AfricaIs aCountry

Being Black in Germany

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

Being Black in Germany

By
Tom Devriendt

Sharon Dodua Otoo is hoping to edit the book series ‘Witnessed’, written in English by black authors, who live or have lived in Germany. She says:

The idea for the series came to me one day as I thought about how little people know about life in Germany as a Black person – or how dated this knowledge is. Even within Germany, discourse around ethnicity and diversity goes something like this: “if the foreigners learn German, they will integrate then there will be no problems”. And yet, Black people have lived in Germany for over 300 years. Black Germans can be found in all fields from science to art, from education to sport, from music to entrepreneurship. Where there are problems, these rarely have to do with lack of proficiency in the German language. It is (…) incredible how little voice Black people within Germany have, despite decades of activism, academic research, creative publications and performances. So I thought – fine! If we don’t find recognition within Germany, we surely can on an international stage.

There are also these video presentations of some of the project participants: Philipp Khabo Kopsell, Joshua Kwesi Aikins and Mirjam Nunning.

All the details here.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

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.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

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.