Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 290

Power against Power

Jesus is coming. Jesus is here. Jesus is killed by local preachers worried about the drastic downturn in business. His arrival portends for their collection of tithes and offerings. The music video from 2012 for the eponymous Ghanaian band, Fokn Bois, unlike much of their other work unwinds at a slow tempo.

Multiple narratives – the dialogue in the music, the dialogue of the character in the videos, a refrain of a woman praying and an overlay of biblical quotes – hold up the question of supernatural intervention and its opposing existential: how much are we humans down here responsible for? Such an inquiry is not alien in one of the world’s most religious countries. In 2017, the questioning of all modes of power through artistic work, is almost commonplace in Ghana. It coincides with a flourishing of unorthodox art and artists.

In her documentary, Accra Power, Austrian director Sandra Krampelhuber chooses the poet Poetra Asantewa, fashion DJ Steloo, gospel scientist Edward Ohemeng Oware, dancer Hadassah Asare, musician Wanlov (one half of Fokn Bois), visual and performance artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, storyteller Mary Yaa Konadu and boxer Abigail Quartey to be our guides around the greater Accra area. Performances on front porches, in boxing gyms, art studios, and on live stages are interspersed with one-on-one interviews with the artists, in which power is examined: Spiritual power, electric power, physical power, mental power and Vim.

Wanlov The Kubolor, musician, activist, filmmaker. Still from Accra Power.

What, then, is power? “Power is a rhetorical question, a thick deep line with no meaning,” the poet Poetra Asantewaa proffers, her yellow jumper declaring “prose before hoes.” Poetra’s meditations on power, in poetic verse, pokes in and out throughout like a soundtrack to the documentary. The word power itself she tells us “is a paradox because it can represent something very good and it can represent something very bad at the same time.”

Art too – especially music – occupies a double-edged place in Ghanaian history in its relation to power. In the 1930s the blending together of the colonial waltzes and polka sounds played by the military brass bands, the Caribbean take on this (introduced to Ghana by West Indian colonial troops) and indigenous sounds would birth Ghanaian Highlife. At that moment, however, the music was played in concert halls and ballrooms, to English lyrics, catering to the upper echelon of colonial society. As the struggle for self-rule gained momentum in the 1950s, musicians caught the national fever. Musician E.K. Nyame transformed his set by merging a guitar band to what was previously a vaudeville act, creating the Akan Trio that sang in Twi. Many would follow the lead. Out with the English; in with the local, promoting Gold Coast nationalism.

Steloo, Fashion DJ, Accra House Music. Still from Accra Power.

Bands like ET Mensah and the Tempos, and the Axim Trio performed at Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) rallies, performing songs like “Nkrumah Will Never Die” and “Nkrumah Is a Mighty Man.” In turn, Nkrumah would fund arts and culture on a massive scale, as a show of national pride. The Arts Council of Ghana, whose mandate was to “protect, simulate and improve the nation’s cultural expression and limit foreign influence on music,” was put in place. This investment included sending artists abroad to widen their breadth of musical theory. Ebo Taylor, the recipient of a government scholarship, recounted finding himself in the company of Teddy Osei and the other members of what would become Osibisa (Ghana’s most internationally renowned musical act) upon arrival at the Eric Gilder School of Music in London.

The honeymoon period between musicians and those in power would end in the late 1960s as musicians found themselves in opposition to the government and expressing frustration at the political situation in fables and parables. As an essay in AccraDotAlt records of the time, EK Nyame’s “Nsuo Bɛto a, Frama Dzi Kan” (before it rains, the wind blows) was interpreted as an end-time omen for the Nkrumah regime. In the next government, Nana Kwame Ampadu’s “Ebi Te Yie” (Some Are Sitting Comfortably), ostensibly a song about the animal kingdom, was banned from the radio and the musician hauled in front of a military tribunal.

Poetra Asantewa poet, writer, fashion designer. Still from Accra Power

Now, as then, government action and inaction is the target of the music and the art. But the protagonists in “Accra Power,” press the sharp edge of their respective artistic mediums against the accepted sequence of quotidian life, as if to cut it open and move around its contents. The sharpening of these very artistic talents have come, unlike in the Nkrumah era, in the absence of state support. They have had to survive, much like the average Ghanaian, without consistent electrical power.

Even if art hasn’t affected power, power has affected art making. Steloo the fashion DJ, explains that uncertainty about the availability of power has made him more efficient in his music production in the few hours the lights are on; Wanlov says it is cheaper to travel to Europe and work for stretches of time, rather than try to fuel a generator for 24 hours a day.

Abigail Quartey, boxer. Still from Accra Power.

On the surface of things, Serge Attukwei Clottey’s public performances escape the constraints of unreliable electrical power. His choice to espouse traditional images in an actively Christian country is bold. Being powerful, he says, means “understanding your inner power… and how you try to shine your power for people to see who you are.”

A more surgical observer will notice that the challenge of these artists, unlike their independence-era colleagues, is to produce where the raw materials are precisely a lack of power and empowerment. It is reflective of the miracle that most Ghanaians are able to keep up our famous liveliness and hospitality despite the economic hardship of the last decade.

White masks in Tunisia

Image via Al Jazeera.

Tunisia has a problem with its African roots. Racial discrimination and xenophobia is outrageously commonplace for black Tunisians and African immigrants and completely unrecognized and unaccounted for among public institutions and governmental parties. Despite the emphasis on the Islamic coda that prohibits discrimination against fellow black Muslims and Act 21 of the national constitution which emphasizes that all Tunisians are “equal before the law without any discrimination,” racism against its black citizens permeates the social, institutional, and political strata of Tunisia.

Black Tunisians represent roughly around 15% of the population; however, their exact number, as well their demographic backgrounds remain indeterminate. References to the slave trade between North Africa and Sub-Saharan countries such as Chad and Niger are often suggested to explain the presence of blacks in general. As for Sub-Saharan immigrants, they are often Francophone West African students who pursue their university diplomas in such disciplines as medicine or law and Sub-Sahara nationals who usually overstay their three-month entry visa to Tunisia working in odd jobs in order to fund their trip to Europe. In sum, and as Hamid Bahri observes, “the level of interaction between Sub-Saharan in general and the Tunisian population is negligible.”

The banalization of a racial problem in Tunisia is occurring in the shadow of an unfortunate far-reaching misconception among Tunisians that blacks are of an inferior race. Black Tunisians and sub-Saharan immigrants alike are often socially stigmatized and called such derogatory names as wossif (slave) or kahlouch (similar to the n-word). Even worse, Maha Abdelahmid, co-founder of l’Association de défense des droits des Noirs (ADAM or the Tunisian League for the Defence of the Rights of Blacks) states that birth certificates delivered to black Tunisians who are born in Djerba (in the south east of Tunisia, known for its large black community) still carry the title “freed slaves.” Scenes of blatant anti-black racism include teachers’ bullying against black students, street abuse against sub-Saharan immigrants, and police discrimination against the black minority.

An excellent film by Nada Issa, “Tunisia’s Dirty Secret,” captures this prevailing sense of ordinary negrophobia. In her interview with Najiba Hamrouni, a black Tunisian journalist, unionist, and former president of the Syndicat national des journalistes tunisiens (SNJT, National Union of Tunisian Journalists), she revealed being targeted by a racist defamation campaign undertaken by supporters of the Ennahda party – the leading Islamic political party in Tunisia – who created numerous Facebook pages filled with negrophobic insults to perpetuate politically-motivated personal attacks.

