Malawi’s president Bingu wa Mutharika (Christened Tryson Webster Thom when he was born) has died of a heart attack last week Thursday. Mutharika was in power for eight years, and was grooming his brother to succeed him. His vice-President, Joyce Banda, whom he expelled from the ruling party in 2010, went on to form another party, a fact which those in power at the time of his death wanted to [...]
Photo ©Shebreathes.com SheBreathes.com bills itself as a virtual vault of goodies where independent, emerging, and established designers can be shared and supported. They had us at “independent”. We’re all about DIY good looks having premiered our ‘What I Wore’ series this week, a feature we’d like to use to showcase the fascinating personal styles of people we come across. Also browse through their Sales Vault. I’m yet to find anything within my [...]
He goes by Mr. Mobility. Yomi Adegboye’s expertise involve all things mobile and he has become the go-to source for that sector in Nigeria, which will eventually (if not already) include all of Africa. Having already built a tight-knit community around Mobility blog, his main platform for spreading his knowledge, it is interesting to watch how a “techie” on the continent is using social media to his advantage. Meet our [...]
(photo credit: from Yoruba Girl Dancing) Hopefully you’re familiar with one of our most popular set of posts, The ’10 Nigerians….’ series. If you are, then you’ll know this isn’t the first time we’ve sung the praises of journalist and writer Bim Adewunmi. We listed her as one of 10 Nigerian wordsmiths you should know. The other day I had a browse through her blog Yoruba Girl Dancing and in [...]
New York City: AfriPOP! has 2 sets of tickets for the Georgia Anne Muldrow at S.O.B.’s (March 26) and Nneka at the Gramercy Theater (March 27). That’s one pair per show. Win by entering your deets below and signing up for our email list. We’ll announce winners by 2pm on the day of the show so be sure to check your emails. CLICK HERE TO ENTER TO WIN TICKETS
Africa Express is the travelling soundsystem that came about in 2006 after Damon Albarn invited a lot of US and UK musicians to get together with a lot of Malian musicians to jam in Bamako, the mission to bring awareness to African music and to inspire the trading of creative ideas. This kind of cross cultural mash-up is very much his thing and is the basis for his latest project [...]
(photo credits: Shako Oteka) It was summer ’09 in humid New Orleans and Alec Lomami just wanted to give a recently recorded song a test drive. Literally. As part of his quality control check for new tracks, he would drive around with the song blasting from his speakers. Minutes into the drive, he was pulled over. “The policeman said I hadn’t paid a ticket, which I argued I had,” he explained. [...]
Nneka recently spoke with AfriPOP: On Occupy Nigeria: “I was in Nigeria for the Occupy Nigeria movement. People use the opportunity not just to stress the removal of oil subsidies, this was an opportunity to express their grief and frustration they’ve been having for a long time. People became more courageous to speak up about corruption. People came together – it was amazing. Muslims, Christians… I think it was the [...]
AfriPOP! and Masauko Chipembere of blksonshine celebrated Miriam Makeba’s life and legacy through song at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City on March 10, 2012. The show’s intent was also to celebrate the women’s voices from around the world. Performers included Tuelo Minah (South Africa), Des Gordon (Antigua), Samantha Thornhill & Mimi Jones as Medusa Strings (Trinidad/US), Yolanda Zama (South Africa), Lollise Mbi (Botswana), Sinethemba Makanya (South Africa), [...]
If you missed this (though it was hard to), the African twitter world was taken astorm when the hashtag #whatiloveaboutafrica became a worldwide trending topic on Tuesday, March 13th, 2011. It was first started by Semhar Araia (@semhar), founder of DAWN (Diaspora African Women’s Network ) late the previous night. She explained that she wanted to add to the narrative about Africa when starting the hashtag “Tired of reacting, complaining. Tired [...]
