Threads of Ifriqiya

“Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon,” Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961, opening the book that would make him one of the most radical voices of the anti-colonial century. In this episode, we close our trilogy on colonialism with Les Damnés de la Terre*, published in English as *The Wretched of the Earth, after Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism and Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized.Fanon was a Martinican psychiatrist who ran a hospital ward in Algeria as the war of independence unfolded, treating colonized and colonizers alike. It is a vantage point none of our other authors wrote from: not the poet’s affirmation of dignity, not the portrait of two figures locked together, but a diagnosis made at the bedside of a society at war.We follow three threads from the book: why Fanon saw violence as the necessary language of decolonization (and where we part ways with him), why national identity-building failed in so many newly independent African states, and what the colonial war did to the minds of those who lived through it, including the “born criminals” myth colonial science invented to justify its rule. It is where the question Memmi leaves open, i.e. what form the break with the colonial system should take, gets its harshest answer.Follow us on ⁠Substack⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠

A colonizer, Albert Memmi argued in 1957, cannot help being privileged, by his passport, his skin, and his mere presence in the colony, whether he asks for it or not. In this episode, we continue our trilogy on colonialism with Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur, published in English simply as The Colonizer and the Colonized.Memmi was Tunisian and Jewish, colonized like his Muslim compatriots, yet French-educated and structurally closer to the colonizer than most of them. It is a vantage point none of our other authors have written from: someone who claimed to know the colonizer almost as well as he knew himself.Because of that position, he could map, with brutal honesty, exactly how colonizer and colonized are locked together, and why neither charity, nor reform, nor full assimilation could ever set either side free. We trace his argument from the myths colonial society built about the colonized, through assimilation’s dead end, to his final demand: not reform, not compromise, but total revolution, what he calls breaking an iron collar. It is the exact demand Frantz Fanon picks up next.Below are few of the sources we used for this episode to dig deeper:⁠https://orientxxi.info/from-anticolonialism-to-zionism-the-variations-of-albert-memmi,4072⁠ ⁠https://www.yadmizrahmag.com/p/looking-back-with-albert-memmi⁠⁠https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Memmi⁠⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_First⁠Follow us on Substack, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠

What shocked Europe about Nazism, Aimé Césaire argued in 1950, was the fact that methods long reserved for colonized peoples had finally been turned on white Europeans themselves.In this episode, we open a small trilogy on colonialism and its enduring legacy with one of the most explosive anti-colonial texts ever written: Discours sur le colonialisme, and a companion speech, Discours sur la Négritude, delivered nearly four decades later.Césaire was Martinican by birth — from a Caribbean island still legally part of France today. But his intellectual journey was inseparable from Africa's. So we bend our rules a bit and include him here. Because he cofounded the Negritude movement, gave a generation of colonized Africans a language for what had been done to them, and spent decades dismantling the myth that colonialism had ever brought civilization to anyone.We trace his argument from the colonial lie all the way to a surprising evolution: by 1987, Césaire had loosened Negritude from skin color entirely. He redefined it not just as Blackness, but as a shared condition of having been dispossessed, marginalized, and refused.Follow us on ⁠Substack⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠

Migration is often discussed through numbers, policies, and borders. But what happens when we follow the journey of a single person?In this episode of Threads of Ifriqiya, we explore Little Brother, a remarkable collaboration between Ibrahima Balde, a Guinean refugee, and Amets Arzallus Antia, a Basque writer and bard who helped transform his testimony into literature.What begins as the story of a boy growing up in Guinea becomes an extraordinary search for a missing brother. Along the way, Ibrahima crosses the Sahara Desert, survives traffickers, prisons, forced labor, and some of the most dangerous migration routes in the world.This story is about family, responsibility, sacrifice, and the lengths a human being is willing to go for someone they love.Through Ibrahima’s journey, we reflect on healthcare, education, trans-Saharan migration, human trafficking, resilience, and ultimately, what a refugee’s journey can reveal about human nature itself.Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠

Some books become famous across the world. Others remain quietly cherished within the places that raised them.We are back with season 2 of Threads of Ifriqiya, and in this episode, we explore Les Frasques d’Ebinto by Ivorian writer Amadou Koné — a short but unforgettable coming-of-age novel that many francophone West Africans know intimately, yet much of the world has never encountered.Set in 1970s Côte d’Ivoire, the story follows Ebinto, a teenager discovering love, desire, regret, and the painful weight of actions understood too late.Through this deeply emotional novel, Amadou Koné reflects on romantic love, friendship, premature marriage, and perhaps most powerfully, forgiveness — the kind that survives even after profound hurt.Link to the interview with the Author: https://youtu.be/klhDolqouJU?si=WMKUZhNt7H7sOTLsFollow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠00:00 Intro02:00 Book Intro and Synopsis10:55 The Author17:30 Love35:45 Foregiveness50:30 Outro

