Africa in Words is a blog providing a platform for voices whose focus is on cultural production and Africa. Our name is intended to recognise that there are as many Africas and ways of talking about it as there are words to do it with. It reflects our shared understanding of the diverse networks across the continent that generate thought and action, that provoke people to produce, to curate, and to write, and that cross political, generic, and disciplinary limits.
With bookish roots in the literary, we also cover all manner of texts, visual art and media, film, history, music, theatre, ideas and people in all their in-betweens and combinations, prioritising content that reflects the ways they interact across our related communities, their various economies, geographies and senses of place.
We are not affiliated with any institution, nor do we receive any form of funding. Ours is a collective and co-generative space made up of regular authors and guest contributors, and a collaborative, voluntary editorial team, based in various and changing locations around the world, and in and beyond the academy.
If you’d like to be part of our ongoing conversation, please be in touch; you can find us on Twitter @africainwords, or join us on Facebook and/or our Instagram.
If you’d like to write for Africa in Words, share material with us for review, or let us know about relevant forthcoming events, please see our Submissions and Contact info, or email us at africainwords@gmail.com. All are welcome.
History
AiW was the brain-child of Nara Improta, set up in late October 2011 with Jenny Greenshields, Kate Haines, Katie Reid and Victoria Moffatt – all five of us PhD students working with Professor Stephanie Newell, then based at the University of Sussex, UK.
We began AiW to give us a space where we could share interests and encounters from our doctoral research, and also from our work and lives. It was somewhere where, despite our sometimes disparate locations and affiliations – Kigali to Brighton, Rio to Accra, Cape Town to Austin – we could come together and find connections, and reach out to other people who might share similar preoccupations.
Invited Guest Authors widen our network and open our conversations and we have expanded beyond our institutional roots, growing into an independent voluntary organisation run by our tight-knit team of Editors working in a range of places, in and beyond the academy.
africainwords.com 