How did Tunisians establish this racist and xenophobic majority? How did other Tunisians turn into closet racists? There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this enduring negrophobia in Tunisia. The racial issue is complex and requires a genuine social debate and even a meaningful cultural revolution.

Tunisians see themselves as whites. Whether in literature, in media, in movies, or on television, the image of the white Tunisian who communicates in eloquent French is the ideal standard against which the stereotype of the Tunisian subject is defined and performed. Affet Mosbah, a black Tunisian, poignantly asked in her influential testimony on “Being Black in Tunisia”: “Aren’t we ourselves Africans? What is the meaning of this self-exclusion by this verb?” The lack of visibility of black Tunisians in the media is the most obvious as there is no black actors or black TV hosts. The few times there were references made in national newspapers about black Tunisians or sub-Saharan immigrants, they were focused on clandestine migration.

As Frantz Fanon carefully asserted in Black Skin, White Masks, whiteness has become the desired ideal, the epitome of self-realization. The enduring internalization of the inferiority complex has turned the Arab against the black and rationalized his or her subjugation through negrophobic and xenophobic crimes. The anti-black racism in Tunisia is pervasive because it is not a social phenomenon, but also a political and cultural issue. The absence of statistics on the population of black Tunisians reveals how deep racism runs in the governmental and public institutions.

—

The caption in this photo reads in French “Je ne veux pas mourir en Tunisie parce que je suis un étranger noir”, which can be translated to “I don’t want to die in Tunisia because I am a black foreigner.” It refers to the anti-racism campaign launched by members of L’Association des étudiants et des stagiaires Africans en Tunisie (AESAT or Society of African Students and Interns in Tunisia) in late December 2016 to call for better security conditions and institutional support for sub-Saharan African students. AESAT’s campaign came into being in the wake of the most recent and obnoxious example of the growing intolerance of large number of Tunisians against its sub-Saharan African residents. The brutal attack against three Congolese students in the capital, Tunis, left two of them in critical conditions and the other wounded.

Chris, one of the victims, describes a scene where the assailant attacked him from behind while he was waiting for the metro. After assaulting Chris, the attacker continued his rampage targeting two female students. One, Jemima, is still in a coma due to serious injuries, and another, Sarah, is in traumatic shock after the attacker tried to slit her throat. These students were targeted by the attacker purely based on the color of their skin.

The image selected for the campaign refers to the figure of Trayvon Martin, the African American teen whose death in February 2012 launched the Black Lives Matter movement. The reference to the first iconic figure of Black Lives Matter is more than fitting here. The AESAT shares with Black Lives Matter an urgent call for political intervention, public empathy, and communal involvement in securing justice and security to all black people regardless of their origin, gender, or sexual orientation.

While linkages between BLM and the Arab Spring are often made, those who participated in the Arab Spring did not tackle racism in their own countries. In its wake, the degrading reality for black Tunisians and sub-Saharan immigrants remains unchanged. While the exact number of racially aggravated offenses remains impossible to identify due to institutional denial of these crimes, strong evidence from increasingly vocal civil rights organizations reveal that these attacks have been on the rise in Tunisia since the 2011 revolution.

Today, there is little hope for anti-black racism in Tunisia to disappear. In the absence of a true decolonization of the mind of the Tunisian subject and a true cultural revolution, the efforts of civil society do little to challenge the complex issues of negrophobia and xenophobia among Tunisians. There remains an urgent need for a new language of national belonging which mediates the way Tunisians see themselves and their fellow blacks.

If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night

[image error]Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930. Image by Lawrence Beitler via Wiki Commons.

I spent inauguration day not in front of the television but with my wife touring the Metropolitan Museum’s extraordinary exhibition by the artist Kerry James Marshall. The retrospective ranged from Marshall’s diverse depictions of black interior life to his sometimes playful and often searing considerations of various aspects of American history. For me, it was a powerful and necessary alternative to the shameful spectacle unfolding in Washington that morning.

Yet try as I might to take my mind off of the installation of the new president, and all that his ascension represented, it was impossible to fully escape from the looming dread of our new collective reality. As I neared the end of the exhibition, two sets of images in particular spoke to me about the need for vigilance and sustained, principled resistance under the new regime.

In the first, a triptych entitled Heirlooms and Accessories (2002), Marshall takes a well-known photograph of the 1930 lynching of two African-American men in Marion, Indiana, digitally “whitewashes” the gruesome scene, and isolates individual white bystanders captured looking directly towards the photographer’s lens. Marshall frames each of the women’s faces within a locket-like necklace. Though I teach about lynching in my courses and invite my students to dwell on questions of both individual and group complicity in the horrors of systemic racial terror, there was something about the guile with which Marshall highlights these “accessories” to the crime that stopped me in my tracks.

Beyond the artist’s statement regarding a specific historical moment or any simple condemnation of distant actors long ago, I was compelled by what I took to be Marshall’s challenge to the viewer: To what crimes against our common humanity are we all accessories?

Just around the corner from these images another of Marshall’s works delivered a message seemingly tailor-made for this fateful moment. The large scale abstract painting Red (if they come in the morning) (2011) dates from just a few years ago, yet it conveys the weight of decades of black struggle. The phrase that appears in large block letters filling the sweeping red canvas bookended by narrow black and green borders was immediately recognizable to me as an adaptation of the words of that signal American prophet, James Baldwin. In November 1970 Baldwin penned an open letter to activist intellectual Angela Davis, then incarcerated and charged with capital crimes for which she would later be exonerated following an international grassroots support campaign. Baldwin ends his letter with a potent statement about the need for people of conscience to act.

It is not enough, Baldwin insists, simply to be aware of a moral crisis. “If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name,” he writes. Baldwin then concludes:

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

I have read that letter often, shared it with friends and students. Encountering Baldwin’s caution, via the work of Kerry James Marshall, on the day an unrepentant xenophobic, misogynist, white nationalist took the oath to assume the nation’s highest office was auspicious.

Exactly one week later, the illegitimate president signed yet another immoral and unconstitutional executive order – the latest in a series of cruel, punitive, and profoundly short-sighted measures meant to consolidate his power, punish the vulnerable, and isolate the United States from the rest of the world. As promised, they had come for the refugees, the immigrants, the Muslims.

“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated,” the human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson reminds us. If I were to heed the lessons my mother had taught me, if I were to honor those freedom fighters who had made possible the considerable privileges I enjoy, if I were to be true to the history I write and teach about, then there was only one choice. I boarded the subway for the hour and a half journey underground through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and eventually out to Queens: John F. Kennedy International Airport, Terminal 4.

I joined the protests in solidarity with the vulnerable populations targeted by this capricious decree; with the immigrant workers whose labor allows this city and this country to function; with the activists, organizers, and lawyers struggling on the front lines; and with my fellow New Yorkers wishing to embody and make manifest genuine compassion, democracy, community, and resistance. I joined the protests for my students – past, present, and future – who dare to speak up and speak out. I joined the protests for the migrant diaspora that is my father’s family, originating in eastern Nigeria and now residing in three countries and at least seven states. I joined the protests for my children who are (thankfully) too young to understand the viciousness and hatred of the current moment but to whom I will one day have to answer.

I have been to scores of demonstrations in my life in support of a wide range of causes. I have felt the euphoria of standing tall and “doing something” and the nagging despair that says that clever chants and razor-sharp slogans are meaningless in the face of entrenched power. I know well that protests and marches are not the only valid forms of resistance and that, for many people, participation in a mass demonstration is not an option. Letters and petitions, phone calls to elected officials and business leaders, strategic voting, investigative reporting, lawsuits, boycotts, strikes, slow downs, walk outs, sit ins, the full range of art and human creativity. We need it all.

But on this cold Saturday in January I knew I needed to be shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people of like mind, signs, fists, and camera phones in the air, voices raised in unison — facing down the agents of the state, demanding justice, and refusing to accept the unacceptable.

“Resist, fight back, this is our New York…”

Weekend Music Break No.103 – Delasi edition

We’ve decided to open our end of the work week music break up to guest contributors, and this edition we are proud to feature Delasi, a Ghanaian MC shifting between Accra, Berlin and Nairobi. This selection of smooth Afropop illustrates his transnational vision for contemporary African art and music. Highly recommended for your weekend mornings!

It’s the second Weekend Music Break of the year (enter confetti and dancehall sirens) and I’m super delighted to present you this playlist.

Weekend Music Break No.103

1) We kick off with the Afro bass duo Gato Preto’s “Take a Stand”, which features Kenyan singer Janice Iche. Sounds like an anthem for African pride everywhere in the world. 2) On “Brujas,” the Bronx-based artist Princess Nokia explores her roots and origins acknowledging the Yoruba deity Orisha. Try not to get possessed as you enjoy the visuals. 3) Senegalese producer Ibaaku takes you to his abstract world on the hypnotic tune “Monkey Boy” off his Alien Cartoon album. 4) Next stop, practice your dance moves to Branko’s “Let Me Go” track feat. Nonku Phiri & Mr. Carmack. Shot in Joburg, enjoy nice Pantsula dance moves infused with zouk bass and Nonku’s chilled R&B flavor. 5) Sudanese and Nubian inspired collective Alsarah & The Nubatones share melodic vocals in Arabic backed by oud drums on their quest to find home. 6) Sampha’s “Blood On Me” is bordering around dark and desperately forebodes the demons that are out to get him. For the sake of delicious music, let’s hope they don’t find him. 7) Jamaican singer-songwriter Chronixx pays tribute to all the queens, if you are not teary eyed at the beauty of black love celebration then you may probably have ideas of starting your own family ☺ 8) “How Far” by Red Red is a socially conscious and politically unapologetic tune that sees M3nsa playing different faces of the average Ghanaian, and asking the most pertinent questions on all of Ghanaians’ minds. 9) UK based Ghanaian producer DJ Juls has steadily been releasing hits for a while now. Enjoy this video for “Give you Love” ft. L.A.X.  10) What would the world do without the black woman? Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 celebrates and glorifies the strength and power of black women in the diaspora.

Europe’s refugee colonialism

In August 2015 when Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel declared an open-door policy for Syrian refugees — the first and only European country to do so — it seemed possible Europe would take a different course on migration. A year and a half later, it’s as if that moment never occurred. In contrast, Europe today is outsourcing its “migration problem” to a set of authoritarian or unstable regimes in Libya, Egypt, Sudan and elsewhere. The US is now following Europe’s lead with Donald Trump threatening to ban Syrian refugees from entering the United States, and to block all refugees for at least 120 days.

The European Union already began abdicating its response to the Syrian refugee crisis in 2016 with the EU-Turkey deal, which paid Turkey to prevent refugees from heading to Greece. Now, similar deals are being made with African countries. An interactive map by German journalists shows the 24 African countries already receiving funding to “stem migration.”

This hands off approach, aimed at curbing the flood of migrants before they reach Europe’s shores (out of sight, out of mind), resembles the strategy of indirect rule employed by European nations during their colonization of Africa and the Middle East. During this time, European countries like Britain and France sought to control their colonies by sending a small occupying army, along with white settlers, and imposing a top down order with authority passed on via European administrators to local leaders and existing power structures. These local rulers would be the ones who would perform most of the governing of the “native” population. This allowed European countries to dominate economic and military interests in the colonies without having a large on-the-ground presence.

In 2017’s version of this remote control command, security and defense contractors in Africa, colluding with state officials, will likely start halting men, women and children as they cross the Sahara desert and on the Mediterranean sea in an attempt to reach Europe. Ensnaring these African bodies will be paid for by European tax dollars and cleverly packaged as “aid” to quell questions from the public.

While the EU-Turkey deal essentially halted the flow of people from Turkey (at least for now, as its uncertain how long Turkey will uphold its end without the EU fulfilling its promise to lift visa restrictions for Turkish citizens), 363,348 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy and Greece in 2016, primarily transiting from Libya. Now the EU is so frantic to cut off this migration route that it’s willing to dish out millions of dollars to Libya, even though right now Libya consists of three governments and at least eight armed groups vying for power, including the Islamic State.

The EU has already started funding the Libyan coast guard to patrol Libya’s coastline – despite the fact that Amnesty International documented that the coastguard has left migrant boats to sink. Africans passing through Libya on the way to Europe are almost all jailed – either by the government or by different armed groups. Women in detention are systematically sexually assaulted. Human rights and humanitarian organizations have detailed the torture and abuse migrants and refugees face in Libya, often having to buy their freedom only to set out on another perilous journey. In 2016, 5,079 people drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean sea.

The EU is also exploring increased funding to Egypt, the other main (although less used) departure point for Africans hoping to reach Italy. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government continues to consolidate its power and demolish civil and human rights groups. Independent monitoring of refugee and migrant rights in both Libya and Egypt will be virtually impossible, as will be tracing the EU’s millions. No doubt the EU’s aid agreements with poor countries around the world will continue to demand accountability and human rights, while the EU shakes off accountability for these same concepts.

Recently, German Development Minister Gerd Müller released a new plan for Africa. One of the intended aims is to stem migration. Full details of the plan are not yet online – it remains to be seen whether the funding will make any tangible difference for individuals and their families, or rather further bankroll German corporations to “invest” in Africa.

In a predictable development, defense and security firms are also getting in on the EU’s deals with Africa – the German TAZ newspaper documents a slew of Orwellian scenarios, including plans for biometric controls to pop up across the continent. This is especially alarming considering the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has been using biometrics to provide services to refugees and displaced people. Could an eye scan to receive food at a refugee camp later hinder you from fleeing violence and crossing a border to safety?

Trying to come to Europe via these routes already involves, for most Africans, a series of indescribable journeys where people routinely lose their lives. Those that survive may have lost children or loved ones, and have spent their life savings to make the journey. There are many policies that have been proposed to make migrant journeys within Africa and to Europe less deadly and dangerous, key among them is opening more legal avenues for Africans to travel, including student, work and humanitarian visas. Such a system would also allow Europe to reap millions in visa fees, rather than those same funds going to smugglers and traffickers.

