Shell brought me here
A BBC reporter visits the old fields of southeast Nigeria, the site of massive exploitation by Shell Oil--in a helicopter provided by Shell.
Blog
We are not all Senegalese
Senegal's scandal: Thousands of local boys or trafficked from neighboring countries (known as talibés) are forced into begging by religious teachers.
Parisian Africa
Younger generations of artists, many immigrants of African origin, are reconfiguring the arts in France on their own terms.
Photographer Gregory Chris: Shooting Nneka, Meta and Just a Band
Photographer Gregory Chris shot African music stars Nneka, Meta (of Meta and the Cornerstones) and Just a Band in and around New York City. Here he talks about how he came to chose these artists and what he tried to convey. “I wanted to shoot the artists in the streets of the city, in the neighborhoods where they live, their favorite places, inside their homes, in a place they feel comfortable. Basically, I wanted to shoot them as they are.”
Uganda, now you have touched the women
In October 2011, the Ugandan government sent Ingrid Turinawe to the infamous Luzira Prison–Uganda’s Guantánamo–for the treasonable act of walking to work. This week, the State, again, attacked Turinawe and other women activists for the “crime” of standing, speaking out, driving, and generally being. Big mistake.
The Other African election: France’s First Round
Both of the front-runners, incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist François Hollande, have run against FrançAfrique. Easier said than done.
Mahesh Shantaram’s Addis Ababa Diary
Images of Ethiopia by Indian photographer Mahesh Shantaram
In Praise of Jeffrey Gettleman’s Pulitzer
Pulitzer awarded Gettleman $10,000 for "his vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa."
Goldman Sachs’s Angolan interests
When the Financial Times commits an entire article to topics Angolan, it fills my Google news alert for a week.
Friday Bonus Music Break, N°7
Nowadays we’re doing multiple #musicbreaks on Twitter and Facebook when the spirits move us. We figured we’d put the ten favorite ones up every Friday as our #BonusMusicBreak. First up, old school jazz man Pharoah Sanders is still doing it. Here’s a video (uploaded this week on Youtube; recorded last year) of him and his band playing […]
Soviet cinema and African filmmaking
Abderrahmane Sissako’s oblique suggestion of what a ‘socialist friendship’ might be in his first film, "October" (1993) set in a then-declining Soviet Union.
The impotence of the political bourgeoisie
Ousmane Sembene's "Xala" (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal.