Hospitality and Power in the Teranga Republic

In this episode of The Africanist Podcast, host Bamba Ndiaye sits down with Dr. Emily Jinan Riley of El Colegio de México to explore her groundbreaking book, Teraanga Republic (Indiana University Press 2025)—a sharp, intimate, and deeply layered examination of Senegalese hospitality, politics, and everyday life. Dr. Riley unpacks how “teraanga,” often celebrated as a national ethos of generosity and welcome, becomes a powerful political language that shapes belonging, citizenship, and the performance of national identity.

Together, they trace the book’s ethnographic roots, its challenge to romanticized narratives of Senegalese exceptionalism, and its insights into how ordinary people navigate the tensions between cultural ideals and lived realities. Dr. Riley unpacks theory and street‑level experience, offering listeners a vivid sense of how hospitality becomes both a moral horizon and a political tool. The episode opens a window into a Senegal that is at once familiar and startlingly new—one where teraanga is not just a virtue, but a terrain of negotiation, aspiration, and struggle.