The Charged Politics of an African Passport

For more than 60 years, African governments have treated colonial borders as untouchable. But as conflict, economic fragmentation and shifting global power expose the limits of that decision, is it time to imagine a different map of Africa?

In N’Djamena, the lives of Chinese residents expose the cracks in Chad’s electricity system, revealing how unreliable power reshapes everyday life and survival.

Our latest issue, Nigeria in the World, explores how Nigeria moves through the world and how the world, in turn, shapes and misreads Nigeria. Across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, it traces the political, cultural and economic encounters that define this relationship and their consequences at home.

In 1967, Afro-Palestinian Fatima Bernawi became the first woman to be arrested by the Israeli Occupation Forces after planting explosives in a theatre frequented by Israeli soldiers. Though sentenced to life, she was released ten years later, continuing to fight for Palestinian nationhood.

After being trafficked from Nigeria to Italy under false promises of work, Princess Inyang Okokon survived exploitation, testified against her traffickers, and went on to establish an organization that rescues women trapped in the same system she once endured.