9 Best Articles on Africa
The most useful articles on africa from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Africa Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved on africa by Refind users in 2023.
How to ...?
How to help Sudan: 7 things you can do right now for a country in crisis
Shared by 25, including Mark Kaigwa, 🌻 Laura Fitton (she/her) 🌻, Yvette Dubel
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles on africa—all under 10 minutes.
Ghana, you were doing so well!
Africa needs a development leader. Ghana can't afford to play the game of borrow-and-bailout.
«Ghana basically did a speedrun of its emerging market crisis, getting the pain over with and skipping to the recovery phase.»
How digital commerce is evolving in Kenya
Kenya's M-Pesa made the agent-network model popular, e-commerce startups are applying the model to food and household retail shopping.
Will the US deliver on its promises to Africa?
The global affairs briefing you'll actually look forward to reading.
Soccer can boost Africa's creative economy even further. Here's how
Soccer is hugely popular in Africa. Increasing connections with the creative economy will make the already dominant sport even more dynamic, say experts.
Africa’s rising cities
By 2100, 13 of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles on africa.
The idea of ‘precolonial Africa’ is vacuous and wrong
The idea of a ‘precolonial’ Africa is theoretically vacuous, racist and plain wrong about the continent’s actual history
«Hegel, a racist philosopher, who argued in the 1820s that Africa was a land ‘outside of Time’ and not a part of the movement of ‘History’.»
Built on the bodies of slaves: how Africa was erased from the history of the modern world
The long read: The creation of the modern, interconnected world is generally credited to European pioneers. But Africa was the wellspring for almost everything they achieved – and African lives were…
«By miscasting the role of Africa, generations have been taught a profoundly misleading story about the origins of modernity.»
Africa’s Century of Growth
On Morten Jerven’s The Wealth and Poverty of African States.
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
400k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.