Vampire teeth
Annual review: Hipsters Don't Dance's "Top 10 African-Caribbean Collaborations" of 2014
Culture
Slave Biographies
Last week, I discussed the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and two of its offshoot projects, the African Names Database and the African Origins Project. While the focus of my piece was meant to be on the quantitative data on slaving voyages, readers responded most strongly to these connected projects, which aim to recover lost names and identities […]
Decolonising white Berlin
The myth of an all-white, Christian German society largely persists. So does the idea that anyone who is black only arrived here in the late 20th century or the 21st as refugees, or for economic reasons. Though many Germans actually remain unaware or do not acknowledge it, German colonialism did exist—and no, it was not […]
The Kiswahili Prize for African Literature
Can an African language literature prize be inherently Pan-African?
Why we can’t breathe
The last few years have revealed that, particularly at the state level, justice for Black Americans is an impossibility.
The Invisible Children Highlight Reel
Nine conclusions we can draw from the hype machine that was the viral advocacy campaign, Kony 2012. One of them was that ordinary Ugandans saw right through it.
Feel the Rainbow
Designer Akosua Afriye-Kumi: "A lot of designers take or find inspiration from Africa, I want to do the same but actually be in Africa doing it."
A New Kind of Romance
Nigerian publisher: it is time the continent’s consumer class gets romance lit that is entertaining and reflect the complexity of their lives.
Pure Bacardi house fun
Hipsters Don't Dance Top World Carnival Tunes for November 2014.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
When I was first given the opportunity to write this weekly series, I reached out to a few friends and colleagues who work in the digital realm for suggestions on possible projects that I could feature. One of the first projects that was suggested to me, by fellow AIAC contributor Jill Kelly, when I started […]
5 Questions for a Filmmaker: Kivu Ruhorahoza
Ruhorahoza wished he made "Sans Soleil" by Chris Marker: "The film is a good example of the work of a filmmaker who has reached maturity and an artist who is truly free."
Purely as artifacts
Mainstream journalism must stop treating Timbuktu and Timbuktians as artifacts, focusing mainly on manuscripts.
Cape Town, Segregation and Hip Hop
It’s very difficult for Spaza (hip hop done mostly in Xhosa) and Afrikaans hip hop to organically co-exist.
African pop reawakens its political roots
Nigerian band VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes wants to open the world's eyes to the political and social realities of the continent through a catchy and danceable repertoire.
Sweden’s love affair with Pippi Longstocking and “definitions” of racism
Recently The New York Times picked up on one of Sweden’s latest “race controversies”: The Swedish national broadcaster announced it would broadcast an edited version of a 1969 Pippi Longstocking TV-series. The edited version excludes a scene where Pippi plays Chinese by slanting her eyes and Pippi’s mainly absent dad is just a king instead of a ‘negro-king’. Despite Pippi’s creator, […]
Remembering Slavery in South Africa
People forget that for 176 years, racial slavery was the central institution in a large part of the territories that would come to form South Africa.
Mohamed so-and-so from such-and-such
Ridley Scott's "Exodus" and deeply rooted issues of bigotry and racism in Hollywood.
Lessons for black South Africa in black America
Many middle-class black South Africans hold poor and working-class blacks in disregard if not disdain, and believe poor blacks hold themselves back.
The African Sources of Knowledge Digital Library
Organized at Harvard University, this digital library contains rare handwritten and out-of-print African language documents of non-latinate scripts.
The history of Nigeria’s 1990s democracy movement
What has been the personal legacy and costs to the Abiola women in Nigeria's struggle for democracy.