But as is the case globally these days, from America to Australia, Europe’s debates about migration are not logical or rational. The vast majority of refugees and migrants are hosted outside Europe: for example, 1.3 million South Sudanese have currently sought refuge in neighboring countries, and Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt together host over 4.8 million Syrian refugees. Yet Europe continues to suffer from historical amnesia, ignoring the role European countries play in fostering conflict, crime and poverty on other continents, which secured a high quality of life for their own citizens.

The majority of Europe’s politicians prefer to amplify fear and sort people into categories that are to be served by different UN agencies and aid organizations elsewhere: migrant, refugee, displaced person, asylum-seeker. Such labels allow Europe’s security forces to sort Africans (and other non-Europeans) back into their bin – deportations of failed asylum-seekers from countries like Germany, the UK, Norway, France and elsewhere are expected to increase this year. One country in Africa has resisted: Mali. Although last year Mali entered into an agreement with the EU to accept failed asylum-seekers, public outrage and condemnation from civil society groups has caused the government to re-consider. In late December 2016, Mali refused to accept two people deported from France and flown to Bamako. It’s unclear whether other African countries will re-consider their deals.

Meanwhile, the people Europe deports and that countries refuse to accept continue to suffer, their lives suspended. Just yesterday, a young Gambian man drowned in Italy’s grand canal to the jeers and spectacle of tourists, who did not think an African man’s life was worth saving. They saw him as a migrant, a black man, a foreigner – but not as a human.

In the superb short film, Becky’s Journey, Becky, a young Nigerian woman, describes how desperately she wants to come to Europe, agreeing to sell sex upon arrival in Italy to secure her passage. Becky made two failed attempts to reach Europe; the first at Lagos airport where they would not allow her to board a plane, and the second in Libya, where conflict forced her back to Nigeria. On her third attempted crossing, not covered in the video, Becky dies. Her death could have been prevented if there was a legal and safe way for her to come to Europe – but no such pathways exist. And in 2017, Europe’s leaders have no intention to create them.

Nigeria’s ‘brain drain’

Still from “Naija Beta.”

Obinna Ukwuani, the MIT graduate and self-described “education entrepreneur” wasn’t born in Nigeria, but claims a close connection to the country of his parents. The founder of Exposure Robotics Academy (ERA), a competitive robotics camp that he ran in Lagos during his summer breaks from MIT, Ukwuani caught the attention of the young filmmaker Arthur Musah. Hailing from Ghana and Ukraine and himself an MIT graduate, Musah is committed to documenting understudied aspects of the Afro-diasporic experience, particularly the efforts of Ukwuani and others to promote STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in Nigeria. Musah’s documentary Naija Beta was born of an eagerness to better understand the conditions under which African MIT students learn, labor, and dream of “giving back” to the continent to which they are (however ambivalently) tethered.

The film’s opening sequences feature Musah’s eloquent, introspective voice-over narration, which the director uses to communicate not merely his own biography, but also his sheer curiosity about Ukwuani. “Here,” he says of his subject, “was this young guy who called himself Nigerian, even though he was born in America’s capitol, and even before he was done with college, he was headed to Lagos with his team to bring technological education to 35 high school students in Nigeria.”

Sensing that Ukwuani’s aims exceeded the familiar dimensions of tech-centered philanthropy, Musah felt “compelled to follow” the young man and his team “all the way to Lagos.” The credit sequence that follows this confession strongly suggests a Nollywood film, but with a key difference: offering a montage of images of the big city – of notorious traffic jams (or “go-slows,” to employ the parlance of Nigeria), tall buildings, and crowded marketplaces – Musah eventually trains his eye on educational sites like the National Open University of Nigeria (the first federally funded distance-learning center in West Africa) and, finally, the Grange School, a private day and boarding school in Ikeja, close to the airport and flanked by country clubs.

Still from “Naija Beta.”

Regrettably, Naija Beta does not provide much contextualizing information about the Grange School, or about the students who are admitted to Ukwuani’s (apparently highly selective) robotics academy. Describing the academy as the product of a certain “back to Nigeria” movement among MIT students – and more specifically as an effort to encourage young Nigerians “to be passionate about technology” – Ukwuani serves as his own spokesman in Musah’s film, periodically informing the camera of his ambitions. Joining him on this techno-evangelist mission are other MIT students interested in spreading the gospel of robotics, among them the energetic Tobi, a young woman whose parents are from Ogun State. Musah shows her teaching a class, her tone as much inspirational as admonitory, enjoining students to do their best while warning them about the perils of unoriginality.

At its best, Naija Beta captures the near-comic disappointment of students who discover that “Miss Tobi” is requiring them to prepare for all conceivable contingencies, and Musah is particularly alert to the code-switching shared by students and teachers alike (particularly memorable are the MIT students who address the camera in standard, American-accented English, only to offer a few Pidgin words and phrases in casual conversations with the kids), as well as to the bitter doubts with which everyone seems to regard Nigeria. One of the ERA students carefully and candidly outlines her plan to contribute to Nigeria’s “brain drain,” saying, “I want to achieve my personal goals, become an engineer or a doctor. Instead of staying here and saying, ‘I want to improve my country,’ I will go and improve myself.” Dismissing those who advocate remaining in Nigeria, she continues, “Secondary school is the only thing holding me back here. In my own case, it’s not like I have a choice. Once I’m done with secondary school, I’m running away. And I can’t guarantee I’ll come back to Nigeria.” Her sobering thoughts on the futility of Nigerian politics and the impoverishment of Nigerian activism stand in stark contrast to the cautious optimism espoused by Ukwuani and his associates, all of them apparently aware of their enormous privilege as MIT students.

But Naija Beta barely suggests the socioeconomic status of the ERA students themselves, begging the question of how, exactly – under what criteria – they were selected for the program. At one point, Musah shows them swimming in a pool on the palm-tree-lined grounds of the Grange School, their exultant freedom counterpoised with the apparent indigence of a pair of candy sellers forced to sit on the dirt just beyond the institution’s fences.

Still from “Naija Beta.”

If Musah seems to sidestep the question of the students’ relative privilege (and of what appears to be their corporate sponsorship by Shell Oil), he certainly, if only occasionally, zeroes in on the experiences of those on the periphery of Ukwuani’s robotics school, interviewing security officers, day laborers, and several others, all of whom discuss the failings of the Nigerian state (as one man says with heroic bluntness, “The Nigerian government cannot help you”). Back at ERA, the students are instructed in how best to prepare for the SAT – “so they can obtain a great education” in the United States.

“The students that we recruit tend to be the best anyway,” one instructor says, confident in their capacity to “ace” the SAT. One student is caught cheating, however, leading to much handwringing. At one point, Ukwuani wonders if his academy will in fact “raise false hopes,” although he concedes that the students seem to understand that “Nigeria’s challenges are larger than they are.” But he concludes his musings by saying, “The life of a leader is not meant to be easy – it’s fraught with a lot of emotional, psychological, structural challenges that a lot of people may never have to face.” He remains convinced that ERA students, “the best of the best, will be perpetually dissatisfied with what Nigeria has to offer.”

Perhaps the best that can be said for Naija Beta is that it reveals some of the tensions between young Nigerians eager to flee their country for a better life in the United States and the men and women of color who, in fact, made it all the way to MIT, only to become disillusioned by its perceived superiority. One ERA instructor, for instance, laments the competitiveness of Nigerian culture that contrasts with the smooth cooperativeness of life at MIT, seemingly embodying some of what Fanon critiqued about the “colonized mind.” That the MIT students look upon Nigeria with pity and terror is reinforced in a scene in which Ukwuani, listening to NPR in his car (and far from any aggravating “go-slow”), hears about the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls, and then about a suicide bomber who targeted a secondary school.

