OUR BEST WRITING OF 2023
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Our latest issue, An African Manual for Debugging Empire, confronts the erasure of Africans in global tech debates and highlights the ways the continent is actively shaping, contesting and redefining the futures of AI.
Purchase an annual print + digital subscription, and get unlimited access to The Republic. We ship worldwide.
Every year, The Republic publishes the most ambitious writing focused on Africa, from news and analysis to long-form features.
Support our award-winning coverage by subscribing today.
Our print + digital subscription is 50% off.
Your Duration: 0
Highest Score: 0
// Items Remaining
// keyboard arrows to play
// Eat all the items to debug the empire
Our latest issue, An African Manual for Debugging Empire, confronts the erasure of Africans in global tech debates and highlights the ways the continent is actively shaping, contesting and redefining the futures of AI.
Purchase an annual print + digital subscription, and get unlimited access to The Republic. We ship worldwide.
Our top analyses, debates, ideas and stories of the week.
Nigeria’s freelance economy is growing, but for millions of digital workers, receiving international payments remains an extreme sport. If the country wants to export digital labour and capture its value at home, it must first fix how that labour gets paid.
As domestic unrest in Kenya grows, President William Ruto’s carefully crafted global image is unravelling. Internal discontent is eroding Ruto’s international standing, which can potentially damage Kenya’s position as a regional sanctuary.
‘I woke up one day and I realized that I simply despised the smallness that life here hoists on everyone. Small loves, big needs met by small resources, small hopes quashed by gigantic misdeeds, small joys flickering off with each new leaving.’
‘But how disturbing it is that my own language, one filled with so much beauty and melody, would be considered foreign to me. Why did I not think in my language? Why would my default language be one that was imposed by brutal colonialists on my ancestors’ lips?’
Tinubu’s economic reforms have had an unintended consequence: the collapse of Nigeria’s once-vibrant nightlife. In its wake, a surprising twist has emerged. Young Nigerians are channelling their frustrations from dance floors to the democratic arena.
As artificial intelligence transforms global systems, Africa remains sidelined in its design; even as its labour and resources power the very infrastructure that makes AI possible. The emergence of AI on the continent raises urgent questions about equity, inclusion and how to ensure Africans benefit from the technologies they help sustain.
‘The laffaya is elegant, but it is also instructive. It teaches you how to move, how to hold your head high. There is a sensuality in the way it wraps the body, not in the Western sense, but in the quiet power it gives.’
Editor of Who Gave The Order: The History of a People’s Movement, Chibueze Darlington Anuonye, believes that 20 October 2020 stands as an indictment of the Nigerian conscience and urges Nigerians to remember that day: ‘What happened at the Lekki Toll Gate could be described as a country waging war against its citizens.’
In our latest First Draft interview, we ask leading African writers, including Laila Lalami and Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, about their writing processes. Here's what the told us.
Halimatu Iddrisu paints Muslim women and their voices. She entrusts their faceless bodies with self-expression and the freedom to engage viewers in a dialogue about dressing choices and the hijab—veiling in Islam—that transcends language.
Despite the United Nations’ workshop and log-frame fabrication of a particular kind of African woman who can be measured, trained and displayed for prime-time news, African women’s organizing has always exceeded these scripts. This decolonial feminist politics is both the product of 80 years of UN gender politics and its most potent challenger, pointing toward futures where empowerment becomes obsolete because African women already hold power in their own right.
Nigeria celebrates its 65th independence anniversary during a period of uninterrupted 26 years of democratic governance. Despite this commendable sustenance of democracy, the country struggles to unite as ethnic tension rises.
In Angola, the intersection of technology and governance is forging an unconventional democratic landscape—one that emerges spontaneously and outside traditional political structures. While the regime has long maintained control through conventional means, the rapid proliferation of digital platforms, social media, and encrypted communication is enabling civic engagement beyond state oversight.
With AI proponents promising to ‘save’ Africa, Nanjala Nyabola asks an urgent question: what happens when a continent’s future is outsourced to someone else’s imagination? We discuss the politics of technology, the myth of the ‘cloud’, and why the next digital revolution must begin with African women.
Nigeria’s worsening insecurity cannot be curtailed by border fences alone, as suggested by the chief of defence staff, but by the government investing in border communities, strengthening local infrastructure and deepening cross-border cooperation with neighbouring countries.
Since 2021, France has witnessed a decline in economic growth. A key question is whether France’s ailing economy has any connection to the recent spate of coups and subsequent loss of key long-term allies in Francophone Africa.
