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."
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 […]
YOYO OPOKU Picture it: one slice of pizza to feed 1.5 million people. Seems impossible, right? Well, that’s the same problem the Bronx faces with only one brick and mortar bookstore for its 1.5 million residents. But fear not, because Loc’d and Lit is here to help! This online bookseller and book club, started by […]
TikTok—specifically #witchtok—is fueling interest in this spiritual movement. Here’s how to immerse yourself in full moon rituals, spellcasting, and more. CHRISTINE MACINTYRE Centuries ago, ancient Celts traveled windy moors to worship the horned god, Cernunnos. Ancient Egyptians crossed deserts to invoke the protection of Isis. Druids journeyed to a forest clearing to perform rituals under […]
In the 17th century, Dahomey flourished under the protection of its all-woman military regiment that inspired Viola Davis’s acclaimed film The Woman King RACHEL JONES Call it mere coincidence or a masterstroke of tourism-focused timing. Earlier this year, when news spread that a hundred-foot-tall statue of Queen Tassi Hangbe had been erected in the West […]
COREIN CARTER Would you be persuaded to attend a festival if I told you that you could leave a changed person? AfroFuture accomplished that and then some. The festival formerly known as Afrochella, was founded in 2017 by Abdul Karim Abdullah and Kenny Agyapong and has now evolved into much more than just a music […]
Ellen Craft’s light skin allowed her to pose as her husband’s enslaver when the two made their daring escape—in broad daylight—from Georgia to freedom in 1848. TUCKER C. TOOLE In the 1800s many enslaved people in the United States, especially those who lived in the Deep South, made valiant efforts to escape to freedom in […]