But the film ends on an encouraging note, as one MIT student, referring to Nigeria, tells the camera, “I am not embarrassed to say that I love my country. I have never been so patriotic in my life.” When Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations, she tried to sing along to the Nigerian national anthem, quickly realizing that she didn’t know the words, but resolving to work harder to honor her African roots. “I need to learn that,” she says with a smile.

What lessons on fascism can we learn from Africa’s colonial past?

Mainstream discussion of fascism took a dramatic upturn in 2016. While the term became one of the most incriminatory labels of the 20th century, the reassertion of far-right ideologies and previously fringe political groups across the globe has reanimated popular debate about the term. Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism and stifling of dissent has been met with considered critiques of fascism in India. In Holland, France, Italy and Germany far-right populism threatens to engulf Europe in a succession of 2017 elections that has mainstream media asking whether this is Europe’s new fascism? The success of Nigel Farage’s xenophobic arguments during Brexit and the circus show of Trump’s rallies brought debates about the nature of fascism firmly into mainstream media discussion.

In the face of populist vitriol against foreigners and enemies, threats and intimidation, demagoguery, and a repositioning (or removal) of the state, its laws and institutions, the repertoire of fascism is under critical debate again. Yet, while fascist behavior often appears loud, aggressive, and speaks in matter-of-fact terms, Jane Kaplan has recently reminded us that fascism is “not just the big bang of mass rallies and extreme violence; it is also the creeping fog that incrementally occupies power while obscuring its motives, its moves and its goals.” To confront fascism we need to “look more closely,” not simply by debating whether the past fits the present, but by applying “the history we already know” in order to look anew at our current circumstance. But what is the history we know?

And what, if anything, does African experience have to say about all this? A great deal, if we care to look. In the 1930s fascism’s face was immediately recognizable in colonial Africa. Historians are now engaging in a fruitful debate about the similarities and differences between fascism and colonialism, and whether one was a form of another. What is less recognized is that this debate was in no way peripheral to colonized people at the time. My own recent research in Ghanaian and Nigerian newspapers has found that editorials debated the nature of fascism on the same page as news reports of forced labor practices in Kenya; of segregation and “extermination” policies carried out by General Hertzog and his government in South Africa; of the use of militarized force to suppress labor in Northern Rhodesia and the power of one-man rule by colonial governors.

What does this tell us? First, that fascism was neither a foreign concept nor an external threat in Africa. In 1937 the Sierra Leone-born trade unionists, I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, declared that Britain ruled in its colonial territories in a way that “turned the whole land into one large concentration camp.” That same year Jawaharlal Nehru asserted that the British Raj in India “wears a fascist uniform.” When rumors swirled that Hitler might be appeased by returning former German territory in Africa, the Nigerian editor J.V. Clinton argued that to be handed back to Germany “would be no greater treachery… than to place us cheek to jowl with European Colonists.” For Clinton, fascism involved the suppression of freedom of speech and racialized violence against workers, but it also had something to do with land, territory and annexation, and settler colonialism.

The second point that African perspectives on fascism tells us is that, because of the close comparisons between colonial rule and fascism, Africans and other colonized peoples around the world understood the character of fascism in a relational mode. This is vital insight for an ideology that continues to defy clear categorization and definition. My main point is simple: if we are witnessing ideas and behaviors that look a lot like fascism but in a contemporary context and in newer geographies (like the United States and India), then we need to expand our historical perspective beyond continental Europe.

The most famous articulation of the relation between colonialism and fascism is certainly Aimé Césaire’s declaration that fascism was “colonialist procedures… applied to Europe”. With this formulation, fascism’s character struck a different chord. We know that this was not the first articulation of this idea, but rather one voice among many. Césaire’s avowal in 1950 meant that the Allied powers could not walk away from fascism so easily. Nor can any of us, wherever we live, now. His declaration demanded that fascism be examined again, with a wider lens and a broader canvas. It cautioned that every time we think we have diagnosed the culprit, we should look again.

To exist every new nation needs a national football team — they also need a kit

South Sudan football team players wearing the AMS kit.

The first round of the 2017 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Gabon, Africa’s premier football competition, is nearly over. The knockout round starts later this week. This is the  60th anniversary of the tournament. Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire (the defending champions), Morocco, and Senegal are all among the contenders for the title. Sadio Mané’s Senegal have been the form team so far, while Algeria has failed to impress despite some individual magic from Riyad Mahrez, and hosts Gabon and their star forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have already been eliminated. Although much of the attention of African football fans has been focused on the tournament, spare a thought for some of the teams on the continent that didn’t make it.

The Australia based apparel company, AMS Clothing, is the official apparel supplier to a number of less established national football teams throughout Africa. Unfortunately, none of the teams that AMS supplies made it to the AFCON this year, although Ethiopia did come close. A number of the AMS teams couldn’t even participate in qualifying matches as they aren’t members of FIFA or CAF. Yet this is part of what makes the AMS brand so distinctive and interesting, that it is focuses on less high profile national football teams, regardless of whether they are recognized by FIFA or not. It also provides the opportunity for them to benefit commercially from the sale of shirts.

As in 2015, Africa is a Country is holding another AFCON-themed competition and AMS has again very kindly agreed to provide prizes from their amazing collection of football strips. To have a chance of winning an AMS jersey, simply tag @futbolsacountry and @africasacountry on Twitter with a link to a video of your favorite AFCON goal from a previous tournament and a few words on why you love it, using the hashtag #MyAFCONGoal. Two winners will be selected by our panel. In the event that the same video is submitted by more than one person, we will go with the first person who submitted that video. The winner will be announced on Twitter on the morning of the final.

We spoke to AMS founder Luke Westcott in the lead up to the 2015 AFCON. I spoke to Westcott again this year, delving deeper into the company’s mission, his all time favorite African football strips, producing strips for nations that aren’t recognized by FIFA, having teams and fans vote on shirt designs, and AMS’s plans to expand into Oceania.

Firstly, can you tell me about how AMS got started and its mission? Who was behind it? Was there an explicit politics from the start or did it evolve over time?

AMS stands for African Manufacturing Solutions. I developed a business plan in my final year of high school in Melbourne, Australia in 2012. The AMS plan was created in my own time, not as part of any school class, it was just something that I was interested in pursuing once I finished high school. It involved capturing the massive potential of the manufacturing industry in two African countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia. The plan was a bit too ambitious for a teenager to implement, but I was fascinated with the possibility that Africa, specifically Nigeria and Ethiopia, could one day become the world’s manufacturing hubs.

In addition to my interest in business in Africa, from a young age I also had an obsession with football shirts. I had been collecting them for as long as I could remember. I’ve always preferred the African strips, and my four favorite African jerseys of all time are: First, the Nigeria Adidas 1994 Home Kit, the first time that African patterns were used on a design from what I can remember, and it was executed in a perfectly 90’s type of way. Second, is the Botswana All Kasi 2011/2012. The Zebra print on this one has made it a favorite amongst all collectors. Then there’s the Uganda Hummel 2000/01 Home Kit; the designer cranes on the front make it a true work of art. Finally, South Africa’s Kappa 1998 Home Kit. I am putting this in the “so bad it is good” category.

