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Imagining Africa: El Anatsui brings his metal tapestries to ROM

Three Continents, 2009 by El Anatsui

Ghanaian sculptor Brahim El Anatsui's father was a master weaver who taught the tradition of strip-weaving Kente cloths to his sons. This textile technique has become a staple of El Anatsui's art: he amasses and refashions the debris from his community to create majestic, visual narratives that address his personal history and global issues like environmental sustainability. The North American premiere of his four-decade career retrospective When I Last Wrote to You About Africa is at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, having been extended to Feb. 27.

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January 4, 2012 |
The specter of genetically modified organisms has loomed large in Europe and North America and is now being faced in Africa.

The true tragedy: Bodo oil spills

In August and December 2008, two major oil spills disrupted the lives of the 69,000 or so people living in Bodo, a town in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. Both spills continued for weeks before they were stopped. Three years on, the prolonged failure of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, to clean up the oil that was spilled, continues to have catastrophic consequences for the Bodo community.

Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: Nollywood cinema and postmodern youth culture in Africa

May 31, 2010
| Through the combined influences of globalization, inherited customs and the postmodern condition, young Africans are constructing a new identity. Paul Ugor explains.
Length: 29:38
Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: Space, Culture and the Ecocritical Imagination

May 30, 2010
| Alessandra Capperdoni discusses space and post-colonial literature in the first installment of rabble's podcast series from this year's Congress at Concordia University.
Length: 25:40
Africafiles: The Pulse

Cameroon/Nigeria: The social side of the Bakassi Peninsula Crisis

April 14, 2010
| The resolution of the Cameroon-Nigeria sovereignty dispute over oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula has been described by the UN as "a diplomatic success." Exactly how successful was it?
Length: 14:02
Africafiles: The Pulse

Cameroon/Nigeria: The Social Side of the Bakassi Peninsula Crisis - Part II

April 14, 2010
| The resolution of the Cameroon-Nigeria sovereignty dispute over oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula has been described by the UN as "a diplomatic success". Exactly how successful was it?
Length: 15:46
Redeye

Nigeria's new president from the oil-rich Niger Delta

March 30, 2010
| Nigeria is a country divided into north and south, Muslim and Christian. The north has always been the power base and the south has had the oil wealth. Now things are changing.
Length: 14:36
Redeye

Sweet Crude: A film about the Niger Delta

January 31, 2010
| Since oil was discovered in Nigeria, life expectancy has dropped by 20 years, mangroves have disappeared and fish have been poisoned. Meanwhile the wealth generated by the resource leaves the country.
Length: 16:20
Columnists

Two men who stood under the plunderers' knives

Ken Saro-Wiwa and Alberto Pizango never met, but they are united by a passion for the preservation of their people and their land, and by the fervour with which they were targeted by their respective governments. Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government Nov. 10, 1995. Pizango this week was charged by the Peruvian government with sedition and rebellion, and narrowly eluded capture, taking refuge in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Lima. Nicaragua has just granted him political asylum. Two indigenous leaders -- one living, one dead -- Pizango and Saro-Wiwa demonstrate that effective grass-roots opposition to corporate power can take a personal toll. Saro-Wiwa's family and others just won a landmark settlement in U.S. federal court, ending a 13-year battle with Shell Oil.
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