In 1977, historian Obaro Ikime delivered a lecture, ‘History and the Changing Cultures of Nigeria’, responding to Alhaji Shetima Ali Munguno’s disapproval of what he saw at the University of Calabar. Ikime argued that one of Nigeria’s greatest problems is our ‘inadequate knowledge of history and the ways of life of the various groups that make up Nigeria.’ As Nigeria turns 65, it is important to return to that history.
The United Nations’ celebration of its 80th anniversary provides an opportunity to investigate the institution’s involvement in Africa and analyze an age-old academic question that has made its way into mainstream consciousness: Does the UN prioritize locally defined African needs or external northern interests?
We are delighted to introduce ‘Little Republic’, an interactive children’s book series designed to introduce young readers and their families to the richness of Africa’s cultural heritage, mythology and storytelling traditions.
The Republic is now accepting pitches for our February–April 2026 issue, in which researchers, storytellers, photographers, journalists, illustrators and writers will critically explore ‘On Nigeria’, a panoramic reflection on the stories, histories, tensions, possibilities and lived realities that define Africa’s most populous country.
Amid Trump’s disruptive return, Africa isn’t just reacting—it’s recalibrating. The continent has the opportunity to turn Washington’s unpredictability into a strategic advantage.
We are delighted to introduce ‘Little Republic’, an interactive children’s book series designed to introduce young readers and their families to the richness of Africa’s cultural heritage, mythology and storytelling...
The Republic is now accepting pitches for our February–April 2026 issue, in which researchers, storytellers, photographers, journalists, illustrators and writers will critically explore ‘On Nigeria’, a panoramic reflection on the...
For decades, oil has dictated the fate of the naira. When crude prices soared, the currency strengthened; when they collapsed, the naira buckled. This cycle, so familiar to Nigerians, once...
‘The laffaya is elegant, but it is also instructive. It teaches you how to move, how to hold your head high. There is a sensuality in the way it wraps...
Now Available: Our May – July 2025 Print Issue
Featuring:
Republic editor, Wale Lawal, in conversation with Kenyan writer Nanjala Nyabola; Dawn Chinagorom-Abalakam on African and artificial intelligence; Otobong Inieke on the geopolitics of digital technology in Africa; Oyindamola Depo-Oyedokun on the revolutionary rise of Piggyvest. This issue also includes writing by Boluwatife Oyediran on the debates about the acceptability of generative AI in art; Rui Verde on Angola’s inorganic techno-democracy; art, comics, quizzes and much more!
Now Available: Our August – October 2025 Print Issue
Featuring:
Republic editor, Wale Lawal, in conversation with Kenyan writer Nanjala Nyabola; Dawn Chinagorom-Abalakam on African and artificial intelligence; Otobong Inieke on the geopolitics of digital technology in Africa; Oyindamola Depo-Oyedokun on the revolutionary rise of Piggyvest. This issue also includes writing by Boluwatife Oyediran on the debates about the acceptability of generative AI in art; Rui Verde on Angola’s inorganic techno-democracy; art, comics, quizzes and much more!
For whom is the transformative potential of feminism new? Our latest issue, An African Feminist Manifesto, considers the imperatives for Black African feminism(s) in our uniquely uncertain times, plus more.
Member of the Feminist Coalition and organizer of the #ArewaMeToo and #NorthNormal movements, Fakhrriyyah Hashim, reflects on #EndSARS five years after ‘Feminists against SARS’ redefined national consciousness on police violence.
To encounter a body in collage is to momentarily believe the human form is physically and even gesturally incapable of coming up against its own limitations. Frida Orupabo’s collages do this so well. They haunt the viewer with fond, familiar and unexpected shapes.
Though the presence of Abrahamic tradition within global Black consciousness often finds expression through male-dominated narratives, a closer examination uncovers Black women at the very centres of the most path-altering moments in the tradition, offering analogues with which Black women have interpreted, reimagined and reclaimed their past, present, and future.
In 1974, Buchi Emecheta’s novel, Second-Class Citizen, was published. While this novel has inspired a generation of African writers, the themes Emecheta explored—such as Black immigrant life in the UK and the ills of a patriarchal society—remain as relevant today as ever.
Our latest issue, An African Manual for Debugging Empire, confronts the erasure of Africans in global tech debates and highlights the ways the continent is actively shaping, contesting and redefining the futures of AI.
