N°01
Ghana
Ghana, Nkrumah and the Accra Riots
The riots the empire pretended were nothing. And the man who turned them into a whole new country.
Season 3 · New episodesnow pouring
African history,
over a drink… or three.
Unexpected stories of African decolonisation. Dictators, coups, betrayals, spies, bad decisions and the odd love affair. Told with humour, rigour and a small amount of shade.
Weekly · MondaysEst. Bar Afrique13 dossiers this season
Now serving
Ghana, Nkrumah & the Accra Riots
new episode ↓
- 28Video dossiers
- 13S3 episodes
- 4Platforms
- 1Group chat
About the show
African history,
without the dust.
hosted by →
Sarah & Line
Bar Afrique makes African history conversational without compromising on accuracy. It takes stories often trapped in textbooks and turns them into episodes that feel funny, dramatic, human and strange enough to be true.
Every Monday, Sarah Masiyiwa and Line Talla open a new dossier. Coups, crown jewels, hostage crises, cold war betrayals, the odd forbidden romance. Serious research, unserious delivery.
think of it as the bar tab of African history.
Season 3 syllabus
Pinned to the wall.
Thirteen dossiers, delivered every Monday. Bring a drink. Take notes. Argue with a friend.
Week 01
Mon 9 June
Comoros
Comoros, on repeat
"The islands that kept getting couped."
Week 02
Mon 16 June
Togo
Togo and the very first coup
"How independence turned on a single Sunday morning."
Week 03
Mon 23 June
Ghana
Ghana, Nkrumah and the Accra Riots
"Ex-servicemen, boycotts and a very British ambush."
Week 04
Mon 30 June
Botswana
Botswana and a very forbidden romance
"A king, an English typist, and an empire losing its mind."
Week 05
Mon 7 July
DRC
DRC, Lumumba and the CIA
"One speech, one plane, one very ugly plot."
Week 06
Mon 14 July
DRC
The hostage crisis nobody talks about
"Stanleyville, mercenaries and a rescue that reads like fiction."
Week 07
Mon 21 July
Egypt
Egypt, on repeat
"Nasser, the canal and a very cold summer."
Week 08
Mon 28 July
Liberia
Liberia, and coming back from America
"Freed people, borrowed flags and a country built on complicated ground."
Week 09
Mon 4 August
Mali
Mali and the great Timbuktu book heist
"Manuscripts, motorbikes and the librarians who outran an army."
Week 10
Mon 11 August
Madagascar
Madagascar, on repeat
"Queens, uprisings, and a colony that fought like hell."
Week 11
Mon 18 August
Namibia
Namibia, the Herero and Nama, and the banned book
"The 20th century's first genocide, and the words nobody was allowed to read."
Week 12
Mon 25 August
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea, dictators and the mind
"Macías, Obiang and a country ruled from a very dark place."
Week 13
Mon 1 September
Zanzibar
Zanzibar, prophecies and holy missions
"Sultans, spice, a very short war and a revolution nobody expected."
Featured dossiers
If you only listen
to five this season.
N°02
Botswana
Botswana and a very forbidden romance
Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, and how a love story rearranged southern Africa.
N°03
DRC
DRC, Lumumba and the CIA
Patrice Lumumba lasted 200 days. This is why, who wanted him gone, and what they were willing to do to make it happen.
N°04
Mali
Mali and the great Timbuktu book heist
How Mali's most brilliant men and women smuggled centuries of scholarship out of the city, one crate at a time.
N°05
Namibia
Namibia, the Herero and Nama, and the banned book
German South West Africa, the concentration camps history forgot, and the book that finally said it out loud.
more where those came from →
See the full syllabusWhy it works
The kind of history you actually forward to a friend.
01
History without the dusty classroom energy
No lectures. No slides. Just two hosts, a shared document and a lot of unhelpful footnotes.
02
Serious research, unserious delivery
The bibliography is real. So is the shade. We do the reading so you can enjoy the drama.
03
African stories with global consequences
Rubber, cobalt, cold wars, cotton, uranium. Everything that shaped the last century started somewhere on the continent.
04
Built for people who love politics, culture, drama and shade
If you screenshot podcast quotes and send them to your group chat, welcome home.
As seen in
The Southern African Times
· Culture desk · 2026Arts & Culture · Podcasts
The Southern African Times
Bar Afrique returns with a new season exploring Africa's hidden history.
"A podcast that makes decolonisation feel like the group chat you always wanted to be in."
The show has built a loyal following by proving African history can be witty, dramatic and deeply human. A generation of listeners who never thought of history as their thing now text each other after every drop.
Read the receipts →clipped for the fridge
The hosts
Two women, one bar,
a lot of footnotes.
Sarah Masiyiwa
Documentary producer, co-host
Sarah spends her days making documentaries about power, memory and the people history tries to forget. On Bar Afrique she is the one with the timeline, the primary sources and the very specific opinion about who lied first.
Line Talla
Journalist and writer, co-host
Line writes about culture, politics and the strange shape of modern African identity. On Bar Afrique she is the one asking the question you were too polite to ask, and then asking it again.
Syllabus drops
Between episodes, from the group chat.
Field notes, receipts, reading lists and the occasional voice memo. The stuff that doesn't fit in an episode but is too good to lose.
Field noteDRCThu 3 July
Why the Lumumba episode took three months to write
We went in thinking it was one CIA cable and a toothpaste joke. Then we found the Belgian parliamentary report. Then the Church Committee. Then a police commissioner's diary. Every source we opened added another name to the list of people who wanted Patrice Lumumba gone.
This is the episode we've been most nervous to publish. It is also the one we're proudest of.
DossierBotswanaMon 30 June
Six years of letters, one very stubborn marriage
Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams wrote to each other almost every week of his exile. The British filed their letters. The South Africans filed their letters. Ruth kept writing anyway.
We pulled our favourite lines for the new episode. Bring tissues, or gin.
On the rocksSun 22 June
The Bar Afrique reading list, June edition
Four books we could not stop quoting this month: Nzongola-Ntalaja on the Congo, Susan Williams on Botswana, Jean Allman on Asante, and Ludo De Witte on the Lumumba plot.
We read them so you can pretend you did at dinner. You're welcome.
ReceiptGhanaWed 18 June
The Accra riots, mapped street by street
We rebuilt the 1948 march route using the Watson Commission report and colonial police records. Turns out the shootings happened almost exactly where a Shoprite is today.
History doesn't repeat, but it does keep its receipts.
Field noteFri 6 June
Behind the mic: what our recording setup actually looks like
Two mics, one very forgiving flatmate, and a bottle of something between us. That's the studio.
We filmed a short walk-through for the newsletter and Instagram. Yes, the plant is real. No, it does not have a name.
New drops most weeks. The good ones become episodes.
Where to find us
Pull up a stool.
New episodes every Monday. Pick your platform of choice. Follow, subscribe, rate five stars, tell one friend. That is the whole deal.
The newsletter · Join the next round
Get the receipts.
Reading lists, behind-the-scenes notes, footnotes we cut for time, and the stories too messy for the episode. One email a week. Never on a Monday morning.
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