LIFESTYLE - The African Mirror

Dec

24

2025

A voice that crossed oceans: Remembering Chris Rea

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

THE road has finally ended for Chris Rea, but the journey he shared with us - from the townships of South Africa to the streets of Lagos, from the highlands of Kenya to the heart of Zimbabwe - will echo forever. For generations of Africans, that raspy, world-weary voice was more than entertainment. It was a companion through our own struggles, our own dreams of something better. When Rea sang, he didn't preach from a pedestal. He walked beside us, dusty and tired, acknowledging the hardship while pointing toward hope. His philosophy resonated deeply with the African experience: we are…

Dec

20

2025

By PAUL ONANUGA

Revolutionary rap: Nigerian star Falz has kept protest music alive

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

NIGERIAN rapper, actor and social media star Falz released his sixth studio album, The Feast, in 2025. Few Nigerian popular musicians have shown as much versatility and staying power as the man behind the #ElloBae and #WehDoneSir social media trends. For over a decade now, Falz has been marrying musical skills and social activism with digital savvy and comedy. His rise to global prominence was solidified with his 2018 song This is Nigeria. But it began in 2014 with Marry Me off his debut album Wazup Guy. As a young artist known for his video skits, he created an online…

Dec

16

2025

By VERA OKOH FOR BIRD STORY AGENCY

How Chimamanda Adichie’s hair stylist went natural

BEAUTY AND FASHION

HAPPINESS Okorie’s dream came true in July 2025 when global literary icon Chimamanda Adichie travelled to Enugu and visited Okorie's salon to get her hair done. Okorie packed Adichie’s coiled tresses into a crown-like updo. Adichie smiled, turning her head from side-to-side to look at what Okorie had created. After the session, Okorie showed Adichie a copy of Adichie's book, “Half of a Yellow Sun.” In the back, Okorie had written, five years before: “Dear Chimamanda, this is to let you know that someday, I will style your hair.” The moment of the two women embracing each other after Okorie's…

Dec

08

2025

By VUSI MAVIMBELA

From Lusaka to Lyrical Mastery: Stogie T’s aNomy through his uncle’s eyes

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

STOGIE T’s new album, aNomy, consolidates lyrics in his rap music repertoire as the most politically sophisticated, most intellectually literate and most worldly and historically informed in the South African rap scene. I have not come across any other South African rap artist with the same political depth in their lyrical rendition. My musical appreciation runs across all genres; from classics, jazz, choral, maskanda, kwaito, amapiano and everything in between – only if they are well thought-out and well-constructed musical offerings. I have a liking for rap lyrics because I came into the liking of this genre through my love…

Dec

06

2025

By GWEN ANSELL

Pops Mohamed mixed old and new to reinvent South African music

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ISMAIL Mohamed-Jan – better known by South African jazz fans as Pops Mohamed – has passed away at the age of 75. His life in music represented a struggle against narrow, oppressive definitions of race, instrumental appropriateness and musical genre. A few days before his death, a remastered version of his 2006 album Kalamazoo, Vol. 5 (A Dedication to Sipho Gumede) had been released on digital platforms ahead of an official launch. Mohamed was born on 10 December 1949 in the working-class gold-mining town of Benoni in South Africa. By his mid-teens, the Group Areas Act – which divided urban…

Dec

06

2025

By ADRIAAN VAN KLINKEN

God in Nigeria: the country’s novelists help us understand the complexity of Christianity

LIFESTYLE

IN African literature, Christianity has usually been shown as a foreign religion brought to the continent by European missionaries and colonisers. But in the past few decades, Nigeria’s writers have dealt with it in a far more complex way as Christianity is rooted in, and transformed by, local realities, ranging from conflict to prosperity. A new open source book by a scholar of African religion, Adriaan van Klinken, sets out to understand these changes through the eyes of Nigeria’s fiction writers. We asked him five questions. What made you decide to use fiction to understand religion? What fiction and religion…

Nov

29

2025

By AMY ROSS ARGUEDAS and NIC NEWMAN

News influencers are reshaping the media – insights from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS creators and influencers have become increasingly important sources of news as more people turn to social media and video networks like Facebook and YouTube to inform themselves. By news creators, we mean individuals who create and distribute content mainly through social and video networks and have some impact on public debates around news and current affairs. While traditional news outlets and journalists still tend to dominate attention for news on legacy platforms like Facebook, data from our Digital News Report 2025 show that news organisations face growing competition from creators on other platforms, especially on newer video-heavy networks. In…

Nov

27

2025

By The African Mirror

Congolese activist creates community radio for farmers

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

ON a humid afternoon in North Kivu, a group of farmers crowd into a low, corrugated-roof community hall, passing around basic feature phones as a young facilitator replays a Jambo Radio podcast on shifting rainfall patterns and the economics of oil extraction in Africa. The audio cuts, and the questions begin: a few sharp, several hesitant, many shaped by longstanding myths about who profits from extraction and what it means for their land. Patricia Kasoki listens closely. She asks follow-ups, redirects assumptions, and invites elders to share what past seasons looked like, before the forests thinned, before heavy rains became…

Nov

21

2025

By ERIC BIANTUDI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Rebecca Zoro: Weaving Ivorian Heritage into Global Fashion

BEAUTY AND FASHION

INSIDE a workshop bordering her family’s rubber plantation on the outskirts of Abidjan, Ivorian designer Rebecca Zoro is busy tapping into her creative roots. Global celebrities such as Beyoncé have worn her clothes under her label Yhebe Design. Currently, she is retreating from attending glitzy, glamorous events to concentrate on her next collection. After studying fashion design at Collège LaSalle Maroc in Morocco, Zoro started Yhebe Design in 2015 to capitalise on an industry with massive economic potential in Africa. With the global apparel market valued in the trillions, Africa’s share of annual textile, clothing, and footwear exports was only…

Nov

18

2025

By ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

The Magnificent Rebel: Fela Ransome-Kuti

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

SOME musicians entertain. Some educate. Fela Anikulapo Kuti? He declared war—armed only with a saxophone, a relentless groove, and the kind of audacity that made military dictators break out in nervous sweats. Nigeria's most flamboyant revolutionary didn't need grenades when he had a groove. While others whispered dissent in backrooms, Fela was broadcasting his contempt for corrupt authority through thundering horns, hypnotic drums, and lyrics so sharp they could slice through propaganda like a hot knife through butter. His weapon of choice? Afrobeat—that intoxicating fusion of jazz, funk, soul, and Yoruba rhythms that he didn't just create, he unleashed upon…