We get it. Sometimes the headline stories are just not enough.
‘The laffaya is elegant, but it is also instructive. It teaches you how to move, how to hold your head high. There is a sensuality in the way it wraps...
‘I don’t recall the exact moment it dawned on me that almost everyone I called a friend had left Nigeria, but the realization was shattering. Having a friend leave you...
‘But how disturbing it is that my own language, one filled with so much beauty and melody, would be considered foreign to me. Why did I not think in my...
‘We are at your grave. Everyone is crying, everyone is wishing you goodbye. All I have are paralyzed emotions depicted by a numb countenance. When the saints go marching in...
Nigeria’s freelance economy is growing, but for millions of digital workers, receiving international payments remains an extreme sport. If the country wants to export digital labour and capture its value...
For decades, oil has dictated the fate of the naira. When crude prices soared, the currency strengthened; when they collapsed, the naira buckled. This cycle, so familiar to Nigerians, once...
Tinubu’s economic reforms have had an unintended consequence: the collapse of Nigeria’s once-vibrant nightlife. In its wake, a surprising twist has emerged. Young Nigerians are channelling their frustrations from dance...
Rice costs more, the naira buys less, and the middle class is checking out. From golden-age dreams post-independence to present japa-fuelled exits, this essay traces how Nigeria’s middle class rose,...
Although Nelson Mandela’s presidency fostered hope for a permanent end to the woes of the apartheid era, South Africa’s non-white population have come to realize that they are still under...
Nigeria celebrates its 65th independence anniversary during a period of uninterrupted 26 years of democratic governance. Despite this commendable sustenance of democracy, the country struggles to unite as ethnic tension...
In 1977, historian Obaro Ikime delivered a lecture, ‘History and the Changing Cultures of Nigeria’, responding to Alhaji Shetima Ali Munguno’s disapproval of what he saw at the University of...
Since its independence from France 65 years ago, the Republic of Congo has remained profoundly shaped by its Marxist-Leninist past, marked by authoritarian resilience and intimate Chinese connections.
In a country failed by peace agreements, connection didn’t disappear—it went online. South Sudan’s digital diaspora challenges the glossy myths of Silicon Valley and insists that innovation thrives not only...
In Angola, the intersection of technology and governance is forging an unconventional democratic landscape—one that emerges spontaneously and outside traditional political structures. While the regime has long maintained control through...
In April 2025, Brice Oligui Nguema was formally elected as president of the Gabonese Republic. Two years on from the coup d’état that overthrew the Bongo dynasty in August 2023,...
The death of former president Muhammadu Buhari has put President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a precarious political position where he risks losing the support of the north, which can cost...
We all grew up hearing about ‘June 12’, but how well do you know what really happened? Let’s find out together. The first episode of The Republic is now available...
This episode will establish M. K. O. Abiola as a major actor. It will examine his personal life; his initial foray into business and politics; and areas of his life...
In this episode, we take a look at the key election candidates and what platforms they ran under. We compare their profiles and proposed agendas for Nigeria, highlighting what political...
After eight years of anticipation, and eight years of promises from General Ibrahim Babangida’s junta, Nigerians were finally about to have their say at the ballot box. In this week’s...
Our latest issue, An African Manual for Debugging Empire, confronts the erasure of Africans in global tech debates and highlights the ways the continent is actively shaping, contesting and redefining...
As the world leans into the fourth industrial revolution, Africa has become a frontier for the geopolitical power play of China and the United States. Amid this, African governments must...
With AI proponents promising to ‘save’ Africa, Nanjala Nyabola asks an urgent question: what happens when a continent’s future is outsourced to someone else’s imagination? We discuss the politics of...
From his mother’s community chemist shop in Enugu to a Toronto lab, Nigerian pharmacist Chukwunonso Nwabufo is building a device that could save lives by revealing how your genes respond...
Since 2021, France has witnessed a decline in economic growth. A key question is whether France’s ailing economy has any connection to the recent spate of coups and subsequent loss...
The United Nations’ celebration of its 80th anniversary provides an opportunity to investigate the institution’s involvement in Africa and analyze an age-old academic question that has made its way into...
With waning multilateralism, the United Nations is experimenting with new geographies, relocating agencies to cities in the global South. Can a strategy born of austerity also reshape legitimacy and influence?
Exactly 70 years ago, African and Asian states gathered to imagine a world beyond empire. Their dream of solidarity—its failures and achievements—still haunts global politics.
