Exorcizing Afropolitanism: Binyavanga Wainaina explains why “I am a...
AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana. Binyavanga Wainaina, writer and founding editor of the Kenyan literary magazine, Kwani? Traces of Binyavanga Wainaina’s address, “I am a Pan-Africanist, not an...
View ArticleCFP: 4th Annual African Languages in the Disciplines Conference (ALD),...
AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana. CALL FOR PAPERS The African Language Program in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University presents the 4th Annual African...
View ArticleReview: 100% Jacob Zuma
AiW Guest Emily Hogg and Benjamin Poore. In 2006 The New York Times reported that Jacob Zuma’s defence during his trial for rape was rooted in claims he made about the traditions and customs of Zulu...
View ArticleNotes from the Kwani? Literary Festival
AiW Guest Dzekashu MacViban In December 2012, I travelled to Nairobi for the 2012 Kwani? Litfest as part of the Goethe Institut’s pan-African exchange programme ‘Moving Africa’. Of the various panels...
View ArticleThe Book in Africa: A Day Symposium
AiW Guest Ruth Bush This lively one day event took place in London at Senate House on 20 October 2012, was led by Dr Caroline Davis (Oxford Brookes) and brought together a number of researchers...
View ArticleSites of Memory, University of Birmingham, 17 February 2013
AiW Guest Rebecca Jones Is memory imagination or plagiarism? Are artists curators or creators of memory? Is memory determined by audience? Do we remember or embroider? – these were some of the...
View ArticleTravels in Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Transwonderland
AiW Guest Steve Haines ‘Looking for Transwonderland’ by Noo Saro-Wiwa Working in the world of ‘international development’ I’m easily tempted to measure a country by metrics and indices. What interests...
View ArticleGilroy’s Black Atlantic: Samba, Jazz and Sambajazz in Brazil and the Black...
Ipanema beach, in Rio de Janeiro This post is part of the series Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Click here to read the first post of the series and here to read the third. AiW Guest Gabriel Improta I’m a...
View ArticleCulture, politics and intellectual practice through Gilroy’s “The Black...
This post is part of the series Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Click here to read the first post of the series and here to read the second. The book “The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness”...
View ArticleFela Kuti and Bob Marley: two ports of the Black Atlantic
This post is part of the series Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Click here to read the first post of the series, here to read the second and here to read the third AiW Guest Tiago C. Fernandes SIDE A: FELA...
View Article‘Deliver us from Evil’: A Review of Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’
AiW Guest Gbemisola Abiola. Tope Folarin’s Miracle depicts the prevailing belief in Christian supernaturalism, and the apparent promise of prosperity it holds for the African adherent, as the means of...
View ArticleBlogging the Caine Prize: Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s ‘The Whispering Trees’
AiW Guest Sylvia Gasana Hauntingly beautiful! Those are the two first words that come to mind when describing Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s ‘The Whispering Trees’. I’m always very excited to read a story...
View Article‘Ghana Must Go’ by Taiye Selasi – review
AiW Guest Emylia Hall Ghana Must Go (Penguin, UK edition) One of my favourite quotes on the subject of the craft of writing comes from the Pulitzer Prize-winner, Katherine Anne Porter: ‘Get so well...
View ArticleBlogging the Caine Prize: Thinking Through Chinelo Okparanta’s ‘America’
On Monday Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’ was announced as the winner of the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Building up to this announcement the five shortlisted writers spent a week in the UK, talking...
View ArticleWinning films from African Movie Awards 2013
by AiW guest Phoenix Fry On 20 April 2013 the African Movie Awards took place at “a glittering ceremony” in Yenagoa, southern Nigeria. You can read elsewhere about the glitz and the glitches – this...
View ArticleThe magic of African cinema comes to Scotland
AiW Guest Justine Atkinson on the upcoming ‘Africa in Motion‘ Film Festival: Fallous is a young Tunisian boy who is always running. We follow him as he journeys through his village, down winding paths...
View ArticleLauren Beukes and African Science Fiction
Africa in Words Guest, Professor James Smith of the University of Edinburgh, writes: Professionally I research the role science and technology play in shaping Africa’s development. Thus I naturally...
View ArticleReview: Imraan Coovadia’s ‘The Institute for Taxi Poetry’
AiW Guest Tom Penfold. Imraan Coovadia’s The Institute of Taxi Poetry (Umuzi, 2012) is an appeal to the imagination – the reader’s and South Africa’s. Set through a week in the life of Adam Ravens as...
View ArticleIs there a market (in Africa) for contemporary African art?
By Africa in Words Guest Jürg Schneider. In a period of dramatically shifting geopolitics where markets as well as people have to readjust in an accelerated pace to new constellations of players and...
View ArticleFor Young African Writers
AiW Guest Mukoma Wa Ngugi Mukoma wa Ngugi and his father Ngugi wa Thiong’o. I love to write and have been doing it for a long time now. Along the way I have learned, mostly through mistakes, a few...
View Article