LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Aug

25

2025

Hilda Baci’s gallant quest: Cooking the world’s largest pot of Jollof rice

LIFESTYLE

IN the vibrant heart of Africa’s culinary scene, a name has risen to global prominence—Hilda Baci. Known not only for her exceptional cooking skills but also for her unwavering determination, Hilda has become a symbol of passion and persistence. Having already etched her name into the annals of history by breaking the Guinness World Record for the Longest Cooking Marathon by an Individual in 2023, she is now preparing for an even more audacious feat: cooking the world’s largest pot of jollof rice on September 12. Jollof rice, a beloved West African dish bursting with rich flavors, spices, and heritage,…

Aug

23

2025

By SOLOMON WALIAULA

How Nollywood films help Kenyan housemaids make sense of their lives

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

NOLLYWOOD, Nigeria’s prolific video-film industry, has been popular in Kenya since it was introduced to East Africa at around the turn of the century. These low-budget, high-output films and TV series immediately struck a chord with ordinary people in lower-income brackets. Although new Nollywood productions can be slick, high-budget affairs, the bulk are not about high production values. They’re about real-life stories and social issues that are easy to relate to. At first, Nollywood films were screened in informal video halls in poorer Kenyan communities, offering a unique going-to-the-movies experience. But in the first decade of the new millennium, TV…

Aug

23

2025

By PHOEBE RUNCIMAN

Wheelchair basketball: what can be learned from a South African athlete’s journey to France

LIFESTYLE

WHEELCHAIR basketball is one of the fastest-growing Para sports in the world. Over 100,000 athletes compete in national and international competitions and at the Paralympic Games and Commonwealth Games. In Africa, there are 26 national wheelchair basketball federations. But the level of support and resources available for athletes with disability (Para athletes) varies greatly between the global north and south, shaped by gaps in healthcare, infrastructure and policy. In African countries, the sport is often underfunded. In 2022, for example, South Africa’s sports and recreation budget was 15 times lower than France’s. Many Para sport athletes from the global south…

Aug

16

2025

By GARHE OSIEBE

Fela and food: how Lagos restaurants are serving up the music star’s legacy

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

In LAGOS, Nigeria’s commercial and creative capital, food is doing something unusual. It’s keeping alive the spirit of a musician. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, one of Africa’s most influential artists, was the architect of Afrobeat (not to be confused with today’s Afrobeats, which was born from it). Fela pioneered his politically charged, musically expansive sound in the early 1970s by blending jazz, highlife, funk and Yoruba rhythms. He paired these with lyrics that took aim at corruption, oppression and postcolonial disillusionment. His songs were as much rallying cries as they were works of art. Today, dishes named after Fela’s protest anthems –…

Aug

16

2025

By SALIM WASHINGTON

Kippie Moeketsi’s global influence: what made the South African saxophonist so great

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ONE of the most influential artists in South Africa’s rich history of jazz is Kippie Moeketsi. He was born on 27 July 2025 and passed away at only 57. Like Moeketsi, Salim Washington plays the saxophone and composes jazz. As a professor of global jazz studies, he also teaches students about Moeketsi’s work and researches South African jazz. As part of our coverage of Moeketsi’s centenary, we asked him about the music behind the man. Who was Kippie Moeketsi? Kippie Moeketsi was born Jeremiah Morolong Moeketsi on 27 July 1925. He was a jazz virtuoso, a modernist, and a cultural…

Aug

16

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

Abdulrazak Gurnah: searching for signs of Zanzibar’s most famous writer, all I found was trinkets and tourists

LITERATURE

ZANZIBAR has long been an island of arrivals for traders, sailors, slaves and, more recently, waves of tourists. I arrived as a wedding guest and a reader of the Zanzibar-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, in search of the literary and emotional landscapes that shape his fiction. For a week, I was part of the tourist economy of this East African island, passively complicit in its curated pleasures. For all its beautiful images on social media, Zanzibar is a site of difficult memory. It was once a central node in the Indian Ocean slave trade, so its past is carved into the…

Aug

12

2025

By The African Mirror

Basketball Africa League documentary to premiere at Toronto Film Festival

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

A documentary examining the Basketball Africa League's inaugural season will make its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, marking the first comprehensive look at the NBA's ambitious expansion into African professional basketball. "Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League," directed by Richard Brown and Tebogo Malope, documents the creation of the 12-team professional league that represents the NBA's first collaboration to operate a basketball league outside North America. The BAL operates in partnership with FIBA and features the continent's top club teams competing in a season-long tournament culminating in playoffs among the top…

Aug

05

2025

By ALESSANDRO ARDUINO

Drones, disinformation and guns-for-hire are reshaping conflict in Africa: new book tracks the trends

LITERATURE

ALESSANDRO Arduino has researched Africa’s security affairs with a particular focus on the use of private military companies and other guns-for-hire across the continent. In his latest book, Money for Mayhem, Arduino examines how military privatisation intersects with international power dynamics. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews and firsthand data, he tracks actors from Russia, China and the Middle East to explore how they profit from instability across Africa. What war trends did you identify in your book? In Money for Mayhem, I chart the rise of mercenaries, private military companies and hackers-for-hire, alongside emerging technologies like armed drones. Nowhere does this…

Aug

02

2025

By ESTHER MUSEMBI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

bird TenX: 10 promising animation studios in Africa

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

1. Triggerfish Animation Studios - South AfricaArguably the biggest and best-known animation studio in Africa, Triggerfish is home to renowned projects such as Kizazi Moto, which put Africa on the map in terms of high-quality and well-scripted animations. Triggerfish Studios is known for its visually innovative animation that speaks to the heart of Africa through its relatable storytelling. Other successful animated films produced by the studio include "Zambezia," “Adventure Time: Distant Lands,” and “Khumba.” For its pioneering work, the studio won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "The Lost Thing" in 2011. 2. Creatures Animation Studio -…

Aug

02

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

A university bookshop in Ibadan tells the story of Nigeria’s rich publishing culture

LITERATURE

DRIVEN by a desire to explore Nigeria’s literary and cultural history beyond the metropolis of Lagos, I took a road trip to Ibadan, once the most important university town in the country. Ibadan, in Oyo State, was the first city in Nigeria to have a university set up in 1948. Ibadan is where the Mbari Club once gathered, an experimental space where Nigerian writers, artists and thinkers – among them Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Mabel Segun and South Africa’s Es'kia Mphahlele – met, debated and dreamed in the 1960s and 70s. It’s…