Building a fashion empire in a country that’s still conservative about sexuality and female agency.
Africa
Posted inArts & Culture, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Nina Simone’s Three Years of Freedom
At Guernica, Katherina Grace Thomas turns a lens on the years Nina Simone spent in Liberia in the mid-1970s.
Posted inNonfiction
Young African Artists Lead Nuanced Conversation about Race in America
Taiye Selasi, Yaa Gyasi, and Toyin Ojin Odutola expand notions of blackness with layered, nuanced artwork.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Congo Is Working to Protect Both Its Coastline and Its People
A small group of park rangers help protect Congo’s wetlands from poachers and smugglers.
Posted inArts & Culture, College, Nonfiction, Quotes
Decolonizing Education in South Africa
South African students of color are working to improve the conditions of education in a country that, twenty years after apartheid, is still rigged for the white minority.
Posted inQuotes
Twilight of the Sawfish
When a West African symbol vanishes, its loss is felt in the ocean — and on land.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
On Being Eritrean
In her essay in Pacific Standard, Rahawa Haile writes about identity, the anxiety of origins, and the search for a grounded life in unstable, isolating locales. Born to Eritrean parents, Haile grew up in Miami, Florida, speaking English and Tigrinya in a low land of built of hurricane deposits that felt doomed to rising sea levels. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Conservation Threatens Indigenous Peoples
But the Maasai of Loliondo are not alone in disputing these supposed benefits. Worldwide, 8 million square miles—a landmass almost as large as the entire African continent—have been classified as protected areas by governments and conservation groups. In turn, the locals have mostly been pushed off their lands. Though no one formally counts people displaced […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Recalling Life in Liberia
Yes, I remember: boiling leaves to eat; rubbing leaves on your skin because you have no soap; crushing leaves under your arms so that you don’t smell bad. Leaves and dirt, sticks and rocks: these are the only things a refugee can count on. Even if the exiles go home, the average wage in Liberia […]
Posted inUncategorized
The key to solving hunger in Africa starts with improving the soil. An overview of agricultural subsidies and the debate over whether the best approach is through inorganic fertilizers or greener, cheaper (but more difficult) solutions like no-till farming: Fertilizer use in Africa is at the mercy of precarious politics. Although Rwanda’s fertilizer programme is […]