In this episode, we explore Jacaranda, a novel by Gaël Faye, a Rwandan-French writer and musician whose work moves between memory, exile, and inheritance.Set between France and Rwanda, the novel follows Milan, a young man born in Europe yet pulled persistently toward a history he was never fully told. From televised images of the 1994 genocide to the open-air Gacaca courts, from family silences to generational transmission, Jacaranda asks what it means to grow up in the shadow of a past you did not live, but still carry.Structured around three threads - African parenting, the search for purpose, and the enduring memory of the genocide - this episode is less a plot summary than a reflection on silence, identity, and the weight of history across generations.As in many of our previous conversations on Africa’s story, this reading reminds us that memory does not disappear with time. It evolves, circulates, and shapes lives in quiet but decisive ways.Tune in as we reflect on Jacaranda, and ask: when comfort is possible, why do some still choose the questions?Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠00:00 Intro01:31 Book Intro and Synopsis07:49 The Author13:34 African Parenting33:49 The Search for Purpose40:07 The Genocide

In this episode, we explore Without Prejudice, a memoir by Tidjane Thiam,  one of the most influential African figures in global finance, whose life has unfolded at the crossroads of power, race, ambition, and belonging.From a rare, privileged, yet at times deeply challenging childhood in post-independence Africa, to elite education in France, to the highest executive roles in global finance, and finally to a contested entry into politics, Thiam reflects on risk, responsibility, and the invisible barriers that persist even at the very top.Structured around three threads - a golden childhood, a brilliant career, and a rocky start in politics - this episode is less a celebration of success than a meditation on its cost: racism, exile, sacrifice, and the limits of meritocracy.This reading also echoes themes we’ve explored in earlier episodes on Africa’s development -  a reminder that excellence emerges from Africa, in all its complexity.🎧 Tune in as we reflect on Without Prejudice, and ask what it truly means to rise, and what it means to choose what you rise for.The FT article we talked about: ⁠https://www.ft.com/content/d3365c78-e93e-44eb-9c62-d43189e70bda⁠Follow us on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠00:00 Intro01:30 Book Intro and background12:31 The Author14:03 The Rare African Golden Childhood42:19 A Brilliant Career01:29:51 Rocky Start in Politics01:40:48 Outro

What does it mean to reject (or defend) democracy in Africa?In this episode, we explore Africa Against Democracy: Myths, Denial and Peril, a recent and provocative essay by Senegalese journalist (now Writer), Ousmane Ndiaye. Unlike the well-established works we’ve discussed so far, this is a debut book - tentative in places, urgent in others - that invites reflection. Structured around three central assertions (myths, denial, and peril) Ndiaye examines how democracy is imagined, dismissed, or placed at risk across the continent.In this episode, we built on our earlier conversations around Axelle Kabou’s What if Africa Was Refusing to Develop? and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind, to extend the thread toward contemporary political debates unfolding in real time in West Africa. An essay. A moment. A set of questions that feel increasingly difficult to postpone.🎧 Tune in as we unpack Ndiaye’s arguments and reflect on why democracy in Africa remains such a contested, yet urgent, terrain today.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok00:00 Intro01:40 Book Intro and background07:12 The Author08:29 The myths surrounding democracy in Africa26:20 The denial of democracy35:41 The peril: imminent danger for Africa42:00 Outro

What does it mean to “decolonise the mind”?In this episode, we explore Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s influential book Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature — a work that continues to shape conversations about culture, identity, and creative expression across the continent.Building on our previous episode on Axelle Kabou’s What if Africa Was Refusing to Develop?, we shift the lens inward. While Kabou interrogated Africa’s resistance to structural transformation, Ngũgĩ invites us to examine the deeper terrain of thought — the languages we use, the stories we tell, and the mental perspectives shaped by colonial education.We revisit Ngũgĩ’s journey from writing in English to embracing Gikuyu as an act of artistic and political liberation, and reflect on why, despite his global stature, his work has not always been widely read within Africa itself.Tune in as we unpack the four pillars of Decolonising the Mind, explore the politics of language in theatre, fiction, and everyday life, and consider why these questions remain urgently relevant today.Follow us on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠.00:00 Intro01:23 Book Intro and background03:17 The Author08:05 The main themes08:46 The Language of African Literature 22:56 The Language of African Theatre 30:58 The Quest for Relevance37:55 Outro

What if Africa is refusing to develop?This unsettling question lies at the heart of Axelle Kabou’s groundbreaking 1991 book, written originally in French and never translated into English — perhaps because of how provocative it remains.In Et si l’Afrique refusait le développement?, the Cameroonian author challenges the comforting narratives of victimhood and dependency, urging Africans — especially the elites — to take full ownership of their continent’s destiny.In this episode, we unpack Kabou’s bold ideas, her critique of postcolonial stagnation, and the deeper question of what true self-determined progress might look like for Africa.Tune in now to explore the nuances and legacy of What if Africa is refusing to develop?Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠.00:00 Intro01:25 Book Intro and background04:38 The Author09:13 The main themes13:34 So why is Africa underdeveloped according to AK?24:25 The signs of the refusal of development40:30 The Promise of a Decomplexed Africa… Deferred51:53 Outro