Africa Is a Country

'Emerging' Photographers

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

'Emerging' Photographers

By
Tom Devriendt

Paris Photo will celebrate its 15th anniversary at the Grand Palais this year. With a “Place of honour for Africa (…) From Bamako to Cape Town.”  This focus on Africa follows focuses on “Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, the Nordic Countries, Italy, Japan, the Middle East and central Europe.”

Les Rencontres de Bamako exhibits the work of Abdoulaye Barry (Chad), Mohamed Camara (that’s a photo from his Souvenirs series above), Fatoumata Diabate (Mali), Husain and Hasan Essop and Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Uche Okpa-Iroha (Nigeria), Jehad Nga (Kenya/Libya), Nyani Quarmyne (Ghana), Arturo Bibang (Equatorial Guinea), Baudouin Mouanda (Congo-Brazzaville), Nyaba Ouedraogo and Nestor Da (Burkina Faso). Because there’s only so many African photographers to choose from these days all of them seemingly caught in a perpetual state of “emergence” –even if they’ve been around for years.

Les Rencontres de Bamako runs from 1 November 2011 to 1 January 2012.

Further Reading

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.