Picturing the bandits

In June, the Guardian published “Brutal and Emboldened: How Nigeria’s Bandit Crisis Spun Out of Control,” a report from Katsina State in Nigeria’s northwest, where communities in local government areas such as Batsari have struck peace deals with the armed groups that have terrorized them for years. The photographs were taken by Terna Iwar, an Abuja-based photographer and artist who traveled with the Guardian’s West Africa correspondent, Eromo Egbejule, and a local stringer—without a security escort—to meet one of those groups under a neem tree near the border with Niger.On the latest episode of the Africa Is a Country podcast, the Nigerian Scam talks to Terna about that encounter: why he kept his camera in plain sight from the moment he arrived, how the group saw itself (as protectors of their communities, not bandits or terrorists), and what the peace deal actually gives them. Access to shops and medicine, and an end to their families’ shame, are on the table; disarmament is not, since other armed groups are still out there. Terna describes a landscape of abandoned towns and clinics, electricity poles without cables, and border posts that barely function. He also reflects on the central dilemma of conflict photography: how to portray people as more than one-dimensional without losing sight of the horrific acts they have committed.

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 Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat. He highlights key turning points such as the late 2000s shift in Nigerian listening habits, the 2012 breakout generation of artists, and the role of streaming and international labels. While acknowledging the genre’s global success, he expresses concern about creative stagnation, commercialization, and weak value capture for Nigerian stakeholders, suggesting that the industry may be entering a plateau phase shaped as much by global capital as by local artistic direction. We also briefly reflect on Ajayi’s multidisciplinary career and intellectual journey, situating his work within broader Nigerian cultural production, touching on literature, criticism, and the role of the public intellectual.

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 a trenchant observer of the Kenyan public sphere, and in this wide-ranging roundtable, he reflects on the country’s shifting political landscape: from the promises of the 2010 constitution and the disillusionment of Jubilee-era politics to the emergence of a new Gen Z–led revolt demanding a wholesale renegotiation of Kenya’s social contract.As fellow travelers in the struggle to build a more critical, independent, and solidaristic media, we approached this conversation with Kobuthi not simply as observers but as participants. The crises facing Kenya—shrinking civic space, intensified repression, the return of theological-authoritarian rhetoric—are not unique. They resonate across the continent and beyond, including in our own work. What are our responsibilities, as editors and writers, in such a moment? What new forms of public imagination are needed? How do we hold space for resistance while sustaining institutions of critique?This wide-ranging discussion explores those questions. From the ghosts of Kenya’s post-independence promises to the radical promise of Gen Z revolt, from the ideological decay wrought by structural adjustment to the shifting terrain of faith and power, Kobuthi offers a sobering and searching diagnosis of where things stand—and what might come next.

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 abolition of the monarchy, the uprising was not just about corruption or unemployment—it was about a deeper sense of betrayal. What had happened to the revolution?In this episode, editor William Shoki speaks to Feyzi Ismail, a political scientist and longtime observer of Nepalese politics, about what the uprising revealed—and what might come next. Together, they trace the longue durée of struggle in Nepal, from the armed insurgency and the resulting fragile peace, to the rise and demobilization of the Maoists, to today’s fractured political landscape. What does the Gen Z rebellion tell us about the future of left politics in Nepal? What kind of economic or geopolitical program could emerge from this moment? And is it possible to imagine a new political formation rising from the ashes of disillusionment?

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. What followed was not simply a policy defeat for the state, but a profound crisis of legitimacy.For weeks, the streets became a site of generational reckoning. Disillusioned with formal politics and disconnected from traditional civil society, a new political subjectivity emerged—youth-led, digitally coordinated, ideologically inchoate but morally resolute. Even after the Finance Bill was withdrawn, the protests continued. By June 2025, they had reignited in response to the death of Albert Omondi Ojwang in police custody, now squarely targeting state violence and the wider political order. The demands had shifted: no longer just focused on reform, but on complete rupture. Still, if the movement has posed powerful questions, there remains the matter of answers: What comes next? How do we sustain this moment? Who is building a politics for the long term?In this episode of the Africa Is a Country podcast, editor William Shoki is joined by Sungu Oyoo, a longtime activist, writer, and community organizer based in Nairobi—and a 2027 presidential candidate in Kenya’s presidential elections. Sungu is the national spokesperson of Kongamano La Mapinduzi (“Congress of the Revolution”), a socialist formation that emerged out of years of student and community organizing. He is also a founding member of the Kenya Left Alliance, a broad coalition of progressive organizations that is trying to turn the country’s popular discontent into a durable, anti-capitalist political force.In this conversation, they discuss Sungu’s personal path to politics, the failure of Kenya’s elite-led independence project, the broken promises of the 2010 constitution, and why the post-2022 period has been marked by such sharp disillusionment. They also talk through the class composition of the recent protests, the limits of “Gen Z” as a political category, and what it means to build a left electoral project without falling into the traps of clientelism or cynicism.

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 foreign reserves in currencies other than the dollar.But what is often missing from these conversations are the perspectives and practical considerations of citizens who interact with multiple currencies by necessity or by choice —whether through trade, remittances, or other forms of cross-border exchange. To what extent is de-dollarization already a practical outcome of increasing Africa-China trade? Are Igbo importers of Chinese-made goods at the vanguard of a multi-currency fluency which nation-states will ultimately have to adopt?The Nigerian Scam explores these issues on the most recent Africa Is a Country podcast through a conversation with Dr. Jing Jing Liu, focused on her recently published study “Decentering the Dollar in Africa–China Trade: How Nigerian Entrepreneurs Navigate Currency Swaps and Digital Currencies in an Era of USD Hegemony and RMB Internationalization.”

