A Short History of the Slave Trade in Nigeria
A public service as a response to Nigeria's removal of history from its school curriculum
History
Where were you when Chris Hani was killed?
Chris Hani, a prominent ANC and Communist Party leader, was murdered on April 10, 1993, by white racists. The writer remembers hearing the news.
What’s it like to be Somali in Kenya
Kenyans employ all kinds of crude and unconscionable fascist statements towards anything Somali.
The ‘Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy’ claim
Today's post is about economic systems, the World Bank and the IMF, and whether they have they helped Nigeria or not.
Fela Kuti on Film
Who has the right to speak about the late Nigerian Afrobeat king, Fela Kuti, and how is that right earned? Also, what do you exclude? What do you include?
When Chinua Achebe went to Scandinavia in 1988
It is striking that that the topics his hosts discussed with Achebe in those days are still animating us.
An Afropean Journey
Johny Pitts could not find a sense of self in his corner of black Britain, so he started to wonder if there was a collective black consciousness on the European continent.
When Salazar met one of Lumumba’s murderers
António Oliveira Salazar founded Portugal’s New State dictatorship in 1933. Some Portuguese still remember him fondly.
Steve McQueen and the Dutch
The Dutch are quick to celebrate "12 Years a Slave," but what if Steve McQueen had decided to make the film about Dutch slavery and colonial history?
Africa is more queerer than you think
Both in and outside of Africa, there is an argumentative frenzy around the instability of gender and sex and non-conforming performances of gender.
Cinema of disquiet
Alain Resnais and Chris Marker's 1953 film "Statues also die" should be appreciated more for how it challenged European, especially French, approaches to African art.
“Congo Dialogues.” Alice Seeley Harris and Sammy Baloji on exhibit in London
The London gallery Autograph ABP is currently exhibiting Alice Seeley Harris’ well-known 1904 Congo Reform Association
Are Nigerians the New Asians?
Amy Chua's racist nonsense about "model minorities," peddling the lie that elites are on top because they're better.
John Akomfrah, Stuart Hall and the Film Essay
Akomfrah's films gives voice to the legacy of the African diaspora in Europe, and his experimental approach to narrative and structure helped pave the way for the re-emergence of the "essay film" today.
New Photography Book Depicts the South African Social Landscape
Between 2012 and 2013, an exercise took place known as the France South Africa Season. This
The social history of a “moral panic”
There is no evidence that Nigeria is under attack from gays and lesbians or the nation's "culture" being eroded from within by "waves of sexual marauders."
The Year of Blackface in the Netherlands
Interview with Verene Shepherd, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on People of African Descent.
The troubled border of the colonial and postcolonial
Jean-Marie Teno's film, 'Une Feuille dans le Vent' (A Leaf in the Wind), lays bare the affective costs of public silence in Cameroon.
How a coup d’état drove a scholar to social media
Call me a curmudgeon, but I had never really understood the value of social media. I
The Prisoner and his Pin-up Girl
Apartheid's prisons tolerated 'National Geographic; For Nelson Mandela, who knew better, it was porn.