My book, Senghor’s Eucharist: Negritude and African Political Theology, will be released in August 2023 by Baylor University Press. This brief piece describes the sources that inspired and shaped the book. The book is based on Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poetry collection called Black Hosts (Hosties Noires), which portrays the suffering of Black people as offering global redemption and reconciliation. In the imagery of the poems, Black people replace Christ as the sacrificial offering that should bring about the forgiveness of sins, especially the sins of Euro-American enslavement, colonization, and dehumanization of Black people in the modern world. I argue that…
Author: King Jaja
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June 30, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDTThe Tunisian Coast Guard intercepts a boat of migrants near Sfax, Tunisia, on May 27. (Lorenzo Tugnoli)Comment on this storyCommentSFAX, Tunisia — The same February day that Tunisia’s president warned of a “criminal plot” to overwhelm this predominantly Arab country with Black Africans, Komenan Assa’s landlord evicted her.“He told me to take my baby and go,” said Assa, a 25-year-old Ivorian who moved to this port city five years ago. “It was clear to me: He was a racist who believed the president.”Weeks later, amid an eruption of aggression against Black Africans that followed…
Several national record holders are among the athletes expected to feature in this year’s national trials to pick Nigeria’s flag bearers to the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. A first set of the athletes are expected to arrive in Benin City, Edo State capital, today. Chairman of the organising committee set up by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Yusuf Alli, stated yesterday that the state is ready to stage the best championship ever. Last year, the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium was the venue for the national trials, where athletes for both the World Championships in Oregon, United States and the…
Njinga Mbandi is one of Angolan history’s most important icons: the warrior queen of the 17th century, who defeated the Portuguese, was never captured or subservient, and maintained her kingdom’s sovereignty despite decades of persecution. Angolan nation-building in the 1970s recuperated Njinga’s historical trajectory as a great leader who united peoples of different ethnic origins against colonial interests. Poems by Agostinho Neto and Manuel Pacavira’s novel Nzinga Mbandi, written while imprisoned in the colonial jail at Tarrafal, signal an historical consciousness of the deep roots of the struggle of the peoples of Angola against colonization. A Netflix series about Queen…
• 2023/24 season kicks off August 26The Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the Nigerian Premier Football League (NPFL) has reminded clubs in the league to start their Club Licensing processes ahead of the 2023/24 season, scheduled to kickoff on the weekend of August 26 to 27, 2023. Following IMC’s submission of the season’s report to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), clubs that qualified for CAF Club competitions were invited to commence their procedures with the NFF in line with CAF Club Licensing Regulations 2022. The league organisers in advising all participating clubs to take advantage of early completion of the…
“Staffriders” are young working-class men who hang their bodies on the sides and on top of moving trains. By doing this they are playing with ideas of death and danger in attempting to avoid the electricity and the force of the moving train’s speed that moves the train. Staffriding is rooted in apartheid’s extractive economy and its demand for cheap black labor. Staffriders are the byproducts of an overcrowding influx of human labor moving from platform to platform in a rush against time to stamp their clock sheet ahead of the boss. They live on working-class economic margins, due to…
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria has rejected a bill seeking to establish the National Council of Christian Education, contending that the proposed law violates sections 10 and 42(3) of Nigeria’s Constitution. Rather than promoting a bill that violated the secular character of Nigeria, the bishops tasked the Christian Association of Nigeria, which originally pushed for the bill at the National Assembly, to promote legislation that decisively address unprovoked attacks on Christians in the North, among others. The CBCN rejected the bill in a statement by its President, Archbishop Lucius Ugorji, and Secretary, Bishop Donatus Ogun. The bill, which seeks…
A few weeks ago an uncle of mine, who’s very active on our family Whatsapp group, shared a meme that read as follows: “When will the next slave trade be? I want to leave [the country].” This was not the first time he sent one. Actually, we get several of them almost everyday, which very quickly generates laughing emojis or funny stickers as responses. That’s what happened in this case too. Some cousins laughed at this meme, after having surely shared it with other people. I couldn’t laugh at this one. It took me a few minutes to process why.…
Circle this date on your calendar: Saturday, July 8th, 2023, as Plus Size Fashion Fest Africa presents their 4th edition called ‘The Womanhood Xperience-Business Brunch Summit.’ Plus size Fashion Fest Africa is a global movement which celebrates African womanhood and promotes body positivity whilst inspiring women to thrive physically and mentally. The festival which takes place annually in Uganda’s capital city, Kampala has cemented itself as the ultimate women empowerment event in Uganda and on the African continent. The aim of The Womanhood Xperience in London 2023 is firstly to honour and celebrate the beauty, strength, diversity and achievements of…
Africa’s photographic safari scene is by now well-established.Areas like Kenya’s Maasai Mara or South Africa’s Sabi Sands have over 60 years of experience in crafting the ideal safari for their guests, making subtle tweaks depending on their visitors’ nationality, ages, preferences, safari history etc., and you are bound to get an absolutely mind-blowing, world-class nature immersion as a result. Yet over the last decade or so, a few off-the-beaten track gems have started popping up on our radar (read about a few of them here), and knowing what we do about how much incredibly positive feedback some of our travellers have…