July 10, 2023
Africa: How an African Collection of Art in Canada Is Celebrated With Care and Community
A significant collection of traditional African art has had a home in Canada for almost a hundred years. Read more »
July 06, 2023
East Africa: Kiswahili - How a Standard Version of the East African Language Was Formed - and Spread Across the World
Kiswahili originated in east Africa, spreading around the continent and the globe. It's been adopted as a working language at the African Union and there's a push for it to become… Read more »
July 05, 2023
Africa: Africa's Linguistic Diversity Goes Largely Unnoticed in Research On Multilingualism
Language is a uniquely human skill. That's why studying how people learn and use language is crucial to understanding what it means to be human. Given that most people in the world… Read more »
July 04, 2023
Cameroon: The Fascinating Cameroonian Art of Spider Divination Is On Display At London Exhibition
Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life, which opened at London's Serpentine South Gallery in June, explores how humans relate to spiders. It features installations… Read more »
Mozambique: Paulina Chiziane, Mozambique's Grand Novelist, Finally Receives Her Prestigious Award
Paulina Chiziane, the first woman to publish a novel in Mozambique, has become the first African woman to receive the most important award for Portuguese literature, the… Read more »
Africa: Belgium's AfricaMuseum Has a Dark Colonial Past - It's Making Slow Progress in Confronting This History
Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as "savage" and "wild". Narratives of a… Read more »
July 02, 2023
South Africa: Zondo At Your Fingertips - New Book Offers an Accessible and Condensed Version of South Africa's Ambitious Corruption Inquiry
Anti-corruption activist Paul Holden has done South Africa a great favour by summarising the work of the judicial commission that probed massive corruption under former president… Read more »
June 23, 2023
Africa: The Folly of Making Art With Text-to-Image Generative AI
Making art using artificial intelligence isn't new. It's as old as AI itself. Read more »
June 21, 2023
Southern Africa: Unicorns in Southern Africa - the Fascinating Story Behind One-Horned Creatures in Rock Art
One-horned creatures are found in myths around the world. Although unicorns in different cultures have little to do with one another, they have multiple associations in European… Read more »
June 20, 2023
South Africa: Milisuthando - a Powerful Documentary That Will Get South Africans Talking About Identity
Milisuthando is a debut feature length documentary film by Milisuthando Bongela. Taking the form of a personal essay, it's an intimate story about family and ancestors, about… Read more »
Sierra Leone: African Leaders in Sierra Leone Played a Key Role in Ending the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone on the west African coast, was named for the freed slaves who were returned to Africa by British members of the movement to end slavery.… Read more »
West Africa: Last of West Africa's Legendary Wax Cloth Traders Has Left Her Mark
Dédé Rose Gamélé Creppy, who has died aged 89, was one of west Africa's most influential wax cloth traders. She was the youngest, and the last living,… Read more »
June 09, 2023
Egypt: Never Mind Cleopatra - What About the Forgotten Queens of Ancient Nubia?
Jada Pinkett Smith's new Netflix documentary series on Cleopatra aims to spotlight powerful African queens. "We don't often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that… Read more »
June 13, 2023
South Africa: South African Activist Frank Anthony Wrote a Novel That Has Been Forgotten - Why It Shouldn't Have Been
How does it come about that a man who dedicated the greater part of his life to a vision of a just South Africa, and sacrificed his family and personal relationships to do so,… Read more »
South Africa: Shaka Zulu Is Back in Pop Culture - How the Famous King Has Been Portrayed Over the Decades
Shaka Zulu is one of the most famous figures in South African history, even though not much is actually known about him. The subject of a hit 1980s TV show and of many books, Shaka… Read more »
June 11, 2023
Zimbabwe: Animal Farm Has Been Translated Into Shona - Why a Group of Zimbabwean Writers Undertook the Task
Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has in some ways become like Animal Farm. Like the pigs in the classic 1945 novel by English writer George Orwell, the country's… Read more »
June 07, 2023
Ghana: Ama Ata Aidoo - the Pioneering Writer From Ghana Left Behind a String of Feminist Classics
Prolific author and former Ghanaian education minister Ama Ata Aidoo passed away on 31 May 2023 at the age of 81. News of her death reverberated around the world, proof of her… Read more »
June 05, 2023
South Africa: Major New Research Claims Smaller-Brained Homo Naledi Made Rock Art and Buried the Dead. but the Evidence Is Lacking
On September 13 2013, speleologists Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker descended deep into South Africa's Rising Star cave system and discovered the first evidence of an extraordinary… Read more »
June 04, 2023
Africa: 'Good Soup Is One of the Prime Ingredients of Good Living' - A (Condensed) History of Soup, From Cave to Can
Hot soup on a cold day brings warmth and comfort so simple that we don't think too much about its origins. But its long history runs from the Stone Age and antiquity through to… Read more »
June 05, 2023
Ethiopia: Ethiopia's Musicians Fled the Country After the 1974 Revolution - How Their Culture Lives On
The overthrow of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 led to violent conflict that had a particularly heavy impact on musicians. Sing and Sing On: Sentinel Musicians and the… Read more »
June 01, 2023
South Africa: Harry Oppenheimer Biography Shows the Mining Magnate's Hand in Economic Policies
In Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, Gold and Dynasty, his outstanding biography of the South African mining magnate who died in 2000, Michael Cardo shows that there is still mileage to… Read more »
May 24, 2023
Africa: Male Video Game Characters Speak Twice As Much As Females, Largest Study of Its Kind Reveals
Video games are played by nearly three billion people worldwide and make more money annually than the film industry. Around 50% of gamers are female but gaming has chronic problems… Read more »
May 28, 2023
Africa: Before Disney's Little Mermaid, These Creatures Existed in Mythologies From Around the World
Mermaids are multicultural mythical figures, reflecting the continuing human fascination with the sea in stories echoing thousands of years into the past. Mermaids are found in… Read more »
May 23, 2023
South Africa: World's Oldest Homo Sapiens Footprint Identified On South Africa's Cape South Coast
Just over two decades ago, as the new millennium began, it seemed that tracks left by our ancient human ancestors dating back more than about 50,000 years were excessively rare. Read more »
South Africa: Sign Language Is Set to Become Country's 12th Official Language
Sign language is on its way to become the 12th official language in South Africa after parliament recently agreed to amend the constitution to this end. The move will bring to… Read more »