Africa
The Iron Biby Effect
Since the powerlifter Iron Biby became the strongest man in the world, youth in his home country of Burkina Faso have taken up training to bulk up and get cut.
Dress Up or Be Left Out
At Nigerian weddings, it’s not just the bridesmaids who wear matching attire. Every guest sports a matching outfit to celebrate their unity with the bride and groom as part of the “aso ebi” custom. But “kin cloth” is more than just fabric. It’s a recipe for drama.
How Algeria Became a Home to Africa’s Guerrillas, Anti-Fascists and Liberators
After a brutal war of independence, Algeria sought to become a mecca for liberation movements across the African continent, welcoming all the “wretched of the Earth” to its capital for training and material support — from financing to arms.
A Sliver of Hope on the Deadly Route to the Canary Islands
The route from Western Sahara to Spain’s Canary Islands has become the world's deadliest migratory crossing to Europe, mainly due to tighter controls in the Mediterranean. In the departure zones from the Sahara coast, a humanitarian nicknamed Papa Africa, like a lookout, strives to protect the lives of migrants.
Nairobi Gang Members Turn to Greenery to Change Their Lives and City
"Nature has saved a lot of youths who might have been killed.” In impoverished areas of Kenya’s capital, gang members are putting down their guns and instead creating green spaces in the urban jungle.
Two 19th-Century Tales of Muslims and American Slavery
Western scholarly approaches tend to approach African and Islamic studies in separate lenses: “too Islamic” to be a legitimate subject of study for most anthropologists and Africanists, and “too African” to be of interest to Islamicists, thereby causing African-Muslim scholarly voices to fall through the cracks.
The Bandit Warlords of Nigeria
Northwestern Nigeria is suffering from a devastating conflict that most observers are still struggling to characterize. The violence has received far less international attention than the jihadist insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast, perhaps in part because these militants defy easy categorization.