This eventually led to me selling football shirts online to supplement the purchasing of shirts for my own collection. I soon realized that the shirts of obscure national football team were highly collectable so I focused on sourcing and selling these shirts. Eventually it got to a point where I simply couldn’t source some of the shirts that customers were constantly asking for as these shirts were never made available for purchase.

Then in 2014 when I was 19 years old, I had the idea to create my own brand and supply these smaller national teams myself with attractive and symbolic designs. I founded AMS Clothing along with my friend Angelo Garcia. Our initial goal was to supply the national teams of South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.

T he vibrant design aesthetic of AMS stands out as many other football jerseys have become increasingly bland and unadventurous. Is this deliberate on the part of AMS to offer something different? Can you talk about what informs the design process and choices?

When I was younger I would spend most of my school holidays designing football shirts for fun, so once I actually starting doing this as a business I already had the design skills to create the shirts myself. Being a collector, I knew that the more interesting and unique the shirt was, the more people would want it.

Most of our competition don’t bother to create customized designs for the smaller national teams, and would simply supply them with blank teamwear uniforms with their logo added on. We saw this as an opportunity to set ourselves apart from these other brands, and most importantly provide a uniform that the national team players would be proud of wearing.

With each team, I will usually create about 5 different designs and sent them through to the respective national football federations. They will then respond with their ideas until we have a design we can agree upon. In some cases, we will have the national team players themselves have some input, and the new South Sudan uniforms that we introduced in 2015 were chosen after a vote by the entire national team squad.

A lot has been written about football as an important expression of nationalism and nationhood . T he historian Eric Hobsbawm famously wrote : “ T he imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” More coun tries are acknowledged by FIFA than the UN: There are 211 FIFA member associations versus 193 UN member states .

It is truly amazing to see the effect that football can have on a nation, whether that nation is internationally recognized or not. The platform and funding that FIFA provides to each member association has been crucial in the development of the game in some of the world’s smaller countries. There is definitely a way to go before FIFA becomes truly effective in implementing their development goals, however FIFA new president, Gianni Infantino, has certainly stepped up in terms of financial accountability for each association in his short time in office.

That FIFA allows smaller nations that may not be UN member states to gain formal acceptance into FIFA is fantastic as it allows these nations to be represented on the international stage. Most of the non-UN members that are FIFA members are smaller island nations like American Samoa, Montserrat and Tahiti, so I don’t think in these cases that FIFA are doing anything politically controversial by allowing their nations to gain membership. Other more politically contentious nations such as Kosovo and Palestine may have some groups opposed to their acceptance into FIFA. Nevertheless, I feel that FIFA’s process for member acceptance is solid and that the effects of the entry into FIFA for these nations has been overwhelmingly positive.

In addition to producing jerseys for a n umber of FIFA members across Africa, AMS has also recently started producing jerseys for national teams such as Darfur United, Western Sahara, a nd Zanzibar that aren’t recogniz ed by FIFA. Is this part of deliberate effort to reflect and promote more divers e concepts of nationhood?

There are several different reasons as to why we have targeted some non-FIFA national teams. Firstly, we support the participation of these teams in international competitions and believe this is a fantastic opportunity for these places to be represented globally.

Also, there is a fairly strong commercial opportunity in the distribution of national team jerseys both internationally and within the domestic markets of these regions. There are many international football fans who love to wear the jerseys of these obscure teams, and in the case of Zanzibar, there are massive retail opportunities for the sale of their national team jerseys in the local market.

When we partner with a non-FIFA national team we are not looking to support any political movement, it is simply hoping that these unrecognized nations can be wearing AMS uniforms when they are representing their region on the world stage.

The national teams mentioned above — Darfur United, Western Sahara, and Zanzibar — are all mem bers of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (ConIFA), a federation of football associations outside of FIFA. Can you talk more about your relationship with ConIFA? 

The work that ConIFA are doing is truly amazing, and to see some of the world’s unrecognized nations coming together on the world stage is incredible. We don’t have a formal relationship with ConIFA, but definitely support what they are representing.

I think ConIFA has massive growth potential, and after seeing what they achieved at the recent World Football Cup in Abkhazia there is certainly a place for them in the world of football. Hopefully ConIFA will be able to expand their resources to a level where they can provide funding and development for each of their member associations, and I am sure they will be soon able to achieve this as the popularity of their competitions increases.

The goal of AMS is to supply uniforms to the African members of ConIFA, and allow these national teams to capitalize on the popularity of their brand amongst each nation’s diaspora communities.

Can you tell me about the thinking behind the prototype jerseys, which include jerseys for Abyei, Biafra, Cabinda, and Puntland? Does it matter whether the claims of a group, say Biafra, are realiz able?

The prototype jerseys were created and made available for purchase after we had a heap of requests from various groups who saw the designs we were making for other national teams. Even though these nations do not have any formal national teams at this stage, it is certainly possible for them to be set up in the future. I think each of the prototype teams would be eligible to join ConIFA if they were able to create a functioning national football association, and we would certainly be there to supply uniforms if that happens.

In 2016 the re was a public online poll to choose the design for the new Western Sahara national team strip. Can you tell me more about this process, including how it came about, the reaction, and whether AMS plans to try it again in the future?

This was the idea of the Western Sahara FA after we had sent them through a number of design proposals. In this case, they decided that the design should be chosen by the people, and it was great to see the feedback from the fans.

We are definitely open to having a similar process for future designs, it just depends on the will of each FA to involve their fans in this process. I really like the idea of the national team players having a direct input as well.

Have you received any pushback or criticism for your work, given that s ome of it can be seen as effectively assisting nations in their efforts to attain international recognition? For example, the reaction of Morocco and its allies when you made a Western Sahara strip.

Actually, until we announced the partnership with the Western Sahara FA we hadn’t received any criticism at all regarding the other national teams we have supplied.

Once we made the partnership with Western Sahara public, there was quite a high amount of negative, and downright hateful responses from groups opposed to Western Sahara having a national football team.

It is not our position to have any involvement in this political debate, we really just want to support football and allow Western Sahara to be represented by their national team. Most of the negative comments seemed to revolve around the belief that we were part of some global conspiracy to support the independence movement, which is just ridiculous.

It is hard to imagine companies such as Adidas or Nike becoming involved with teams outside of FIFA as AMS has done. Does the size and regional focus of AMS give it more flexibility in this regard?

I would be very doubtful of the major sportswear brands supporting non-FIFA teams simply because of their business models. Adidas and Nike will only directly support a national team if they believe there is considerable commercial potential, and it is unlikely they would offer support unless they believed they would be able to reach their minimum order quantities by supplying these teams.

As AMS is a small brand that can work with small order quantities it makes it much easier for us to work with teams of a lesser commercial potential. Our target markets are completely different to those of these major sportswear brands, so I don’t really view them as competition. In some cases, we have competed with mid-tier brands such as Joma and Errea for deals, so it is more these companies that we view as our competition.

What does 2017 and beyond hold for AMS?

