In this short story set in Barbados's plantation landscape, Barbadian writer Roderick Sargeant follows a defiant African woman, seven sisters bound by sound, and a boy marked by witness as memory settles into land and body. Drawing on his broader preoccupation with ancestral memory, inherited silence, and the unseen structures of survival within the African diaspora, Sargeant blends historical fiction, speculative elements, and unsettling horror. The narrative moves from arri

On a charged night in a royal court in Southern Africa, a Queen enters the private chamber of a King and what follows is less seduction than negotiation. In this novel excerpt, South African writer and development practitioner Yandiswa Xhakaza draws from a larger manuscript that wrestles with colonisation, patriarchy, ancestral memory and the spiritual laws governing power and lineage. Through erotic tension and deliberate dialogue, she looks at how desire is transmuted, rest

In this reflective essay, Nzaramba Agahozo Alia Fignoline traces a steady but deliberate journey from self-erasure to self-trust. Moving chapter by chapter through moments of survival, love, boundaries, and rest, she looks at the emotional habits formed in girlhood and the slow work of unlearning them. Rooted in introspection and shaped by questions of identity, healing, and African womanhood, the piece moves as a steady return to the self, where softness becomes strength and

In this poem, “Here We Are,” Siya Dlamini, a Swati poet and cultural curator based in Mbabane, Eswatini, gathers collective voice and image into a meditation on origin and becoming. Opening with a shared declaration, the piece moves from cloud and wind to altar and ash, tracing how a generation shaped by memory and prophecy negotiates identity, inheritance, and creative rebirth. Through motifs of vibration, sacrifice, and flight, Dlamini continues his broader exploration of t

In this reflective essay set between Sekimondo and memory, Wisdom Ebai, a Nigerian Yoruba writer based in Kigali, Rwanda, reconsiders the idea of ori-oke, sacred prayer hills in his upbringing associated with urgency and spiritual breakthrough. Observing daily life on a Rwandan hillside that resists symbolic meaning, he traces a steady arc from inherited belief to present-day noticing. Through prayer, naming, and landscape, the writer, whose broader work explores memory and i

In this work of literary fiction, Lagos-based designer and writer Matthias Kupoluyi introduces Ayo, a restless child born in Ogun State in southwestern Nigeria, whose sharp intelligence unsettles the church, classroom, and family structures around him. Moving from infancy into early adulthood, the story traces his growing awareness of the cost of standing apart in a culture that prizes equilibrium. Through themes of conformity, faith, and unrealised potential, Kupoluyi explor

In this short story set in a Nigerian neighbourhood shaped by harmattan mornings and communal Christmas traditions, Lagos-based Nigerian writer Damilola Adesida introduces Kachi, a young girl growing up between a Jehovah's Witness mother and a Cherubim and Seraphim father, navigating faith, friendship, and first love. As December 2006 approaches, rehearsals, schoolyard intimacy, and shifting family dynamics frame her awakening. Through themes of religion, nostalgia, queer des

In this epistolary grief essay, Nairobi-based poet Ivy Amor writes a letter to her late son, tracing the first year of loss as it moves through memory, sleeplessness, and the steady discipline of survival. Known for exploring the inner world with emotional sharpness, she moves between August and the new year, holding space for longing, anger, and fragile hope. The piece stays with motherhood, absence, and resilience, offering not resolution but recognition of grief's shifting

In this reflective journal entry, Afrosensual Awakenings: A Return to My Sense(s), Delah Dube, a multidisciplinary artist based in Kigali, Rwanda, begins a sensory inquiry through sound, tracing how early memories of drums, rain, street life and communal call-and-response shape her understanding of belonging and healing. Moving from childhood recollection to present-day practice, the essay follows a steady arc of self-regulation and how she works, exploring sensuality, nervou

