Category: Lifestyle

Lagos store brings modern African luxury to Nigeria’s rich

The interior of the Alara retail store on Victoria Island, Lagos. (Pic: AFP)
The interior of the Alara retail store on Victoria Island, Lagos. (Pic: AFP)

Take a sought-after architect, add the king of “new Africa cuisine” and a smattering of famous designers, and you get a concept-store in Lagos that seeks to bring modern African luxury to Nigeria’s ultra-rich.

The chaotic, cosmopolitan metropolis has largely failed to cater for its mega-rich minority despite a big appetite for high-end shopping and eating in a country that houses 11 of Africa’s 50 biggest fortunes, according to Forbes magazine.

So, Reni Folawiyo, a businesswoman married to one of the 11 – multi-millionaire Tunde Folawiyo – decided to create Alara, a four-storey building housing a mix of African fashion, design and art and a selection of work by Western designers, complete with a gourmet restaurant.

Nestled in the heart of Lagos, the store does not attract droves of shoppers in a country where the vast majority still lives on less than $2 a day, but it already has its share of discreet regulars who rarely leave the building empty-handed.

David Adjaye building

The price tags are in dollars and often count several zeroes, aimed at customers who are used to travelling far and wide and shopping abroad.

But while they can afford items in New York and Paris luxury stores, these don’t necessarily always cater for the tastes of African women or their body shape.

“We like colour, we’re dramatic, adornment is our way of expression,” says Folawiyo.

Enter Alara, which she says is geared towards “the flamboyance of the Africans”, from the retro, multi-coloured dresses by Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean, futuristic glasses by Kenya’s Cyrus Kabiru to the python bags made by Nigeria’s Zashadu.

The store also has a personal shopping service on offer to cater for customers’ varying needs.

“We are specific in terms of our bodies. We don’t necessarily fit into a sort of international mould, in terms of the size and shape,” says Folawiyo.

The building itself – an imposing black and orange-ochre bloc whose square, openwork patterns bring to mind Nigeria’s traditional Adire textile – was designed by David Adjaye.

The store is the first major work on African soil by the British architect of Ghanaian origin, who is also behind Washington’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others.

‘A cultural re-awakening’

It’s a first for Nigerian designer Duro Olowu too, who grew up in Lagos but now spends his time between London and New York.

The man who counts US First Lady Michelle Obama among his customers had initially refused to have his creations sold in Lagos, but was so taken by Alara that he allowed the store to showcase them.

“Lagos was seen as a mishmash of badly presented things,” Olowu says of the 20-million-strong heaving city better known for its giant traffic jams and poor infrastructure.

“I wanted my clothes to be stocked somewhere that represented everything I believed in. And Alara is stylish but also cultural.

“This store is also a place where young people can walk in and be inspired,” he added.

Fashion aside, a gourmet restaurant is also due to open soon on the ground floor.

The menu will be drawn up by Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam, one of the biggest names in contemporary African cuisine who owns several restaurants in New York.

Like Olowu, this is his first collaboration in Africa, which he left in 1989 but still remains his main source of inspiration.

On the menu, dishes that blend African street food with Western classics such as millet and peanut lamb risotto, quail grilled with suya spices typical of northern Nigeria, hibiscus tart served with palm leaf, coconut and lime flavoured ice cream.

“I wanted this place to be a cultural reawakening, bringing what we’ve known as Africans into the new world,” says Folawiyo.

Does Caitlyn Jenner’s story mean anything for Nigeria’s Yan Daudu?

Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender Olympic champion formerly known as Bruce, unveiled her new name and look in a sexy Vanity Fair cover shoot in June. (Pic: AFP)
Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender Olympic champion formerly known as Bruce, unveiled her new name and look in a sexy Vanity Fair cover shoot in June. (Pic: AFP)

To understand the tasteless comedy that was the larger Nigerian reaction to Caitlyn Jenner, the woman Bruce Jenner introduced to the public on that iconic Vanity Fair cover, post-transition, you first have to understand the place of comedy in the country.

There is a lot that comedy placates in Nigeria. That we can laugh at our problems, that you can gather a broad class of Nigerians in a room and get them to laugh at class difference – the thieving politician sitting in the VIP section of that room is perhaps our most undervalued nationalistic tool.

A little more than a year ago, when the sexuality debate was sweeping through Africa, Nigerians felt it important to drawn clear boundaries. Yet for some reason, on this equally important humanity-defining issue, people largely chose the bliss of ignorance and comedy. For them, Caitlyn Jenner’s story was an America-is-crazy kind of thing. A problem with the world, but chiefly, other people’s problem.

And yet, the fact is in Nigeria, there are at least two public figures that disrupt the rigid boundaries of gender performance. Charles ‘Charly Boy’ Oputa is one of them; the entertainer who goes by the name His Royal Punkness regularly presents himself to the public as a person who exists in a gender flux; he wears make-up, a mostly punkish rock star kind. The other is Denrele Edun, a famous television presenter, who is even less subtle. He wears his shimmery gowns and long, gorgeous, sometimes outlandish hairpieces on the red carpet.

