Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey "Only the best is good enough for Africa."
Kwame Nkrumah "The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa."
Helen Williams, a wigmaker from Lagos, has entered the Guinness World Records by creating the world’s longest handmade wig. The wig measures an astounding 351.28 meters (1,152 ft 5 in) with Helen dedicating 11 days and over two million naira (£2,031; $2,493) to craft this remarkable wig. The GWR acknowledged her feat, by sharing on […]
Authorities in Gabon have launched a legal battle to get back a precious wooden mask used in secret ceremonies by the Fang ethnic group, which was brought to France in colonial times and sold at auction earlier this year for €4.2 million. Lawyers for the transitional government in Gabon, whose long-time president was overthrown in […]
As his newest sculptures fill Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, the Ghanaian artist is returning to his roots and thinking about his legacy. SIDDHARTHA MITTER It’s one of the great origin stories in contemporary art, a flash of instinct that would revolutionize a field. In 1998, El Anatsui was walking around Nsukka, Nigeria, and noticed a […]
HISHAM ALLAM The Egyptian government is clearing a vast area in Historic Cairo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to make way for new main roads and flyover bridges, which it says will improve traffic flow in the sprawling, congested megacity. The developments are being pitched as part of an effort to modernize Egypt and connect […]
The AKAN people probably came from North Africa and very early on settled in the center of today’s Ghana. Around the middle of the 17th century, the AKAN were divided into a lot of small kingdoms, sometimes linked by alliances, sometimes subjected to bloody conflicts. A great man decided to unify this divided people; OSSEI […]
NINA SYLVANUS 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, “Nana Benz” – the legendary first generation of women cloth traders from Togo. Wax cloth was a European adaptation of a classic Indonesian batik hand printing […]
KATIE RAZZALL The ruler of Ghana’s Asante people is pressing the British Museum to return gold items in its collection. The Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, who attended the Coronation of King Charles, later met the museum director Dr Hartwig Fischer for discussions. The British Museum’s collection includes works taken from the Asante palace in […]
LARYEA AKWETTEH Accra, Ghana’s capital, is a noisy cosmopolitan city of almost three million people. Its active nightlife, commercial markets and factories create a deafening mix of sound trails day and night. These synthetic sounds have practically drowned out the natural everyday sounds of Accra. And the most important of these is the steady drone […]
JOANNE SILBERNER Chapurukha Kusimba was a young boy in Kenya in the 1960s just as many African nations were attaining independence from western European countries. The power and success of African nationalists impressed him. So did the archaeological discoveries of ancient humans by the Leakey family showing, as he saw it, that “to be human […]
‘I felt like I was being told, “This is not your special day”,’ says 18-year-old of graduation ceremony JUSTIN McCURRY Strict rules on hairstyles at schools in Japan have attracted criticism after a mixed-race teenager was separated from other students at their graduation ceremony because he had plaited his hair into cornrows to pay tribute […]