeria expert. Along with Ambassador...

We begin this week's episode with a conversation about elections slated for 2019, and important developments in the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also talk about current protests in Senegal and Sudan, which suits our conversation with this week's guest, Lisa Mueller , an assistant professor of political science at Macalester College in Saint Paul Minnesota. Lisa is th...

In this week's episode of Ufahamu Africa, we do our first-ever year-end reflection. We start with what we can learn from broader trends on the continent in 2018. We also share some of our favorite books we read this year and give a sneak peek at some of the guests we'll feature in 2019 -- as well as the elections we'll be watching. Bonus: we talk about art exhibits in Chicago and LA...

In this week's episode we talk about elections in Madagascar, Togo, and especially the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our guest is Laura Seay ( @texasinafrica ), a political scientist at Colby College and an expert on Congolese politics. She offers some background for our listeners on the delayed elections in Congo that are now scheduled to be held on December 30. Laura also talks about her la...

In this week's episode, we talk about Google's top search items in African countries in 2018, how Kenyans did in the Singapore marathon, Trump's new Africa policy, and more. Our featured conversation is with Boston University political scientist Michael Woldemariam ( @MikeWoldemariam ), who shares his expertise on the Horn of Africa region, where he has conducted extensive fieldwork...

Don't miss our first episode featuring an interview conducted at the African Studies Association annual meeting last week. We chat with George Bob-Milliar and Lauren MacLean about recent student protests at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where George is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Political Studies. Lauren was on campus during the protests v...

For the first time ever, Kim and Rachel are together to record this week's episode, which includes a conversation with Northwestern University's Evan Mwangi . Professor Mwangi talks about his most recent book, Translation in African Contexts , and the debates about literature in African languages. He also tells us about his next book, which will be about animals in African literature. We...

In this week's episode, we talk about conflict in Cameroon, work by the writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, land restitution in South Africa, and Nanjala Nyabola's new book. This week's featured conversation is with Abdulbasit Kassim ( @ScholarAkassi1 ), who visited Northwestern University’s Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa earlier this week. Kassim is a PhD student i...

In this episode of Ufahamu Africa, we talk about a new West African currency, media freedom in Tanzania, and an Ethiopian satellite that will launch soon. This week's featured conversation is with Dr. Anthonia Kalu , a professor of comparative literature and gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside. In our chat we talk about kola nuts, cross-cultural digital possibilities, writing, and Af...

Welcome back to Ufahamu Africa. This week's episode is the first in Season 3. We are excited to announce a new co-host, Rachel Beatty Riedl ( @BeattyRiedl ), an associate professor of political science and director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. We've also brought back the weekly roundup of things we're learning and reading about the continent to open...

This week's episode features Petina Gappah ( @VascoDaGappah ), a writer and international lawyer from Zimbabwe. Thanks to the efforts of Chipo Dendere ( @drDendere ), Petina visited the Five Colleges earlier this year and we had a chance to sit down and talk. In addition to chatting about her forthcoming historical novel on David Livingstone's companions, we talk about Gappah’s award-win...

In our second episode during Black History Month, I chat another historian of Africa: Jennifer Tappan , Associate Professor of African History at Portland State University. Her research focuses on the history of medicine and health. This week we talk about her book, The Riddle of Malnutrition: The Long Arc of Biomedical and Public Health Interventions in Uganda . We also talk about a new project s...

To kick off Black History Month, this week’s episode features a conversation with historian Abou Bamba ( @bambaab1 ), a professor at Gettysburg College, where he teaches courses in Africana Studies and History. We chat about his book, African Miracle African Mirage , published by Ohio University Press. Our conversation was recorded during the African Studies Association annual meeting in November....

This week's episode features a conversation with Omolade Adunbi (@LadeAdunbi), a political anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Michigan in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies . We talk about his award-winning book, Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria , which was published by Indiana University Press in 2015. His book teaches us about the promises of oil...

This week’s episode features a conversation with Cajetan Iheka ( @ profiheka ), an assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama. Iheka’s research and teaching focus on African and Caribbean literatures and film, postcolonial studies, eco-criticism, and world literature. In Episode 38, we talk about his book, Naturalizing Africa : Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resista...

Have a quick listen to hear what our most popular episodes were in Season 1 and what to expect in Season 2. Find the books, links, and articles we mentioned in this episode on our website, ufahamuafrica.com . 

This week’s episode features a conversation with Dr. George Karekwaivanane ( @ghkare ). Dr. Karekwaivanane is a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the author of The Struggle over State Power in Zimbabwe: Law and Politics Since 1950 , recently published by Cambridge University Press. I spoke with George last week at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association i...

In this week's episode, I chat with Hilary Matfess ( @HilaryMatfess ), a doctoral student in political science at Yale University,  where she studies the intersection of conflict, governance, and gender. In our conversation, we talk about her new book, Women and the War on Boko Haram , which just came out this week. Absent our news round-up, check out the latest newsletter from This Week in A...

This week’s episode features a conversation with award-winning photojournalist and political activist Boniface Mwangi ( @bonifacemwangi ). Mwangi recently ran to be a member of parliament in Starehe constituency, which is in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. Thanks to the efforts of friend of the podcast Dr. Chipo Dendere ( @drDendere ), Mwangi recently visited the Pioneer Valley to give a lecture at...

In this week’s episode, I chat about the Nigerian Civil War with Judd Devermont , the National Intelligence Officer for Africa at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. He is also a lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Devermont has worked and lived in Nigeria, South Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire. He holds an MA in African Studies from Yale University and...

This week we chat with Kiara Hill, one of the curators of “ 5 Takes on African Art ,” an exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) at the University of Massachusetts. I talked about the exhibition with Amy Halliday in last week’s episode . Kiara Hill was one of the five curators, her exhibit [WOMB]AN explores the saliency of femininity and womanhood in West African cosmology....