Matthew Kirwin

Aug 2, 2024 | africasacountry.com | Simon Adetona Akindes |Matthew Kirwin |Liz Timbs

As any sports fan knows, the Paris Olympics have arrived. This year’s Games, as with each of these quadrennial festivals of global sport, I’m rooting for everybody Black. Issa Rae said this during the 2017 Emmy Awards, and it is easy to apply this principle to the Olympics, which, with its provocative patriotism and proxy-war-like “nation vs. nation” orientation, are the perfect forum for using a broader diasporic focus to push back against that hypernationalism.

Jul 24, 2024 | africasacountry.com | Simon Adetona Akindes |Matthew Kirwin |Liz Timbs

On Friday evening, the world’s attention will lock in on the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games as they return to Paris, the birthplace of Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Games. Over its 128-year history, de Coubertin’s Olympiad has experienced some quite radical changes. His inaugural 1896 Games in Athens saw participation from just a dozen nations, while 206 are expected to take part this summer in Paris.