Listen "Origins of the scam"
Episode Synopsis
Africa is a Country is happy to announce our new collaboration with The Nigerian Scam podcast, which focuses on examining how episodic iterations of audacious fraud in Nigerian history and contemporary politics intertwine with the ongoing struggle for African independence in the intricate web of global capitalism.In the first syndicated episode, Sa’eed Husaini, OAG, and Emeka Ugwu consider the uses and abuses of centering “the scam” as a tool for understanding the failures of independence and the emergence of capitalism in Nigeria. Why did Nigeria come to be associated with the classic internet scam, a.k.a. “yahoo-yahoo” (among other fraudulent activities)? To what extent can the phenomenon of fraud in Nigeria be neatly separated from “legitimate” forms of capital accumulation, such as in the oil sector, the music industry, or Nollywood? Is Nigeria’s case really unique, or is it a slight variation of the failures of petty bourgeois-led independence movements in Africa? Sa’eed is a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja, and a regional editor for Africa Is a Country. OAG is a food security management postgraduate with a passion for revolutionary politics and discourse who lives in Hull, UK, and Emeka is a Lagos-based book critic/co-founder of Wawa Book Review. He is also a data analyst.
More episodes of the podcast The AIAC Podcast
We must learn to sit in the dark together
21/10/2025
Nepal's Gen Z reckoning
26/09/2025
After the uprising
18/09/2025
De-dollarization from below
23/06/2025
What's left of Nigeria's feminist left?
30/04/2025
Between Nkrumah and neoliberalism
17/03/2025
Africa's sibling rivalry
11/12/2024
What is free and fair?
21/10/2024
Fuel's errand
10/10/2024
Business as Usual?
19/09/2024
ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.