Author: King Jaja

African contemporary arts are attracting increasing interest thanks to a packed season stretching from Europe to Africa. Artists and curators from across the continent and the diaspora reflect on the impact of cultural exchanges beyond their borders – from London to Paris, Luanda to Dakar. October and November are set to host a series of events celebrating African art across the continent, in Europe and even farther afield.Spotlight on Africa dives into perspectives from diverse African cultures, focusing on the voices and visions of the diaspora.RFI journalists Ollia Horton and Melissa Chemam take us to the heart of two major…

In 2018, Senegalese philosopher and economist Felwine Sarr, along with French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, were commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron for two meetings in Paris with S.E.M Auguste Alavo, the Ambassador to Benin, before jointly publishing the disruptive Report on the Constitution of African cultural heritage, Toward a New Relational Ethics. This followed  Macron’s announcement in his now infamous 2017 speech in Ouagadougou to “put conditions in place so as to allow the temporary or definitive restitution of  African cultural heritage to Africa,” the first of its kind in French political history. The content of the 252-page document ranges…

.Wants AFN to pay N8m as compensation The Ministerial Committee set up by immediate past Sports Minister, John Owan Enoh, to unravel circumstances that led to Team Nigeria’s failure at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, has recommended sanctions on the secretary general of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), as well as, the federation’s technical director. Specifically, the committee said: “The secretary general of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Rita Mosindi, should be penalised by the appropriate authority for negligence in her duties. She was unable to provide convincing evidence to our committee to support her claim that she…

Richard Henry Greene made history as Yale University’s first Black graduate and later served as a physician during the American Civil War. Born in 1833 in New Haven, Connecticut, Greene was the son of Richard Green, a bookmaker living four blocks off the Yale campus, and his academic achievements and contributions to medicine during the Civil War has marked him as a pioneer in 19th-century America. Greene entered Yale in 1853, however, he studied Greek, Latin, and mathematics under Lucius Wooster Fitch, a Yale graduate and pastor’s son prior to his admission to the University, to prepare him for what…

Gertie Davis was the adopted daughter of Harriet Tubman, and remains a little-known figure in history, although she played a significant role in the private life of one of America’s most celebrated icons. Born in the late 1860s, Davis was adopted as an infant by Harriet Tubman and her second husband, Nelson Davis, becoming the only child in their household. Tubman, renowned for her work as an abolitionist and conductor of the Underground Railroad, helped lead dozens of enslaved individuals to freedom, risking her life to guide them to the North. READ ALSO: Meet Henry Greene, Yale’s first black graduate…

The Alliance Française de Lagos Library recently came alive with a dazzling display of color, creativity, and artistic exploration as it hosted “Kaleidoscope,” the second solo exhibition of celebrated Nigerian visual artist Deji Oluokun. Known for his ability to seamlessly blend various mediums, Oluokun captivated audiences with a fresh convergence of digital art, 3D elements, fashion photography, and immersive audio-visual effects, creating a bold and introspective showcase that spanned from October 12th to October 26th.Each piece in “Kaleidoscope” unveiled a new dimension of Oluokun’s artistic journey. Works bearing titles like “dediKation,” “Kreativity,” and “foKus” chronicled personal moments of introspection, growth,…

First off, it’s important to understand what mobile camps actually are in the context of this post. Whilst some mobile camps are packing up and moving almost daily, the ones we are referring to here only change location twice a year, moving between north and south in the Serengeti Ecosystem in order to have front row seats to one of the greatest wildlife displays on earth, the migration of millions of wildebeest between grazing grounds. The migration essentially follows a clockwise route from the calving grounds in the south around Ndutu Plains, heading up along the western corridor of the…

Is there hope for children with disabilities? Our small team of therapists drove six hours to a village where we met a person of peace (a Christian from the community able to bring people of different backgrounds together) who had asked us to come and help the children with disabilities in her village. We arrived at the first home. Avoiding the mud, we took off our shoes and entered the small shack. As we approached the bed, we saw a small boy moaning quietly. He had Cerebral Palsy. He had multiple broken bones. The jagged ends of the broken bones…

On November 1, 1954, when Algeria was still under French colonial rule, members of the pro-independence FLN carried out a series of attacks across the country. This date has come to be known as the beginning of the Algerian War. In France at the time, there was no talk of war; only attacks attributed to agitators and bandits. But in reality, it was the start of a long conflict that would lead to Algeria’s independence in 1962. On the coattails of losing colonial Indochina, France never imagined that Algeria, home to nearly a million Europeans, had begun its march towards…

  Hanna Noor Mohammed The light is life at What If the World Let there be light, 2024   Artist Hanna Noor Mohammed has an exhibition that showed at What if the World Gallery.  The works in the exhibition were executed with oil paint and depicted entoptic strict images.  With a title inspired by famous poem “Do not go gently into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, the pieces express a measure of the existential and what is emotional. The article will demonstrate how entoptic images are expressing encapsulated feelings around themes of death, life, creativity and self-expression as psychological…