Africa is a Radio, Episode #7
This month's selection of tunes is from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Colombia, the United States, the U.K., Angola, and classics from East Africa.
Culture
The Bullshit Files: The “Mandela Ray Ban Sculpture”
Public art, the vandalism of Nelson Mandela’s legacy for commerce and the spoiling of public space in Cape Town.
Africa Through a Lens
An online archive of photos taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection housed in the UK's National Archives.
Sodade
There's something amazing about not being able to understand lyrics but still being able to comprehend what a song means.
You’re told that you will get used to it
A South African doctor working for MSF writes about her experience working in the Ebola zone in Sierra Leone.
Passports and nations
The writer Taiye Selasi doesn’t seem to realize there is a difference between identity as a subjective, biographical problem and identity as a legal and political reality.
5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann
Born in Bonn in 1985, Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann is a Kenyan and German photographer and filmmaker. She is intrigued by the invisible boundary between individual and collective identities, and fascinated by the influence of ancestral memory, living space and culture on our understanding of ourselves. She is drawn to Lamu, an Island in the Indian Ocean, where The Donkey that Carried the […]
Making African celebrity culture
Considering the proximity of celebrity culture to how capitalism operates in Africa, why is it not given more serious attention?
Every Man Gotta to Decide His Destiny
Survival is an album with a purpose. Released in 1979, it is Bob Marley’s most political recording.
Angry farmworkers on a tractor
Done 'debating' whether “Larney Jou Poes” is free speech? Let's talk about the conditions of farmworkers.
Latest episode of Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s ‘My Song’ series features politically engaged Senegalese rappers
Fed up with what a group of young Senegalese describe as the state of mind of their society being one of ‘defeat’, they decided to start a collective called Y’en a Marre, meaning ‘we are fed up’. Although they came from all walks of life – a mishmash of musicians, activists and journalists – they […]
My barber loves these tunes
Hipsters Don't Dance 'Top 5 World Carnival Tunes' for October 2014.
The Afrobarometer
Inaugurating our series on digital African projects. We'll document projects working to make more resources about Africa’s past and present available online.
How to be an expatriate in Nigeria
Nigerians love expatriates more than they love themselves. Nigeria is expatriate heaven, claims novelist and lawyer, Elnathan John.
5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Dani Kouyaté
In 1995 filmmaker and griot Dani Kouyaté won the Golden Stallion – The award for Best First Film at the pan-African film festival FESPACO – for his first feature Keïta! The Heritage of the Griot. He has since made three more feature films in addition to directing for TV and the stage as well as […]
Children’s Books African Kids Could Relate To
While visiting relatives in Nigeria, I found a children’s bookshop in Lagos with no African children or African languages in their books. That day changed everything.
South African Hip Hop Series: Producer Brian Soko
Brian Soko is not a happy man! Not only is he having to deal with the trauma of a daylight break-in at a cottage he’s renting while on a three-week work-related trip to Jozi, but the rappers he’s supposed to be having a studio session with the next day aren’t picking up their phones. I’ve […]
The Dookoom Debate
What role should media play in the midst of controversial cultural expressions, like songs that address racist violence by white farmers against their workers in South Africa?
South African Hip Hop Series: Video Profile On Rapper Sam Turpin
“The thing about Joburg,” observes rapper and producer Sam Turpin “it’s kind of on the scale of rich and poor.” Sam’s music explores themes of growing up in a changing South Africa. He’s constantly questioning, learning and adjusting according to the dictates of his environment – oftentimes one not receptive and trusting of white people […]
Pan-African fashion that rejects “social entrepreneurship”
Rejecting how African products are marketed to Westerners.