Africa Is a Country

Naija, London

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Naija, London

By
Sean Jacobs

Photographer Liz Johnson Artur, first arrived in Peckham, London, 20 years ago to live. A neighborhood of mostly high rise public housing blocks, Peckham is considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in Britain, is associated with high crime and high unemployment. Liz (who has been featured on AIAC before) writes in an email, that the occasional, mostly sensational, headlines of Peckham, totally misrepresent life as it is for a majority of people there. The people of Peckham “… has treated me well and make it a good place.” What Peckham also has is diversity. More than a third of the residents are immigrants from Africa, almost 20% are from the Caribbean. Smaller numbers of whites and South Asians make up the rest. There’s also been some gentrifying. The heart of Peckham is Rye Lane, its commercial strip. Liz has been photographing the denizens and visitors of Rye Lane. Here, with her permission, are a selection of her images of Rye Lane. More photographs of Rye Lane on Liz’s site, Black Balloon Archive.


Further Reading

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.