The aim is to continue to expand our sponsorship portfolio, and we are close to confirming deals with 2-3 more national teams in the coming months. We also hope to successfully enter the domestic markets of Ethiopia and Tanzania, which is a major aim of the brand. Unlike the major sportswear brands, we are able to lower our prices to meet the demands of less developed markets, and these 2 countries in particular would be ideal for market entry if we can create effective distribution channels.

Long term goals are a bit more difficult to define. As there haven’t really been any other sportswear brands that have focused on Africa, it is hard to us to compare ourselves to any competition. There are plenty of opportunities in Africa, but doing business there certainly has its challenges. For now, we will mostly be working in East Africa and then expand to other regions of the continent once we have developed our business model a bit further. Also, we intend to shift the majority of production to Africa within the next 2 years or so, with Ethiopia being the most likely option of manufacturing operations.

Despite the name and focus on Africa, are they are any plans to expand beyond the continent in future? I notice that there are design proposals on your website for the Palestinian national team.

We are actually about to launch a brand that has a focus on the Oceania region called Palm Tree Sports. This has been in the works for a while now, and we have just finalized an agency arrangement to be based in Samoa, which should see us supplying a number of national teams as well as local clubs in the region. Similar to Africa, there are no sportswear brands in the region that are specifically focused on supporting football in Oceania, so it presents an exciting opportunity. We will probably be working with both FIFA and ConIFA teams, and there are many nations in Oceania that would be eligible to join ConIFA.

The Middle East in another region that we would love to expand into, but at the moment we don’t have any specific plans for this. Maybe once we have got everything set up in Oceania we might look at this as an option.

*The conversation was edited for clarity.

To exist every new nation needs a national football team–they also need a kit

Kei Kamara of Sierra Leone celebrates his goal, September 2014. Image Credit: Darren McKinstry (www.johnnymckinstry.com).

The first round of the 2017 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Gabon, Africa’s premier football competition, is nearly over. The knockout round starts later this week. This is the  60th anniversary of the tournament. Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire (the defending champions), Morocco, and Senegal are all among the contenders for the title. Sadio Mané’s Senegal have been the form team so far, while Algeria has failed to impress despite some individual magic from Riyad Mahrez, and hosts Gabon and their star forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have already been eliminated. Although much of the attention of African football fans has been focused on the tournament, spare a thought for some of the teams on the continent that didn’t make it.

The Australia based apparel company, AMS Clothing, is the official apparel supplier to a number of less established national football teams throughout Africa. Unfortunately, none of the teams that AMS supplies made it to the AFCON this year, although Ethiopia did come close. A number of the AMS teams couldn’t even participate in qualifying matches as they aren’t members of FIFA or CAF. Yet this is part of what makes the AMS brand so distinctive and interesting, that it is focuses on less high profile national football teams, regardless of whether they are recognized by FIFA or not. It also provides the opportunity for them to benefit commercially from the sale of shirts.

As in 2015, Africa is a Country is holding another AFCON-themed competition and AMS has again very kindly agreed to provide prizes from their amazing collection of football strips. To have a chance of winning an AMS jersey, simply tag @futbolsacountry and @africasacountry on Twitter with a link to a video of your favorite AFCON goal from a previous tournament and a few words on why you love it, using the hashtag #MyAFCONGoal. Two winners will be selected by our panel. In the event that the same video is submitted by more than one person, we will go with the first person who submitted that video. The winner will be announced on Twitter on the morning of the final.

We spoke to AMS founder Luke Westcott in the lead up to the 2015 AFCON. I spoke to Westcott again this year, delving deeper into the company’s mission, his all time favorite African football strips, producing strips for nations that aren’t recognized by FIFA, having teams and fans vote on shirt designs, and AMS’s plans to expand into Oceania.

Firstly, can you tell me about how AMS got started and its mission? Who was behind it? Was there an explicit politics from the start or did it evolve over time?

AMS stands for African Manufacturing Solutions. I developed a business plan in my final year of high school in Melbourne, Australia in 2012. The AMS plan was created in my own time, not as part of any school class, it was just something that I was interested in pursuing once I finished high school. It involved capturing the massive potential of the manufacturing industry in two African countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia. The plan was a bit too ambitious for a teenager to implement, but I was fascinated with the possibility that Africa, specifically Nigeria and Ethiopia, could one day become the world’s manufacturing hubs.

In addition to my interest in business in Africa, from a young age I also had an obsession with football shirts. I had been collecting them for as long as I could remember. I’ve always preferred the African strips, and my four favorite African jerseys of all time are: First, the Nigeria Adidas 1994 Home Kit, the first time that African patterns were used on a design from what I can remember, and it was executed in a perfectly 90’s type of way. Second, is the Botswana All Kasi 2011/2012. The Zebra print on this one has made it a favorite amongst all collectors. Then there’s the Uganda Hummel 2000/01 Home Kit; the designer cranes on the front make it a true work of art. Finally, South Africa’s Kappa 1998 Home Kit. I am putting this in the “so bad it is good” category.

This eventually led to me selling football shirts online to supplement the purchasing of shirts for my own collection. I soon realized that the shirts of obscure national football team were highly collectable so I focused on sourcing and selling these shirts. Eventually it got to a point where I simply couldn’t source some of the shirts that customers were constantly asking for as these shirts were never made available for purchase.

Then in 2014 when I was 19 years old, I had the idea to create my own brand and supply these smaller national teams myself with attractive and symbolic designs. I founded AMS Clothing along with my friend Angelo Garcia. Our initial goal was to supply the national teams of South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.

T he vibrant design aesthetic of AMS stands out as many other football jerseys have become increasingly bland and unadventurous. Is this deliberate on the part of AMS to offer something different? Can you talk about what informs the design process and choices?

When I was younger I would spend most of my school holidays designing football shirts for fun, so once I actually starting doing this as a business I already had the design skills to create the shirts myself. Being a collector, I knew that the more interesting and unique the shirt was, the more people would want it.

Most of our competition don’t bother to create customized designs for the smaller national teams, and would simply supply them with blank teamwear uniforms with their logo added on. We saw this as an opportunity to set ourselves apart from these other brands, and most importantly provide a uniform that the national team players would be proud of wearing.

With each team, I will usually create about 5 different designs and sent them through to the respective national football federations. They will then respond with their ideas until we have a design we can agree upon. In some cases, we will have the national team players themselves have some input, and the new South Sudan uniforms that we introduced in 2015 were chosen after a vote by the entire national team squad.

A lot has been written about football as an important expression of nationalism and nationhood . T he historian Eric Hobsbawm famously wrote : “ T he imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.” More coun tries are acknowledged by FIFA than the UN: There are 211 FIFA member associations versus 193 UN member states .

It is truly amazing to see the effect that football can have on a nation, whether that nation is internationally recognized or not. The platform and funding that FIFA provides to each member association has been crucial in the development of the game in some of the world’s smaller countries. There is definitely a way to go before FIFA becomes truly effective in implementing their development goals, however FIFA new president, Gianni Infantino, has certainly stepped up in terms of financial accountability for each association in his short time in office.