In this reflective essay, Kenya-based writer Yasmin Apuwatt, working from Nairobi, examines the fear and necessity of making work, beginning with a simple confession and moving into a self-interview that interrogates ambition, doubt, and creative identity. Drawing from her wider practice of close listening to how people make things, she moves between memory, imposter syndrome, and formative reading experiences, tracing how art becomes both survival and risk. Through questions

In this policy essay, cultural producer and Pan-African arts writer Ian Joseph Wabwire, based in Kampala, Uganda, examines the structural barriers that prevent African artists from moving as freely as their work circulates globally. Moving from visa refusals affecting artists across the continent to long-term cultural residency models in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, he traces how mobility shapes participation, recognition, and exchange. Through questions of labour, bord

In this essay, Johannesburg-based Samnkelo Mdledle, a media professional whose career spans journalism, radio, and marketing, returns to long-form storytelling to revisit the rise, fall, and resurgence of the action film genre. Tracing its evolution from 1980s excess through the 1990s to the arrival of the 2014 Chad Stahelski–directed film John Wick , he reframes global action cinema through South African cultural memory and vernacular, invoking "Bliksem" (an Afrikaans slang

In this piece, Esethu Sam, a Cape Town-based multidisciplinary storyteller, reflects on the making of her photoseries People in Spaces, People Owning Spaces , shaped through attentive encounters with individuals often seen in passing. Moving from observation to sustained presence, the essay develops as a thoughtful journey through space, identity, and self-definition, looking at how lives are inhabited, recorded, and slowly claimed over time. As a multidisciplinary storytelle

Set in the precolonial kingdom of Gisaka, this work of fiction by Rwandan writer and editor Lucky Grace Isingizwe, whose work has appeared in the Caine Prize anthology and Flame Tree's African Ghost Stories, follows the story of twin sisters whose childhood rivalry gradually hardens into accusation, punishment, and lasting harm. Drawing on storytelling traditions attentive to folklore, belief, and moral ambiguity, the narrative moves across decades and regions, staging witchc

As JARS of Clay , his Pan-African cinematic project built around 54 interlinked narrative portraits, takes shape, Panmun G Nanle (OGpee) draws on a practice spanning film, architecture, and storytelling to reflect on identities formed through centuries of migration, trade, colonization, and resilience. Writing from within the development of the project, the essay uses clay as a guiding metaphor for cultures shaped, fractured, and remade over time, moving through space, ritual

As writer and illustrator Karasira Teta Ange Lina reflects on her impulse to write, this essay traces the subtle tension between expression and self-protection. Moving through questions of honesty, vulnerability, and creative safety, she shares her thoughts on how words, unlike images, expose the self more directly, and how holding back, out of fear of being fully seen, shapes the way she creates while still seeking sincerity. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about writing

I'd been watching Atmosfera grow online for months. Posts kept popping up, and I kept getting more curious. Intore dancers on the same stage as a DJ? Yeah, I had to see that. November, I went. Really enjoyed it. Got some nice pictures, saw how everything flowed, got a sense of the format. December though, I almost didn't go back. Rain pouring down, I'd just been there the month before, and my camera bag is heavy to lug around. But the flyer caught my eye. Different collaborat

I first heard about the opening of a contemporary art center in Kigali through friends. Shortly afterward, I began seeing images circulating on Instagram: the opening announced, brief glimpses of the space appearing without fully revealing it. I grew curious. When the exhibition opened, seven contemporary Rwandan artists were presented together: artists from different generations, living and working in different parts of the world. Curated by Kami Gahiga, Inuma: A Bird Shall

Rémy Ryumugabe’s work, films and photographs, move between presence and return, gesture and remembrance. His practice unfolds at the intersection of film and photography, where gesture becomes thought and the image becomes a form of listening.   His practice reflects a deep attention to the human presence—the way a face, a silence or a simple thought can carry the light of memory. Across his films and portraits, he constructs a language of intimacy that challenges the boundar

The Kigali Triennial, set to occur every three years, recently concluded last Sunday in Kigali, marking its first-ever occurrence. It...