LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Nov

12

2025

By IMMANUEL MUASYA AND BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Grassroots project keeps Mijikenda music alive

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE thatch throws a soft, familiar shadow. A woven fence creaks in the salty wind. Inside a cleared yard in Kilifi, twelve drummers set skins into place like clockmakers fitting gears, a pair of elders sits cross-legged on the grass and sunlight angles through palm fronds onto a scattering of wooden shakers and carved flutes. This is not a concert. It is a salvage operation for sound, careful, urgent and stubbornly human. Baobab Studio’s LUTSAGA project, which Flavour Polle, Baobab Studio’s manager and cultural liaison, described simply as a granary, is acting like one by collecting the rhythms, grooves and…

Nov

08

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

African poetry is celebrated in a groundbreaking publishing project

LIFESTYLE

FOR 10 years, Ghanaian poet Kwame Dawes and his friend, the Nigerian writer Chris Abani, have sifted through piles of manuscripts looking for Africa’s new poetic talent. Since 2014, the African Poetry Book Fund has been assembling a formidable archive of writing through the New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. A chapbook – a small publication usually under 40 pages – is an accessible and honoured format for poets to publish focused selections of their work. In this series, each chapbook features an emerging African poet, and is presented as part of a beautifully designed box set of 10 or…

Oct

17

2025

By SETH ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Transforming a little-known Kenyan town into Africa’s film capital

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE morning sun falls gently over Kitale, a town where maize fields stretch beyond the horizon. Inside a modest studio, Peter Pages Bwire reviews schedules for the coming week, surrounded by cameras, scripts, and equipment stacked against the walls. He has just returned from Lagos, where he secured a partnership that will bring Nollywood filmmakers to Kitale. Among those coming to Kitale is Dr Inya Lawal, a renowned social entrepreneur and founder of the African Creative Market (ACM), who will bring her experience in bridging creative commerce and empowering African storytellers to join the programme. They will train local film…

Oct

15

2025

By YAKUBU MESSENI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Trailblazing Ivorian journo inspires next gen

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

FOR more than twenty years, M’ma Camara has covered current affairs in Côte d’Ivoire and the region for notable news organisations. A veteran on the security and defence beat, Camara has reported from conflict zones and experienced some of the profession’s harshest realities. Yet, she has found it hard to meet other Ivorian women to trade career stories with. “What’s unfortunate is that in Africa, we women represent less than 1% of video journalists. Some think it’s a job meant for men. But we absolutely belong here,” she told bird. Earlier this year, the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) said…

Oct

15

2025

By CONRAD ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

A digital makeover for Kenya’s cultural heritage

CULTURE

DURING the Magical Kenya Tourism Expo 2025 held in Nairobi early October, Kenya revealed plans to pivot toward digital heritage tourism, eyeing the world’s growing young and tech-savvy travellers. Among the plans is a Digital Heritage Centre, an immersive innovation that will use virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and other interactive technologies to bring Kenya’s cultural heritage to life. The centre will be hosted at the iconic 50-year-old Bomas Of Kenya, known for displaying traditional villages representing several Kenyan ethnic groups and is a home to one of the largest auditoriums in Africa. “At Bomas Of Kenya, we’ve been…

Oct

07

2025

By SETH ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

New spinoff from Nigerian anime pioneer raises the bar

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

BLESSING Amidu, a film producer and chief executive of Hot Ticket Productions, who has established a bold new voice in African animation, is back. Her latest project, Secrets of the Multiverse, a full-fledged 13-part series, hopes to build on the reception and success of Lady Buckit. “With Lady Buckit, we built a door into the world of Nigerian animation for a global audience… now with the Secrets of the Multiverse, we are inviting them through that door to explore endless corridors of imagination, danger, and moral choices. We are challenging the very fabric of what our heroes can be.” Adebisi…

Oct

04

2025

By YASIR FAIZ FOR BIRD STORY AGENCY

An exiled Sudanese singer’s soulful protest

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ON a starry night in Nairobi earlier this month, Sudanese singer Mohamed Adam Abbo, known by his artist name Wad Abbo, stood beneath the lights of Alliance Francaise’s concert stage to launch his first album. His voice, rich and stirring, carried verses in Sudanese Arabic and Darfuri dialects. The audience of Sudanese, Kenyans, other Africans, and Europeans responded in kind with swaying, clapping, and sometimes singing along. He sang for peace in Sudan, repeating lines that felt like prayers. “When hardship passes, peace comes to us. No matter how stubborn the quarrels, we live as dear ones.” In another song,…

Oct

03

2025

By HENNING MELBER

Windhoek’s Old Location was a place of pain, but also joy – new book

LITERATURE

ALL that’s left of a famous settlement called the Old Location in Windhoek, Namibia, is a graveyard and a monument to remember the residents who were killed while protesting their forced removal in 1959. But a new open source book documents how the spirit and culture that drove resistance are kept alive by those who lived there. After the Old Location massacre, the national liberation movement Swapo would be founded to fight for independence. The Windhoek Old Location tells the residents’ stories with historical images by Dieter Hinrichs and words by Henning Melber. We asked Melber more about the site.…

Oct

01

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

NoViolet Bulawayo wins the best of 25 years of the Caine Prize. Why she deserves it

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ZIMBABWEAN writer NoViolet Bulawayo has been honoured as Africa’s best short story writer after winning the Best of Caine Award. The special recognition marks 25 years of the annual Caine Prize for African Writing. An esteemed panel of judges unanimously selected Bulawayo as the standout winner of the 25 stories awarded the prize so far. Her short story, Hitting Budapest, won the prize in 2011. She has gone on to publish two acclaimed novels, We Need New Names and Glory. Both were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. For me, as a scholar of African literary cultures, Bulawayo’s recognition by the…

Oct

01

2025

By TIM FORSSMAN

Museum in a box: on the road with South Africa’s heritage

CULTURE

MUSEUMS are usually in cities. So, where transport is poor and it’s expensive to travel, many people can’t visit them. We decided to experiment with a way of getting around the problem: we built a travelling museum. I’m an archaeologist working in the Limpopo Valley, in the north of South Africa, studying hunter-gatherers and the rise of precolonial kingdoms. I am interested in how crafted goods and local wealth shaped social relations and became the pillars upon which the state society was built. Together with Justine van Heerden, I designed a mobile museum to share our research. It’s a sturdy,…