That FIFA allows smaller nations that may not be UN member states to gain formal acceptance into FIFA is fantastic as it allows these nations to be represented on the international stage. Most of the non-UN members that are FIFA members are smaller island nations like American Samoa, Montserrat and Tahiti, so I don’t think in these cases that FIFA are doing anything politically controversial by allowing their nations to gain membership. Other more politically contentious nations such as Kosovo and Palestine may have some groups opposed to their acceptance into FIFA. Nevertheless, I feel that FIFA’s process for member acceptance is solid and that the effects of the entry into FIFA for these nations has been overwhelmingly positive.

In addition to producing jerseys for a n umber of FIFA members across Africa, AMS has also recently started producing jerseys for national teams such as Darfur United, Western Sahara, a nd Zanzibar that aren’t recogniz ed by FIFA. Is this part of deliberate effort to reflect and promote more divers e concepts of nationhood?

There are several different reasons as to why we have targeted some non-FIFA national teams. Firstly, we support the participation of these teams in international competitions and believe this is a fantastic opportunity for these places to be represented globally.

Also, there is a fairly strong commercial opportunity in the distribution of national team jerseys both internationally and within the domestic markets of these regions. There are many international football fans who love to wear the jerseys of these obscure teams, and in the case of Zanzibar, there are massive retail opportunities for the sale of their national team jerseys in the local market.

When we partner with a non-FIFA national team we are not looking to support any political movement, it is simply hoping that these unrecognized nations can be wearing AMS uniforms when they are representing their region on the world stage.

The national teams mentioned above — Darfur United, Western Sahara, and Zanzibar — are all mem bers of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (ConIFA), a federation of football associations outside of FIFA. Can you talk more about your relationship with ConIFA? 

The work that ConIFA are doing is truly amazing, and to see some of the world’s unrecognized nations coming together on the world stage is incredible. We don’t have a formal relationship with ConIFA, but definitely support what they are representing.

I think ConIFA has massive growth potential, and after seeing what they achieved at the recent World Football Cup in Abkhazia there is certainly a place for them in the world of football. Hopefully ConIFA will be able to expand their resources to a level where they can provide funding and development for each of their member associations, and I am sure they will be soon able to achieve this as the popularity of their competitions increases.

The goal of AMS is to supply uniforms to the African members of ConIFA, and allow these national teams to capitalize on the popularity of their brand amongst each nation’s diaspora communities.

Can you tell me about the thinking behind the prototype jerseys, which include jerseys for Abyei, Biafra, Cabinda, and Puntland? Does it matter whether the claims of a group, say Biafra, are realiz able?

The prototype jerseys were created and made available for purchase after we had a heap of requests from various groups who saw the designs we were making for other national teams. Even though these nations do not have any formal national teams at this stage, it is certainly possible for them to be set up in the future. I think each of the prototype teams would be eligible to join ConIFA if they were able to create a functioning national football association, and we would certainly be there to supply uniforms if that happens.

In 2016 the re was a public online poll to choose the design for the new Western Sahara national team strip. Can you tell me more about this process, including how it came about, the reaction, and whether AMS plans to try it again in the future?

This was the idea of the Western Sahara FA after we had sent them through a number of design proposals. In this case, they decided that the design should be chosen by the people, and it was great to see the feedback from the fans.

We are definitely open to having a similar process for future designs, it just depends on the will of each FA to involve their fans in this process. I really like the idea of the national team players having a direct input as well.

Have you received any pushback or criticism for your work, given that s ome of it can be seen as effectively assisting nations in their efforts to attain international recognition? For example, the reaction of Morocco and its allies when you made a Western Sahara strip.

Actually, until we announced the partnership with the Western Sahara FA we hadn’t received any criticism at all regarding the other national teams we have supplied.

Once we made the partnership with Western Sahara public, there was quite a high amount of negative, and downright hateful responses from groups opposed to Western Sahara having a national football team.

It is not our position to have any involvement in this political debate, we really just want to support football and allow Western Sahara to be represented by their national team. Most of the negative comments seemed to revolve around the belief that we were part of some global conspiracy to support the independence movement, which is just ridiculous.

It is hard to imagine companies such as Adidas or Nike becoming involved with teams outside of FIFA as AMS has done. Does the size and regional focus of AMS give it more flexibility in this regard?

I would be very doubtful of the major sportswear brands supporting non-FIFA teams simply because of their business models. Adidas and Nike will only directly support a national team if they believe there is considerable commercial potential, and it is unlikely they would offer support unless they believed they would be able to reach their minimum order quantities by supplying these teams.

As AMS is a small brand that can work with small order quantities it makes it much easier for us to work with teams of a lesser commercial potential. Our target markets are completely different to those of these major sportswear brands, so I don’t really view them as competition. In some cases, we have competed with mid-tier brands such as Joma and Errea for deals, so it is more these companies that we view as our competition.

What does 2017 and beyond hold for AMS?

The aim is to continue to expand our sponsorship portfolio, and we are close to confirming deals with 2-3 more national teams in the coming months. We also hope to successfully enter the domestic markets of Ethiopia and Tanzania, which is a major aim of the brand. Unlike the major sportswear brands, we are able to lower our prices to meet the demands of less developed markets, and these 2 countries in particular would be ideal for market entry if we can create effective distribution channels.

Long term goals are a bit more difficult to define. As there haven’t really been any other sportswear brands that have focused on Africa, it is hard to us to compare ourselves to any competition. There are plenty of opportunities in Africa, but doing business there certainly has its challenges. For now, we will mostly be working in East Africa and then expand to other regions of the continent once we have developed our business model a bit further. Also, we intend to shift the majority of production to Africa within the next 2 years or so, with Ethiopia being the most likely option of manufacturing operations.

Despite the name and focus on Africa, are they are any plans to expand beyond the continent in future? I notice that there are design proposals on your website for the Palestinian national team.

We are actually about to launch a brand that has a focus on the Oceania region called Palm Tree Sports. This has been in the works for a while now, and we have just finalized an agency arrangement to be based in Samoa, which should see us supplying a number of national teams as well as local clubs in the region. Similar to Africa, there are no sportswear brands in the region that are specifically focused on supporting football in Oceania, so it presents an exciting opportunity. We will probably be working with both FIFA and ConIFA teams, and there are many nations in Oceania that would be eligible to join ConIFA.

The Middle East in another region that we would love to expand into, but at the moment we don’t have any specific plans for this. Maybe once we have got everything set up in Oceania we might look at this as an option.

*The conversation was edited for clarity.

Music Break No.102 — Winter In America edition

“… The stakes are very high: literally, survival of organized human society in any decent form,” Noam Chomsky tells Brooklyn Rail, as the former British colony of the United States of America, inaugurates its 45th president. So, this weekend’s Music Break goes out to our American family, who are set to face four years of struggle against a new set of rulers, led by “a mendacious and cathartic white president.” The political decisions made in the nation with the largest military, some of the biggest corporations and the loudest media companies in the world, affect all of us.

But let’s not be too quick to panic. If American citizens are firm in their resistance, the regime will be checked by a balance of powers, precedent (we’d recommend some political history, e.g. Corey Robin and Stephen Skowronek) and law-making and enforcement regime that is spread between 50 semi-autonomous states (though the power these states enjoy, could see some of them–those governed by hard-right Republican Party politicians–introduce retrogressive laws around trade union organizing,  the minimum wage, abortion or gender rights).

For starters, you can play these sounds to drown out the noise of Donald Trump’s inauguration speech today.

Music Break No. 102 – Winter in America edition