Best of 2021: Essays

The Inevitable Revolutionary How Thomas Sankara Weaponized Coloniality

Kai MoraSeptember 8, 2021

Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, as a close reading of Frantz Fanon’s decolonization theories suggests, was an inevitable revolutionary. Sankara evidenced and ultimately turned the contradictions of the colonial system against itself. Read more.

August/September 2021Best of 2021: Essays

Everything I Desire Is For Me I Discovered Who I Was When I Stopped Trying to Lose Weight

Oreoluwa George-TaylorJuly 12, 2021

Looking back at how my body has changed over the past 15 years, I realized that I already had all the things I was waiting to be ‘thin enough’ for. Read more.

Best of 2021: EssaysJune/July 2021The Black Atlanticvol5-no4

Nigeria’s Expanding LPG Market The Need for Government Regulation and Investment

Oyin KomolafeJuly 7, 2021

Nigeria may be one of the fastest-growing LPG markets in the world, but impactful growth will require addressing issues such as under-regulation in domestic LPG markets and a shortage of LPG facilities. Read more.

Best of 2021: EssaysJune/July 2021

New Lords of Nigeria’s North West Bandits: Terrorists or Criminal Gangs?

Tosin OsasonaJuly 5, 2021

Banditry primarily impacts rural communities—the very communities responsible for food security—and has disrupted socio-economic life in the North West. Read more.

Best of 2021: EssaysJune/July 2021

Iyibo My First 22 Years is a Long Time to Live in a State of Paralysis

Edwin OkoloJune 21, 2021

Iyibo was beautiful. Even now, I remember it, his was the kind of beauty that sears itself into your memory. Read more.

Best of 2021: EssaysJune/July 2021The Black Atlantic

‘Lady’ A Feminine Critique of Fela

Merlin UwalakaJune 7, 2021

Fela’s attempt to invalidate or mock Lady, an African woman transcending the rigid gender norm is anti-feminine, anti-feminist and anti-Nigerian. Women in many pre-colonial societies in what is now known as Nigeria were empowered in ways that Fela’s Lady made fun of. Read more.

Best of 2021: EssaysJune/July 2021

Books As Ammunition How I Found Solace in Rereading Buchi Emecheta’s ‘Second Class Citizen’

Ope AdedejiMay 17, 2021

I couldn’t see writing in my future, despite leaving Nigeria for a creative writing course. Then I read Buchi Emecheta. Read more.

April/May 2021Best of 2021: EssaysThe Black Atlanticvol5-no4

Myths and Truths Jomo Kenyatta's Hollow Legacy

Edwin ChegeApril 7, 2021

Jomo Kenyatta may be remembered as a prominent Kenyan nationalist and a leader of the Kenyan independence movement. However, his actual contributions to Kenya's independence fail to live up to his legacy. Read more.

April/May 2021Best of 2021: EssaysKenya