Writer Mike Pflanz and photographer Brendan Bannon’s new site Daily Dispatches: Nairobi “… is an innovative exploration through photojournalism of a fast-evolving 21st-century African city, unfolding day by day in real time.” Pflanz, a Brit, and Bannon, an American, “will spend each day of April searching out stories from all corners of Kenya’s capital, stories […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKOwDQcPwbs Selling desperate people false hope, especially AIDS patients, are common on the African continent–well documented in my native country, South Africa–now there’s this “faith healer” in Tanzania who has people in East Africa traveling thousands of miles for a homebrewed drink that he claims can cure AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and other “incurable diseases.” There’s […]

Recently Al Jazeera English’s media review show, Listening Post, did a breathless profile of South African cartoonist Zapiro and his satirical TV show, ZANEWS.  The insert focused on Zapiro’s outsize influence. The country’s president, Jacob Zuma, is suing Zapiro for libel for how he is portrayed in one of Zapiror’s cartoons.  But it now appears […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikxZvvETnPE Not sure what to make of the video. The video was filmed “in Africa.” Kage Sparks, who calls himself “the African Street Ambassador,” and whose family hails from Kenya and Tanzania, has his “tribe riding for me.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGiLEEX5OuQ&feature=player_embedded&w=500&h=307&rel=] Rakesh Rajani, the head of Tanzanian “citizen-centered initiative”, Twaweza, on the “five key networks that need to be considered and collaborated with in development efforts.” According to the World Bank Blog Rajani’s insights are based on “years of experience working in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.” H/T: Zein Rahemtulla

This December 2010, Kenyan literary magazine, “Kwani?” will publish the top five entries of their “The Kenya I Live In” Short Story Competition. (Over 500 entries were received, the judges read 65 of these and announced the winners in February 2010.) See Kwani?‘s website for more details. Image: Allan Gichigi.

Via Nairobi Style

[slideshow] The German photographer, Rainer Elstermanns, imagined an old photo studio set in rural Kenya in his studio in Berlin. He dressed models in period costumes.  The result is a 17-minute film and a series of 40 recreations.  Elstermann writes that he was inspired by the work of the great African photographers and artists, Samuel […]

“… The Kibera slum in Nairobi is home to between 500,000 and 800,000, living in cramped conditions of almost 3,000 per hectare. In September 2009 the UN-supported relocation of its first inhabitants finally got going – several years late. At this rate the programme (projected cost $1.2bn) will take 1,170 years to complete.” Jean-Christophe Servant writing […]

There’s more to Kenyan popular music than Just a Band (even CNN’s David MacKenzie has taken notice of the band’s viral activity) as Chief Boima at Ghetto Bassquake has shown recently. He has been posting videos and links–based on a recent visit there and with reference to sites such as Get Mziki–of some of the […]