Amirr (centre) parades though his village ahead of the imbalu circumcision ritual. Imbalu begins with dance and music, as initiates visit relatives and friends to receive gifts.
Luke Drey/Getty Images
The ritual site becomes a communal classroom where songs and dances teach history, impart values and preserve cultural identity.
EPA-EFE/Phill Magakoe/AFP Pool
Royal women play important roles in succession disputes, such as the naming of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu’s heir.
Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment/Tiff
This movie is absolutely worth seeing. But it’s best viewed with the awareness of its significant alterations of history.
A publicity still from The Woman King, about the “amazons” of Dahomey.
Image courtesy Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment/Tiff
From Lovecraft Country to Black Panther to a statue in Benin, the “amazons” of Dahomey continue to trend in global popular culture.
The new home of the Mapungubwe Archive.
University of Pretoria Museums/Mapungubwe Archive
The Mapungubwe site offers evidence of precolonial innovation and technology.
Toyin Falola
Photo courtesy Boydell & Brewer
Indigenous knowledge, African languages, queer rights and Afrofuturism are some of the issues discussed in the new book.
Tigray’s al-Nejashi Mosque, one of Africa’s oldest Islamic sites, was damaged in December 2020.
Photo by Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images
Many of the artefacts Ethiopia is famous for are found in Tigray. Their continued destruction could lead to irreversible culture shock and social collapse.
Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere, a Swahili advocate.
Keystone/Getty Images
Over two millennia, Swahili has built bridges among people across Africa and into the diaspora.
Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, approached by a Berber on camelback, from The Catalan Atlas, 1375.
Attributed to Abraham Cresques/Bibliothèque Nationale de France/Wikimedia Commons
Born in Blackness by Howard W. French is a towering work. It argues that, because of gold and slavery, Africa is central to creating the modern world.
Chiabella James/2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Africa was divided by European imperialists depending on what each desired in natural resources
Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda at the inauguration of former South African president Thabo Mbeki in 2004.
EFE-EPA
Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat and an international diplomat.
Former President Mwai Kibaki signs the new constitution in Nairobi in 2010 before former Attorney General Amos Wako.
Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images
Kenya’s constitution-making process has exhibited a gyration pattern that often starts with a belief that governance reforms can rectify the country’s problems, but ends up as a power struggle.
Moeketsi Majoro, Lesotho’s new Prime Minister. A minor constitutional amendment enabled his ascension to power.
GCIS/Flickr
The fundamental structure of the current constitution, which is cast in classical Westminster conceptions, is unsuited for modern-day constitutionalism.
Ink Drop/Shutterstock
Nigeria’s pre-eminent position in Africa, lost to corruption and political patronage over the years, can be regained by putting its house in order.
Dance troupes mark the anniversary of Ghana’s independence in the grounds of Kwame Krumah’s masuoleum in Accra in 2007.
EPA/Tugela Ridley
Studies of Kwame Nkrumah have been influenced by the political climate both within and outside Ghana.
Africa has a rich history and insights that can balance Eurocentric schools of thought in higher education.
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How African knowledge systems can be incorporated into higher education.
A human skull on display in Berlin in 2018. Germany handed back human remains seized during the Namibia genocide from 1904 to 1908.
EPA-EFE/Hayoung Jeon
An oral history based biography of a survivor of colonial genocide in Namibia indicates instances of humanity during an entirely inhumane era.
Steve Biko is widely considered to be the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa.
EFE-EPA/Sowetan
Black consciousness in South Africa changed blacks and whites.
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Only psychologists could discern how Dumiso Dabengwa maintained his legendary composure, a necessary trait for an intelligence supremo.
Oromo children saved from slavery.
Supplied by author
Book adds a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade.