MULTIMEDIA - The African Mirror

Apr

2024

The unsung participants at the 2024 World Rally Championship Safari Rally Kenya

WHEN Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen emerged as top finishers at the 2024 World Rally Championship (WRC) Safari Rally Kenya and stepped onto the podium at Hell’s Gate National Park to freely spray champagne over colleagues and rally officials, one might have been forgiven for presuming that this was an all-mens' event. One would have presumed wrong. Apart from four all-womens' teams participating in the race, four Kenyan women made crucial contributions to the event. Here, bird story agency sheds light on these four women. Charlene Tuja, Rally PhotographerIn the male-dominated field of rally photography, Charlene Tuja stands out as…

Apr

2024

By KATE OKORIE, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Meet the creative championing the African Renaissance from her living room

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

BOLA Edwards' living room has been transformed into a giant stage. Large styrofoam books stand tall while an oversized pencil crafted from plywood balances on a brown wall. The opposite wall is a fuchsia pink. The space looks like a classroom from a child’s whimsical imagination. In the middle of the room stands an armchair upholstered in the swirling patterns of African textiles. It is here, at the centre of things, that the fictional grandmother character Grandma Wura comes to life, sharing stories with young African minds around the globe. Ever since the character's debut in 2015, Grandma Wura has…

Mar

2024

By NALEDI SIKHAKHANE, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Lift as you rise – A young agri-entrepreneur star is teaching others how to succeed in small-scale farming

NEWS, MULTIMEDIA

“BEING busy doesn't mean you are making money, I've been busy for three years, I've only started making money in the fourth year,” 23-year-old entrepreneur Ntobeko Mafu told her class on a rainy day in February in Nhlazatshe, a rural area in the KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. Mafu was standing in her garden presenting to 30 people who appeared to hold on to her every word as she detailed how she had created a sustainable small-scale broiler and crop farm. Mafu is the founder and Chief Executive Officer at Madam Clucks A Lot and Madam Leafy Green. The former…

Mar

2024

By ESTHER MUSEMBI, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Gloria Kisilu’s digital supply chain is turning rural artisans into global entrepreneurs

NEWS, MULTIMEDIA

WHEN Gloria Kisilu arrived at the Mwende Munyanya Women's Group in Katangi, some 100 kilometres from Nairobi recently, the women engaged in weaving sisal baskets paused their work and broke into song and dance. The women, whom Kisilu regards as both friends and business partners, have, thanks in large part to Kisilu, been able to continue a long-standing tradition of weaving baskets, called viondo. The technique they use has been passed down from generation to generation among Kenya's Akamba people. At 28, Kisilu could be some of the weavers' granddaughter. She has brought a fresh vision to the craft, as…

Feb

2024

By The African Mirror

Zimbabwe’s “Biker Queen” rides full throttle against gender norms

NEWS, MULTIMEDIA

EVONNE Mudzingwa is in her happy place. The roar of an engine at full throttle is music to the ears of Evonne Mudzingwa and the glint in her eye is from light reflecting off brilliant chrome on powerful two-wheelers filling a parking lot in Harare. It’s a Sunday afternoon, which means the country’s highways have little traffic - every biker’s dream. Mudzingwa and the other members of the Ulysses Motorcycle Club are clad in leathers and are conducting their final checks, raring to go. Their destination is the city of Kadoma, 140 kilometres southwest of the capital. It’s an annual…

Feb

2024

By WARREN SARÉ and GIULIA TRINGALI

‘Nobody sees me’: Photographing displacement in Burkina Faso’s capital

MULTIMEDIA

More than 30,000 Burkinabé have made their way down to the capital city, Ouagadougou, over the past few years, escaping a jihadist conflict that has enveloped large parts of the country and displaced more than two million people overall. Yet despite the city’s safety and employment opportunities, the displaced people have been struggling with high rents and a lack of assistance and recognition from humanitarian organisations and different governments. Late last year, Burkinabé photographer Warren Saré, working alongside Italian reporter Giulia Tringali, spent time documenting the lives of the city’s displaced people, who live in informal settlements, with host families,…

Feb

2024

By VELMA PAMELA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

This popular floating restaurant was on the rocks until Frida Njeri took over

LIFESTYLE, MULTIMEDIA

THERE are no land rates for this bar and restaurant that floats on the sea waters of Lamu Island in Kenya. People have lived here for over 700 years. Lamu Old Town is older than Zanzibar, and other settlements in East Africa where Bantu, Arabic, Persian, Indian, and European influences fused into the Swahili culture. The town, with its relatively well-preserved buildings and traditions, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The island’s natural beauty, history, culture, and popularity with tourists, are what led the bar and restaurant’s original owner to situate it right in the Indian Ocean canal that…

Jan

2024

By ANN MBUTHIA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Her passion for dance transformed Moesha Tajiri’s life. Now she’s changing the lives of hundreds of children

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

ON any given day, Moesha Kibibi Tajiri's house, located in the heart of scenic Madaraka Estate in Nairobi, can be home to as many as 30 children, all eager to welcome visitors with the greeting, “feel at home.” It may be a crowd, Tajiri is quick to explain, but these are just some of the over a thousand she has "adopted", country-wide. “I have four types of kids: orphans, children from mentally unstable parents, special needs children and those coming from vulnerable spaces. I pay rent to 14 different houses in different ghettos in the country. And despite all challenges,…

Nov

2023

By ESTHER MUSEMBI AND FISKE NYIRONGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Missla Libsekal is a Global Ambassador for African Contemporary Art

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

DRESSED in two shades of black and flipping through Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s How To Write About Africa; Ethiopian writer, curator, researcher and activist Missla Libsekal was in her element as she took a break from her work on Art X Lagos, one of the continent's premier art events. "These kinds of events offer Africans on the continent and in the diaspora to be in dialogue with each other. ART X really does provide a space for that to actually happen, for somebody like myself to be invited and participate in the conversation," Libsekal shared. Libeskal has been working to…

Nov

2023

By BIRD STORY AGENCY

Video: Award-winning sculptor gives modern voice to a tradition of Great Zimbabwe

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, MULTIMEDIA

ARMED with a small hammer and chisel, Dominic Benhura – a renowned Zimbabwean stone sculptor – meticulously carves a towering figure of a life-size animal from a piece of serpentine stone. As he chisels delicately, bits and pieces of sharp greyish stone fragments fall off to the ground, and a figure of a bison slowly takes shape. For him, sculpture is the ultimate reflection of physical reality, and one does not need to be a connoisseur to appreciate his dynamic art. "I started sculpting when I was four or five years [old] whilst moulding clay while herding cattle. But with…