TROUBLEMAKERS

Politicians pass laws, but culture shapes belief, and belief shapes everything else. In this episode, Thompson Luzendi sits with Sefu Sanni to unpack the battle of ideas: how culture becomes the real terrain of power...

What does an ideal world look like? Given Kapolyo answers without hesitation: one where inequality does not exist, and leadership is not a male sport. In this Smoke Signals, she lays out her feminist utopia, then...

What makes someone walk to the utility company with a placard instead of posting complaints online? Nalishebo Sinyama has been answering that since 2019, when a load shedding protest in her Lusaka suburb turned her into...

TM Smoke Signals: Silence, by Sylvie Baziga A spoken word piece by Sylvie Baziga on the slow deaths that leave no bullet holes: the swallowed cry, the smothered dream, the word never spoken because speaking means...

Host: Thompson Luzendi (Zambia) Guest: Joe Kobuthi - philosopher, public theologian, political analyst, and curator of The Elephant Pan-African magazine. The rules of the house were written by someone who was never...

Human rights defender, activist, and presidential candidate for the Republic of Kenya, Boniface Mwangi joins Smoke Signals for a direct, unfiltered conversation on what it will actually take for Kenya's Gen Z movement...

A spoken word piece by Frank Amani on the cycles we inherit and refuse to break. Same Stupidity confronts the ways human beings repeat patterns across generations, dressing up the same vicious circle in new clothes...

Guest: Wilson (Willynkya), film & TV producer, content creator, and influencer based in Tanzania Rodgers sits down with Willynkya to unpack "Put Your Target in a Decision Dilemma" (Andrew Boyd & Joshua Kahn Russell)...

In this powerful spoken-word piece, poet Opolot Emmanuel Solomon paints a vision of an Africa that has moved beyond division, dependency, conflict, and limitation. Through repetition, imagination, and conviction, he...

What does “development” really mean—and who is forced to pay for it? Meet the Guest Ziada is a climate and gender justice advocate working at the frontlines of renewable energy and community resistance. Trained in...

What happens when poetry becomes testimony? What happens when a voice carries the grief, rage, memory, and survival of an entire people? In this deeply emotional and politically charged episode of Troublemakers, we...

How do we move from gathering stories to creating impact? How can we be more strategic about story gathering? And who truly owns the narrative - organisations or the communities themselves? In this episode of...

How do we defend rights in a world full of misinformation? In this episode, guest host Jesué Mutanava speaks with Steward Muhindo, a human rights activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo and member of Lutte pour...

In Super Hero, Phindu Banda honors the quiet courage of everyday people who rise, endure, and keep going. From childhood dreams to life’s hardest moments, this piece reminds us that survival, resilience, and showing up...

Why do movements that aim to transform the world so often fall apart from within? And what happens when the gap between our values and our actions becomes too wide to ignore? In this episode of Trouble Makers, we sit...