Remember that little video campaign called #Kony2012? Yeah, we wish we could forget too. Few videos have reached the magnitude of pestilence that the non-profit Invisible Children’s video achieved this year. By transforming a complex regional crisis involving the Lord’s Resistance Army into a simple, manufactured (and in some ways factually false) narrative about the […]
The London Olympics starts tonight and certain streets of the city are swollen with purple-shirted volunteers, track-suited athletes and tourists. In Hyde Park, the continent of Africa has been reincarnated as ‘Africa Village’ and ‘Africa Land’; the emphasis is on colour and diversity, mass acceptance of bland positivisms, but the whole event feels mainly about corporate […]
It is a good year to be Senegalese. Yesterday, Senegal beat Oman, 2-0, to qualify for the London Olympics football tournament. A proper celebration followed. They will be off to join Egypt, Gabon and Morocco in representing Africa at the tournament. This follows the country’s recent success in carrying a very-relatively peaceful elections and enshrining […]
At the recent Film Africa film festival in London, the new Ethiopian feature film “Atletu” (The Athlete) was screened to a sold-out audience. Directed by Rasselas Lakew and Davey Frankel, it is a portrayal of Abebe Bikila, the Ethiopian runner who won two Olympic marathons in a row, and broke the world record in Rome […]
