The Africanist Podcast

About The Africanist Podcast

This podcast investigates political, socio-economic, and cultural issues in contemporary Africa and the African Diasporas. It engages Africanist scholars, artists, activists, athletes, opinion leaders, business people, and ordinary citizens in a critical conversation about the challenges facing Africans and people of African descent.

Publisher

Bamba Ndiaye, PhD

Category

education · history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 May 2020

Latest episode

13 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

49 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Sept 2026

   Pan-African Futurism: A Conversation with Reginold A. Royston

   In this episode, Dr. Reginald Royston (University of Wisconsin-Madison) explores his recent monograph, Pan-African Futurism (UC Press 2025). In it, Royston studies how "Ghana has been a crucial site of encounters between the West and Africa and a historic center for twentieth-century Pan-African independence movements. Today, it has also emerged as an important node of technology-driven development in the Global South. Ghana's activist software developers and digital diaspora are redefining the role of technology, not simply as a means for economic growth, but as a tool for greater African political autonomy. In this rich ethnography, Reginold A. Royston uses the term "Pan-African futurism" to describe the redemptive ethos among technologists working on development projects on the ground in Africa today. Royston charts the explosion of mobile Internet access on the African continent, growing interest in African tech entrepreneurship, and the flowering of digital transnational ties. Ghana's Pan-African futurists advocate entrepreneurship and civil society activism as a means of "hacking" the kinds of socioeconomic development that have long been advocated by NGOs. Using participant observation and interviews with tech developers on the ground and media producers in the diaspora, including in virtual spaces and with communities online, Royston provides a nuanced portrait of tech users focused on "social good" emanating from the Global South, expanding the discourse for contemporary Pan-African politics." Source: University of California Press.

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   Rhetorics of Value: An Interview with Dr. Corinne Kratz

   This episode explores Dr. Corinne Kratz (Emory University) 's latest monograph, Rhetorics of Value (Duke University Press 2025) "In Rhetorics of Value, Corinne A. Kratz explores how exhibition design creates and conveys values that have the potential to touch, educate, and engage visitors. Drawing on case studies from the Victoria and Albert Museum, museums in South Africa and Kenya, a Hawaiian resort hotel, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others, Kratz shows how exhibits help shape and narrate cultural categories, values, and histories while provoking questions and evoking memories and experiences. She crosses contexts to consider ethnographic, history, and art exhibits in national and community museums and other display settings. Through these examples, Kratz traces how exhibition designers combine objects, texts, images, lighting, audio, space, and narratives to craft a complex, multilayered communicative form that visitors experience as they move through museums. By investigating the relationship between audience reception and exhibition design strategies, Kratz contends that through design, exhibits can shape the ways we know, the stories we tell, and our contours of meaning and engagement." Source: Duke University Press Interviewer: Bukunmi Bifarin (Emory University) Music: Ismaila Lo

3. 

   9 Mar 2026

   Hospitality and Power in the Teranga Republic

   In this episode of The Africanist Podcast, host Bamba Ndiaye sits down with Dr. Emily Jinan Riley of El Colegio de México to explore her groundbreaking book, Teraanga Republic (Indiana University Press 2025)—a sharp, intimate, and deeply layered examination of Senegalese hospitality, politics, and everyday life. Dr. Riley unpacks how “teraanga,” often celebrated as a national ethos of generosity and welcome, becomes a powerful political language that shapes belonging, citizenship, and the performance of national identity. Together, they trace the book’s ethnographic roots, its challenge to romanticized narratives of Senegalese exceptionalism, and its insights into how ordinary people navigate the tensions between cultural ideals and lived realities. Dr. Riley unpacks theory and street‑level experience, offering listeners a vivid sense of how hospitality becomes both a moral horizon and a political tool. The episode opens a window into a Senegal that is at once familiar and startlingly new—one where teraanga is not just a virtue, but a terrain of negotiation, aspiration, and struggle.

Who has been a guest on The Africanist Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Peter Alegi
• Bamba Ndiaye
• Reginold Royston
• Dean Rehberger
• Michael Green

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

10 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

21 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 20 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

10

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

77

Contact The Africanist Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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