Africa Is a Country

The African Lion Hunt

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

The African Lion Hunt

By
Mari Haugaa Engh

Some young Danes thought they'd have some fun with colonialism.

Facebook.

At this year’s edition of Roskilde Festival outside Copenhagen in Denmark, guests were invited to join a group of brave, self-declared, male Imperialists from Denmark on an African Expedition, circa 1814. The themed festival camp entitled Afrika-Expeditionen was set up by a group Danish of experts in various scientific fields, such as (French) Security, Medicine, Ethnography, Anthropology, Ornithology, and offered festivalgoers the opportunity to join their journey of ‘scientific’ inquiry into local customs, rituals and dancing. As with all great “explorers,” the Danish Imperialists set out to explore the Dark Continent with a suitably re-drawn and re-named map of Africa.

On Tuesday, July 1st, the brave men of Afrika-Expeditionen hosted a “Lion Hunt.” After several months of exhausting exploration the Danish Imperialists claimed not to have the strength to conquer the beast they have discovered near to their camp. Hence they appealed to Natives for assistance (because we all know that these large feral felines are a real hazard in the Danish countryside…).  In exchange, generous bounties will be awarded to the best hunter, followed by a real ‘hunting party’ to ‘hot African beats.’

unnamed-1

Continuing the perverse collapse of festival revelry with ‘scientific’ inquiry of the African territories of Gongo and Jongo, Afrika-Expeditionen appeal to Danish saviour complexes and offer festival-goers with humanitarian inclinations a ‘Malaria Party.’ On this night, Danes determined to conquer the dangerous disease plaguing Natives and Imperialists alike, will administer a special medicinal concoction of Gin and Tonic to those in need.

In a Scandinavian context shaped by notions of humanitarianism and multiculturalism, supposedly humorous endeavors such as Africa-Expeditionen sustain claims to colonial innocence and non-participation in colonial projects in Africa. These kinds of ‘artistic’ and ‘creative’ projects close down the possibility of meaningful engagements with historical and present reality of Scandinavian- African relations.

Here’s their Facebook page and the WordPress blog.

Further Reading

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.

Colonize then, deport now

Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

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.