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 about the current state of women in Nigeria. On one hand, the suspended senator’s cause has been championed by supporters of women’s rights and feminist politics, who have grown increasingly vocal in the past two decades. This is evident in the rising prominence of women’s rights advocacy in the media and civic spaces, the proliferation of online feminist organizing, and the recurrence of feminist-oriented protests and organizations, such as the Market March protests against sexual harassment in 2019 and the role played by the Feminist Coalition in the 2020 #EndSARS protests. The gains of Nigerian women in recent times are also manifest in the realms of culture and international organizations. Leading lights such as acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and United Nations  Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed have broken barriers for women within and beyond Nigeria. The measure of public outcry and protest that has accompanied the suspension of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan is best understood within the context of these moderate advancements in the struggle for women’s rights and recognition in Nigeria.On the other hand, a powerful constituency—which appears to include the majority of her fellow senators—have accepted or even applauded the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan. Likewise, the handful of women in elective office, which, to be fair, are a vanishing minority in Nigeria, have given lukewarm support at best or been critical of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan. This all suggests that despite the momentum in public discourse, popular culture, and international institutions, the achievements of the women’s movement in the realm of formal politics in Nigeria have been severely limited. The profound inequalities experienced by women in the workplace and across most other metrics of development appear as both a cause and consequence of their political marginalization under conditions of nominal democracy. Such political marginalization persists despite the fact that women’s organizing, in the form of popular organizations such as Women in Nigeria (WIN), played leading roles in the pro-democracy struggle. Nor has the emergence in recent years of a multimillion-dollar global industry for funding and programming for “women’s political leadership” improved the state of women’s political participation in Nigeria.This contradictory situation—characterized by both new momentum and enduring marginalization—prompts critical questions about the state of the women’s movement in contemporary Nigeria. What are the origins and history of feminism in Nigeria? How did the forms of Nigerian feminist and women’s organizing evolve from the colonial and military period till the present? Why, despite the modest achievements of Nigerian women, has Nigerian politics remained desperately patriarchal?In this episode, Sa’eed Husaini and Emeka Ugwu are joined by Hauwa Mustapha, a Nigerian feminist, trade unionist, and development economist, to explore the past, present, and future trajectory of Nigerian feminism. 

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 coup-prone West Africa. Yet its spiraling inequality, recurrent debt crises, and growing civic unrest suggest a society that is far from prosperous. Ghana’s seemingly stable neoliberal present sharply contrasts with the more turbulent early years of its postcolonial history—characterized by the high-modernist project of the Nkrumah government to push through the industrial transformation of a primary export economy crashing against the rocks of vested domestic and international interests.How did that period of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ambition and intrigue give way to the seemingly tamed Ghana of today? Why has a two-party system characterized by alternation without change proven so durable? In light of the anti-galamsey protests, the emergence of social movements critical of the economic status quo, and the rise of the nominally anti-imperialist military regimes to its north, are there indications in Ghanaian society of what might replace the neoliberal two-party system? To examine these themes, Sa’eed Husaini, Africa Is a Country’s West Africa regional editor and cohost of The Nigerian Scam podcast, is joined by Gyekye Tanoh, the Ghanaian social activist, political economist, and former head of the Political Economy Unit at Third World Network-Africa

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, united by a historical bond of tender affection and brotherly love. However, for those familiar with the interactions between these countries—especially on social media—it's clear that the diplomatic niceties barely mask some thorny citizen-to-citizen relations.The rivalry between these two nations has intensified since 2014, when Nigeria’s GDP-rebasing exercise revealed it had surpassed South Africa as Africa’s largest economy. While much of the bilateral banter about who really owns amapiano or why the Super Eagles are vastly superior to Bafana Bafana may seem harmless and mildly humorous, it has occasionally spilled into more serious territory, with incidents of deliberate sabotage, hostile clashes, and xenophobic violence emerging in both countries. Recent examples illustrating this tension include the so-called “bolt for bolt” battle between Lagos and Johannesburg, along with the controversy surrounding the Miss South Africa competition and the xenophobic backlash faced by Chidimma Adetshina.This backdrop frames our conversation about what is really happening between these two nations. Is it time to admit that Nigeria is winning? But more seriously: what, if anything, is at stake in the competition? What drives the vitriol? And what would a normal relationship look like? To explore these questions—and hopefully find some clarity—we're joined by the esteemed Khanya Mtshali, a critic and staff writer for Africa Is a Country.

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 presidential election. On this episode of Just Us Under A Tree, Tanveer Jeewa and Dan Mafora host Civil and Political Rights expert Mudzuli Rakhivhane to unpack the recent threats to challenge the outcome of the May 29 national elections in South Africa. What does it mean to have free and fair elections? Dan and Mudzuli, who were on the ground on election day, share their observations of various irregularities, as the three discuss whether they were indeed “so egregious as to vitiate the entire elections,” as has been alleged on many occasions. Tanveer is a constitutional law and property law lecturer, and Dan is a lawyer in Cape Town and the author of Capture in the Court (Tafelberg, 2023).Listen to the show below and subscribe on your favorite platform.