About DE-0

DE-0, read /de'sif'R/, publishes long-form essays and reporting on the African continent and its former colonies: the histories behind the headlines, the politics that shape them, and the culture that outlives both. Two to four pieces a month, written to last longer than a news cycle.

The written essay is the core. Around it sits a deliberate sequence of formats. We suggest reading (or watching) in this order:

Briefing → Explainer → Article → Podcast

• The Briefing: short cinematic films that deliver one sharp claim or corrected memory.
• The Explainer: structured visual essays that unfold the fuller narrative, context, and stakes.
• The Article: the permanent, argued version published here.
• The Podcast: a longer conversation that stages debate and alternative perspectives, testing and expanding what was written.

Each layer points to the others. The site remains the durable home of the work.

Who makes this

DE-0 is a one-man project. Skander Kacem writes the essays and built the site. Claude, Anthropic's AI model, researches, audits, and drafts under the standing rules at /method. Nothing publishes without the author's decision, and the author answers for every line.

Editorial approach

We work primarily from the European archival record (colonial administration documents, mission reports, travel accounts, and the secondary literature built on them) because that is where the densest written evidence still sits. But we read those archives with a fixed set of rules.

First, African oral tradition and local historiography are treated as legitimate and necessary counter-sources, not as decorative colour. When an oral strand contradicts or complicates the written record, it is given weight rather than dismissed as "unreliable."

Second, we read the archives against their own grain. We do not accept at face value any author, administrator, or missionary who claims moral goodness, civilising purpose, or rightfulness for himself or his project. Self-justifying language is treated as evidence of interest, not as neutral description. We look first for the negative: what is being concealed, what violence is being renamed, what local agency is being erased, and what costs are being externalised.

The goal is not to invert the archive into simple accusation, but to refuse its preferred self-portrait.

Corrections are published promptly, named, and dated. The full record of changes lives on the Corrections page.

The house

• Mission: what the publication is for.
• Method: the standing house rules. Versioned; amendments stay on the record.
• Corrections: errors, named and dated.
• On the Name: what the name means.
• A production note: how the essays are made.

Contact

Pitches, corrections, and questions: desifr.com@gmail.com.