AiW Author: Katarzyna Kubin “In the late 19th and early 20th century, the German Empire was one of the largest European colonial powers,” states the Foreword to the catalogue for the Deutsches Historisches Museum’s exhibit on German colonial history. Unlike… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Pelu Awofeso Actor and performance coach Toyin Oshinaike is teaching 80 thespians in an actors’ workshop at the Lagos Theatre Festival (28 Feb-5 March); all on their feet and attentive, they form a large rectangular ring around him…. Read More ›
AiW Guest: Harriet Hughes Fashion Cities Africa, the first major UK exhibition dedicated to presenting contemporary African Fashion design, opened at Brighton museum in April 2016. The aim of the exhibition is to present the fashion cultures of four African… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Nathan Suhr-Sytsma The fourth incarnation of the Aké Arts & Book Festival took place 15-19 November 2016, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, the birthplace of Wole Soyinka, and shares a name with Soyinka’s classic memoir of his childhood, Aké. The… Read More ›
AiW Guest Katarzyna Kubin The National Theatre’s production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, Les Blancs, directed by Yaël Farber, involved phenomenal use of sound, music and lighting, live fire on stage, and a nuanced mastery of the smallest details: from the… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Katarzyna Kubin With only days left before the winner of the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing is announced on 4th July, the five short-listed writers have been on a whirlwind circuit of public events throughout London, from a… Read More ›
Aiw Guest: Matthew Lecznar Now in its fifth year, the University of Sussex’s African Popular Cultures Workshop creates a lively space where practitioners, researchers and enthusiasts alike come together to consider and celebrate aspects of cultural production in Africa and… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Anthea Gordon To get to the South African National Art Gallery (SANG) you walk through the Company Gardens in Cape Town’s city centre. After passing baobab trees, a rose garden, and fountains in the middle of green lawns,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Sarah Jilani Returning to screens across London this past November, the Royal African Society’s annual Film Africa festival celebrated and promoted filmmaking from various countries across the continent. In a colourful week of reunions, fresh faces and thought-provoking… Read More ›
AiW Guest Steve Haines Sunday’s panel session Facing Forward was introduced by the chair, festival curator Hannah Pool, as bringing together the many strands of Africa Utopia and giving an opportunity for speakers from diverse disciplines to reflect on the… Read More ›
AiW Guest Réhab Abdelghany I first saw Ben Okri in a photograph that the Africa Centre had sent me back in 2000 to accompany an interview with the first Caine Prize winner, Leila Aboulela, which I published later in Egypt. In… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Tessa Lewin. On 12th March 2015 the University of Brighton was visited by two extraordinary South Africans – Zanele Muholi and Lerato Dumse. They were talking about queer black visual activism in South Africa, 21 years after the advent… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Eckard Smuts. Now, almost two weeks after the event, as I try to assemble a tidy picture of the sway and flow of our numerous discussions, an image comes back to me: a horn, black, from the mouth… Read More ›
On 4 December 2014, in the grand setting of Marlborough House (Binyavanga Wainaina wryly explains away his lateness as a consequence of getting lost in Prince Charles’s bedroom) a polite, excited crowd gathers to celebrate the publication of Yvonne Adhiambo… Read More ›
AiW Guest Emma Shercliff The theme of the second Ake Festival, which took place from 18-22 November 2014 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, was ‘Bridges and Pathways’. Festival Director Lola Shoneyin had emphasized that the focus this year would be ‘on building… Read More ›
AiW Guest Nathan Suhr-Sytsma The 57th annual meeting of the African Studies Association took place in Indianapolis over the weekend of 20-23rd November, under the theme ‘Rethinking Violence, Reconstruction and Reconciliation’. A large interdisciplinary conference with more than two thousand… Read More ›
AiW Guest Sarah Jilani Returning to London for its fourth year, the Royal African Society’s Film Africa 2014 festival brought a wealth of diverse voices from Africa and beyond in a celebration of past and present filmmaking from the continent…. Read More ›
AiW Guest Catherine Gilbert Matière grise (Grey Matter), 2011. Directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza. 110 min. Kinyarwanda and French with English subtitles. 2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda in which as many as one million people were… Read More ›
AiW Guest Zukiswa Wanner Arrivals I receive my invitation to Open Book in March 2014. Just the way I like it. It’s a good six months before the Festival and I can mark my calendar accordingly. My itinerary, tickets and… Read More ›
AiW Guest Alexander Nderitu Writers from the Africa39 list were in conversation at this year’s Storymoja Festival which took place from 17th to 21st September in Nairobi, Kenya. The young authors, ably moderated by Kenyan academic and literary critic Keguro Macharia, were: Jackee… Read More ›
