Agana-Nsiire Agana's Blog

This article is the first in a series exploring the question of African prosperity in the coming postdigital age. It takes the current race for supremacy in AI amongst wealthy nations as a starting point for critiquing the aims and goals of tech-enabled global domination, and what it would mean for Africa. It lays the foundation for future instalments to explore how the AI Wars, as I dub them, revitalise old debates about ...

Beware of spoilers.

The first season of 3 Body Problem has delivered a lot by way of the plot and characters. While it is undoubtedly a science fiction show — it is based on the so-called three-body problem in physics — it is also does a good job unearthing some of today’s most challenging problems in philosophy. The questions span areas including philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, ethics, and political philosophy. In this article, we’ll look briefly at five of these intriguing problems....

Since its inception, the Black Lives Matter movement has stirred passions every possible way. Arguably one of its greatest achievements is an unprecedented level of global attention to the injustices faced by people identifying as black. At its height, the movement rode a wave that has still not reached the shore of its resolution.

It is a wave powered primarily by the lived realities of millions of black-identifying people in in the United States and much of the Western world. Centuries of margi...

Continued from Part 1 . Reader Beware, spoilers abound!

The chase is ultimately futile, and they return to Dirt with Pappy and his boys as prisoners, but with no water. The town is Dejected. Rango’s lies catch up with him when Rattlesnake Jake shows up, summoned by the Mayor after he is accused of stealing the water by Rango. In a tense dialogue, Rango is upbraided by Rattlesnake Jake who has our hero wrapped in a tight coil. He d...

Reader beware, spoilers abound!

Rango, the 2011 film written by John Logan, is a great movie. It is a about a lizard in search of his identity. Sure, the movie can be interpreted a few different ways: a story of the oppression of the poor by the powerful, the suppression of the masses by opiate of religion, the making and meaning of a hero. But for me, it is really about a question that haunts all of us a...

“The human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a s...

We have to recognise that theology and religious philosophy are not the preserve of long-trained academics. They are produced every day by those living the examined life, asking questions, sometimes in tears, often with sighs, every now and then with unspeakably beautiful songs.

I confess I am among the enthralled throng who have stumbled upon Black Sherif’s song ‘Money’ after being drawn in by the enigmatic vortex that is the ‘Second Sermon’. That son...

Agana-Nsiire Agana

At the recommendation of a friend, I recently watched Rob Lemkin’s 2020 documentary film African Apocalypse, which deals poignantly with the heavy subject of colonialism. African Apocalypse is directed by Rob Lemkin and stars British-Nigerian poet Femi Nylander, who is also its narrator. It was aired by Bertha DocHouse in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 4th February 2021 at 7pm.

African Apocalype tells the story of French imperial co...

A fog came down over Edinburgh
the other day and
still hasnt left.

It swept through Mumbai,
lifted to Lagos,
And sat again on Monday.

It doused many fires along its way
that burned with the pulse
of life.

And soon the honks and blaring sirens
of all the world were silenced. The lights
and smokes and all the blokes who
walked the streets were
gone.

Yet through the dank I see home still,
the yawning distance between us hid
by the awning white fog insipid.

Home, where I need not travel to be;
home,...

Once upon a time while I sat in a trotro (public transportation van), I saw a woman waiting while her coconut was being opened. The setup was typical: a flat-board on four-wheels with green coconuts arrayed on top of it, a large umbrella overhead to keep out the inspecting sun, and a young man hacking skilfully away at the husk on the top part of a coconut. What grabbed attention was the woman standing on the other side of the wheeler. Her face. Her expression. Her mind.

She peered at the coco...