Sipho Kings

Given the corruption in the West, it’s wild how people in its institutions can talk about that corruption without using the word corruption.

Makes your brain want to tear in half.

One thing I love about South Africa is that people ain’t afraid to call a spade a spade.

So many conversations are universal. Chats about people doing humans things. Mundane chats. Big picture chats.

We have more in common than the algorithms and power-grabbers would like us to think.

Chatbots out there taking over a role white men used to monopolise.

Via www.cjr.org/tow_center/w... @columjournreview.bsky.social

In retrospect the word cool could have been another word. Something to do with their being tools for the billionaire class to extract even more wealth and oppress even more people. Rather than being enablers of humanity or some such more hopeful iteration.

Robots and AI would probably be cool if they didn’t arrive in a world built to enrich billionaires.

What I don’t understand about Americans is that they keep making jerky when Biltong exists.

Our @thecontinent.org newspaper cover from June 2020. The more things change the ...

Subscribe | The Continent Subscribing to quality African journalism is easy and free.

We are just shy of our goal of 30 000 subscribers - 70 people to be exact. Top shelf journalism about Africa from African reporters, photographers, illustrators and editors is right here. For free. Sign up, or pass it on to someone who’d appreciate it.

Newspapers need more illustrations, photographs and cartoons.

Meet this moment with more quality journalism.

The cover of issue 189 of The Continent is illustrated by cartoonist Gado. It's a send-up of the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 which carved Africa amongst thee European powers. Instead of Africa being carved up however, it's the Democratic Republic of Congo being carved up amongst the leaders from the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) who are meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. At the head of the table is Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu Hassan. They are meeting to discuss the conflict between the DRC government and Rwandan-backed M23 soldiers.

All Protocol Observed

Welcome to Issue 189 of The Continent.

M23 fighters are marching on to take a second city in the DRC. The Tanzanian president is hosting a leader’s conference to address the crisis. But Tanzania is not a disinterested party.

Read it here: bit.ly/TheContinent...

After DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model, drove down the stock prices of Silicon Valley AI companies, they accused it of being all the things they are. OpenAI says DeepSeek devs stole its work. Critics say it has its makers’ biases and won’t answer pesky questions about Tibet. In other words: it is AI.

How Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories Palestinian news outlets have seen a steep drop in audience engagement since October 2023.

Yet another example of why news dies when it relies on the algorithms of others to get to people - Meta doesn’t care about public interest www.bbc.com/news/article...

The Continent Reader Survey 2024 All protocol observed. Our goal is for The Continent to be the most important source of African news for anyone, anywhere. To get there, we need your help and we want to learn from you. When we sta...

All Protocol Observed.
It’s your turn to take the mic: please respond to our survey on how we fared in 2024. This helps us to improve the newspaper. It also helps us to make the case for the funding that allows us to keep doing quality journalism.

At its best, journalism tells us a bit more about the world around us, and the people we share it with. We need more empathy.

This is my favourite response so far to our @thecontinent.org Big Annual Survey™. And I love that someone shared it with us.

Our era will be remembered in the weight of tote bags left behind.

The @thecontinent.org’s growth to 23,000 subscribers has been entirely organic. Based on our readers sharing the newspaper. No algorithms. No search engine gaming.

If you’re a reader, we want to know how we can improve. Please do our survey.

Chad and Senegal are the latest Francophone African countries to re-align their relationship with France, underscoring how injustices by former colonial governments serve as a potent political force. My latest in @thecontinent.org with many thanks to @simonallison.bsky.social and @namlyd.bsky.social

*worked
sigh

Our @thecontinent.org newsroom has been around for nearly five years. We've worker remotely that entire time, with staff in six countries. That's hard. Really hard. It's also a testament to hiring great people (like our illustrator Wynona) and giving them space to do their thing.

We’ll be reading newspapers on Mars.

Made my first pumpkin thing. Admittedly, this was a while ago. But something something slow news.

People of Bluesky - @thecontinent.bsky.social is your thing: a *finishable* weekly English-language paper, readable in Signal/WhatsApp, full of crisp, excellent #journalism from across #Africa.

👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

I don't know how else to put it but I love the way The Continent is written with the reader in mind.

Are you looking for quality African journalism, and you miss the curation that comes from weekly newspapers?

We got you.

Subscribe and get a free newspaper each week. It’s built to look great on the device you read on.

And sometimes we put mermaids on the cover.

Peter, thanks for giving us a shout-out 🙂 this thing is a labour of love.

(Yes, this is an ever-so-slightly delayed response)