Nigerians, most of whom daily and with dedication watch Philipino love dramas where at least one character exists in a gender flux, are scandalised by these two local men who fearlessly dress across gender lines in a country where conforming to social expectations is almost non-negotiable. It is always interesting to read the classic Nigerian response to a Charly Boy photo shoot.

The common thread amongst people who live in this state of denial is God/Allah.

A majority of Nigerians construct their identities rigidly around religion. The world known to most Nigerians was created by God, filled by God with men, women and things for the men (to a large extent) and women to dominate. That world as it is known to most Nigerians is under threat from science in general and more specifically, people who think they are smarter than God. Anything that demands that their world be seen differently confirms the end of the world.

Asking that Nigerian to think of gender in the terms that Bruce’s transition demands is a threat. To find fun in it is the sane end of the stick, what lies beyond it can get scary. There is at least one reported case of the Nigerian public unleashing its wrath on an individual for not being ‘normal’. For being a man with woman breasts and, in essence, a witch.

There is a list of permitted ambiguities in the world as it is known to most Nigerians, and gender is not one of them.

From this convenient position, religion (and by religion, I mean Christianity and Islam) is the only accepted portal of history, and the past can be collectively rewritten. The very idea that people do not exist in straight categories of male and female becomes a dangerous foreign construct. Unfortunately, the idea of gender fluidity is not a new paradigm the free world cooked up.

The Yan Daudu exist. They are certainly not Nigeria’s only trangender people, not by a long shot, but they are the best evidence of a trans community in Nigeria. They have been part of the cultural fabric of pocket regions in Northern Nigeria for at least a century. They are pre-religion and have continued to exist post-religion. They cross dress, they take on complete female identities.

What Caitlyn should represent for them, is an audacity to claim the space of their individual realities. To make it anything more than a dying fringe culture.

And herein lies the question. Is what we have witnessed in the publicised transitioning of Bruce to Caitlyn a victory for the ‘global trans community’ in any real way? Does it mean anything for the Yan Daudu in Nigeria, or the Hijras in India?

“I am for people living in their truths” are words that have been increasingly used these past few weeks. I agree with the words. The only valid way to live in any case is in ways that are as truthful as one can muster. But as the world’s progressives cheer for Caitlyn, and we read the positive comments, can we also chip in a discussion on what this means to those small communities of people driven underground already by a witch hunt in places not the America? Is this too a victory for them? Are they, too, the earth?

Kechi Nomu writes from Warri, Nigeria. Her poems have appeared in Saraba Magazine and Brittle Paper. 

Uganda’s ‘Uber for motorcycle taxis’ shows it pays to be safe

The SafeBoda app. (Pic: AFP)
The SafeBoda app. (Pic: AFP)

When Silver Tumwesigye, a sharply-dressed Ugandan motorbike taxi driver known by his nickname ‘Silverstone,’ had an accident six years ago it was a double blow.

First he had to pay for surgery for his head injury and weeks of hospital treatment, then he suffered months of no income as he recovered at home.

Motorbike taxis, known as “boda-bodas” in Uganda and elsewhere in East Africa, are an affordable and effective – but dangerous – way of cutting through the traffic clogging Kampala’s streets.

Now a startup, dubbed “Uber for motorcycle taxis” after the popular ride-sharing company, hopes to make them safer and more reliable.

Silverstone survived his accident but the loss of his daily income of around 20 000 shillings ($5) threatened his family with destitution.

“I was so worried – not about me, but about my children, my wife,” said the 36-year-old father-of-four. “I struggled to pay the rent and school fees.”

Close to 40 percent of trauma cases at Uganda’s main Mulago Hospital are the result of boda-boda accidents, according to a joint study in 2010 by the hospital and the country’s Makerere University.

Like similar services in other developing world urban hubs like Jakarta, SafeBoda hopes to ease traffic in the Ugandan capital connecting customers with a registered driver nearby with the tap of a finger.

The company has enlisted 75 drivers at 20 “stages” – the boda-boda version of taxi ranks – since its launch in November. Each receives driving lessons, motorcycle maintenance and customer service training, and a first aid course taught by the Uganda Red Cross Society.

Drivers pay a membership fee of 10 000 shillings a week and are given a smartphone, a bright orange reflective vest and helmet, and a spare helmet for customers.

“The boda-boda industry got a bad name,” said SafeBoda’s 28-year-old co-founder Ricky Rapa Thomson.

“We want to say we are safe bodas. We should create a good reputation that will lead to more business, so we make more money and become more successful,” said Rapa, who has been a boda driver for four years and also runs motorbike tours of the city.

Rigorous vetting

It was on one of his tours that a visitor from Britain suggested meeting 30-year-old Belgian social entrepreneur Maxime Dieudonne, to help him develop an app to increase safety and provide better service.

Rapa teamed up with Dieudonne, Scottish development economist Alastair Sussock, 29, and the Rwanda-based mobile tech company HeHe Labs to create SafeBoda.

Sussock said the start-up conducts a “very lengthy process of driver training and multiple interactions and recommendations for drivers”.

