LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Oct

15

2025

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,…

Sep

24

2025

By Sumulia

“Art remains our oxygen”: DR Congo’s slam poets refuse to be silenced

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ON the last Friday of every month, they would gather in public spaces to share their latest verses. At festivals and in stadiums, they would perform to packed audiences who would listen to every line. In classrooms, they stood before rows of students, guiding them through their craft. For the past decade, slam poetry – a form of performance poetry with bite – has thrived in the main cities of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, becoming one of the war-torn region’s most vital forms of cultural expression and political dissent. But the scene is now confronting unprecedented challenges. Since…

Sep

23

2025

By PETER SULLIVAN

Where creativity conquers chaos: One man’s mission to transform lives through art

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

AFRIKABURN is rightly famous for gathering people to enter an otherworldly experience - without money or cell phones - where they build art, burn it, and celebrate music and life in the Tankwa Karoo. This year, 2025, my daughter Julia, an artist based in London, built a huge sculpture of an ancient beast that once ruled the food chain in those waters 285 million years ago. At AfrikaBurn, Julia also met Nelson Nganisa, who sparked her interest in his art club in Diepsloot. On Saturday, I was cajoled into visiting it. It was an extraordinary experience that made me want…

Sep

20

2025

By TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU

Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera turns her prayers into paintings

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

AT the Boston waterfront sits the Institute of Contemporary Art, an architectural marvel that gleams against the harbour in a wealthy neighbourhood. My Uber driver, an African immigrant, remarks as I get out: “Be careful, this is an expensive area.” His comment hints at the subtle tensions of race and class in such affluent spaces, where one’s presence as an outsider is immediately registered. I assure him I’ve just come to see the art. I’d come to see Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera’s first solo museum show in the US, Hidden Battles/Hondo Dzakavanzika. This exhibition is a landmark moment of recognition…

Sep

17

2025

By TOM MBOYA OLALI

Muslim ritual meets Swahili culture at Kenya’s unique annual maulidi festival

CULTURE

LAMU is a historic Swahili port town on an island off the northern coast of Kenya. Each year, it hosts the famous Lamu Maulidi Festival, a sacred Muslim celebration, planned this year for 17-18 September. People come from across the world to attend because in Lamu, maulidi (also known as mawlid) is unique. It’s a blend of cultures, and of pilgrimage, ceremony and carnival. Tom Mboya Olali has spent over 30 years researching the event. We asked him about its fascinating history. How do you describe the Lamu festival? In the Lamu archipelago, the mention of maulidi elicits an aura…