“You need to cut your nails if you want to be involved in this kind of work,” Jairus, the experienced farmer and caretaker, said disapprovingly. This was Rosa’s first attempt at planting a tree on her newly acquired farm, located in Kenya’s Rift Valley. All the farmhands’ eyes were on her as she dug and shovelled. [...]
There is a proverb in Timbuktu, the legendary medieval city in Mali’s desert, that says: “The ink of a scholar is more precious than the blood of a martyr.” What Ahmed Baba, the 16th-century intellectual who said it, would make of recent developments is hard to imagine. At the multimillion-dollar Timbuktu institute bearing his name, [...]
Soon after Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, my parents bought a house in the suburbs in Bulawayo. This meant that I began my primary education in a school that was formerly reserved for white kids. I was in such close proximity to them that I was able to touch their hair. I marvelled at [...]
Nigeria’s 21-year-old film industry is considered the second largest in the world; a profitable movie-making machine that churns out about 1000 films annually. Nollywood movies enjoy a wide audience outside the continent. This month, seven feature-length films will be screened at the annual NollywoodWeek in Paris. The film festival runs from May 30 to June 2 [...]
Their project might not sound like much: On Wednesday college students in Ghana launched a tiny model of a satellite the size of a Coke can on a big yellow balloon. It went up to a height of 165 metres and then came back down attached to a parachute. Ambitious organisers in the West African [...]
“God’s case, no appeal” is the name of a long-past-retirement-age taxi in Chinua Achebe’s novel, No Longer at Ease. This pithy aphorism is right up there with “We mend broken hearts” and “Don’t steal, the government hates competition”, as freely dispensed taxi-wisdom goes in many African cities. A fan of most things offside, I feel [...]
Nathalie is a single mum who struggles to clothe her little boy and pay the rent. She plays the flute and the sax. Josephine gets up at 4.30am every day to sell omelettes at the market. She is in the chorus. Papy is a part-time mechanic who also runs his own pharmacy. He plays the [...]
A South African feature film shot in less than 11 days may be up for a Guinness World Record. The attempt officially kicked off at 9am on Wednesday, May 1, for which no preparation was allowed beforehand, while many of the team’s peers were reaping the benefits of a mid-week public holiday. Ten days and [...]
My Mother’s Songs is set in an African landscape and examines inter-generational trauma. The film depicts a series of traumatic experiences through the eyes of several young women who are desperately trying to make sense of their existence. Tanzanian writer and director Erick Msumanje, who was recently awarded the highly-competitive Princess Grace Award for filmmaking, has indeed managed to “push [...]
Kenya’s ambitious urban farmers
Timbuktu’s literary gems in a fight for surival
The fastest film ever made
Going to great lengths for beautiful hair