“The recent issues in India with Uber, with one of the drivers accused of raping a passenger, shows the challenges on background checks or lack of any checks,” he said.

Sussock said that while this made SafeBoda different from Uber, Lyft and other apps which allowed drivers to sign up very easily, it ensured a “higher quality of drivers”.

Rigorous vetting means there are now 250 boda-boda drivers on the SafeBoda waiting list. Silverstone plans to join up, saying that his accident taught him the hard way that safety pays.

The SafeBoda app is also evolving and will soon add another Uber-like touch, allowing customers to rate drivers.

The company hopes to have at least 1 000 boda-bodas across Kampala by the end of the year, before expanding regionally, and perhaps even farther.

“There’s a couple of other countries like India that could be really interesting,” said Sussock.

For the last six years Juma Katongole, 32, has ferried passengers around Kampala’s notoriously potholed roads. He joined the SafeBoda programme soon after its launch.

The father-of-four has gained three new regular customers and reckons he takes home an extra 10 000 shillings a day.

“In the future I’m planning on building a house because I’m still renting,” he said. “I’m happy and customers are also happy with SafeBoda, they appreciate it,” he said.

Bringing museums into homes: Benin’s Wakpon app

A man tries out Wakpon, a new smartphone application that allows people to view pictures and works of art. (Pic: AFP)
A man tries out Wakpon, a new smartphone application that allows people to view pictures and works of art. (Pic: AFP)

Admiring paintings or photographs by Africa’s greatest contemporary artists is a luxury in Benin, where museums are scarce and most people lack money to travel farther afield.

But a new application developed by a foundation based in Cotonou, the largest city in this West African state, is seeking to bring art to the masses by allowing anyone with access to a printer and smartphone or tablet to turn their place into a museum.

“For 10 years, the Zinsou Foundation has been striving to bring contemporary art to people who don’t have access to it because we think culture is a right, not a luxury,” said Marie-Cecile Zinsou, the Franco-Beninese head of the foundation that created the “Wakpon” app.

Budding art enthusiasts need only print out colourful images available on the app’s website onto pieces of A4 paper and hang them on the walls of their home, school or government building – just like paintings in a museum.

Visitors can then aim at these images with their smartphones or tablets using the app, and a painting by Benin’s voodoo artist Cyprien Tokoudagba or a photo of Nigerian hairstyles by J.D. Okhai Ojeikere will pop up, alongside information on the work of art.

All in all, 44 pieces by 10 artists are available on the app, all taken from the foundation’s collection.

Low visibility for African art

Zinsou said she convinced her father, who has just been named Benin prime minister, to set up the foundation after she realised that like many other African countries, there were no museums in Benin to showcase the continent’s contemporary art, despite its growing popularity elsewhere.

Leading African artists were virtually absent from art sales just a decade ago but now contemporary works feature strongly in several international auction houses.

Bonhams in London recently described the continent as “one of our hottest properties on the art block”.

Since 2005, the foundation’s show room in Cotonou puts on free exhibitions of Beninese and foreign artists, and once showcased US legend Jean-Michel Basquiat – a first in Africa.

In 2013, it opened a museum in an old building of the former slave trade hub of Ouidah, some 40 kilometres away from Cotonou.

All in all, nearly five million people have visited both places in a decade – most of them them children who often come the first time with their schools, return on their own and then bring their families.

Zinsou said the Wakpon app – which once downloaded does not need to be connected to the Internet – aims to widen access to a broader population.

‘Tomorrow’s museum’

Mobile phone penetration has been low in Benin, particularly for smartphones, because of poor infrastructure.

But competition from international mobile operators and under-sea cables is increasing take-up, as prices come down for both handsets and Internet services.

“This application is amazing,” said Beninese artist Romuald Hazoume, whose work has been showcased abroad and is also available on the app.

“African people will be able to have access to their culture, to their artists who are known around the world but whom they cannot see due to a lack of exhibition sites, of money or visas.

“It’s like a bait. People will know works of art, their story, and they will want to see them for real. It’s tomorrow’s museum and it’s what all big collections should be doing.”

In the Cotonou showroom, those who visit are given a Wakpon demonstration at the end of their tour.

“Wakpon” means “come and see” in Fon, the most widely spoken local language in Benin.

“It’s great. My cousin has a good telephone, I’m going to plead with him to activate the application and our entire district will take a look,” says Obed, 15, who came with his class.

Zinsou said people in Africa had a tendency to think that culture will emerge only once their countries are developed.

“But no, culture is essential for development,” she added.

Nairobi: Men’s chastity belts for sale

(Pic: AFP)
The chastity belt displayed on a mannequin. (Pic: AFP)

A men’s clothing store in Nairobi has an interesting new product for sale: chastity belts with an iron padlock for $20 each.

The product was designed to help men to protect themselves from being sexually harassed by their wives, after a woman was charged in court for chopping off her husband’s penis because of a quarrel over money.

Maendeleo ya Wanaume, a men’s lobby group,  wants women who chop off man’s genitals to be sentenced to life imprisonment or to the death penalty.