Dynamic Africa
Formerly, "This is Africa/fyeahAfrica".
(Profile Photo by Mama Casset)
DISCLAIMER:
I do not endorse any of the products or opinions shared on this site, nor do I claim any of the work posted here to be my own - except where stated. All posts originally made by me are credited. If no credit is given then the work is either my own/written by me or reblogged from another source.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME:
Student, 24
Based in Cape Town, South Africa
From Lagos, Nigeria
Want to advertise through us? Send an email to dynamicafricablog@gmail.com
(As an unemployed media student, all donations go into ensuring my survival in this cruel world and future projects I hope to embark on).
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(since Oct. 21th 2012)
Saki Mafundikwa is a maverick visionary who left a successful design career in New York to return to his native Zimbabwe and open that country’s first school of graphic design and new media. Mafundikwa is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. In going home and opening his school, Mafundikwa’s ambition is nothing less than to jump-start an African renaissance. (aiga.org)
“I returned home last year after an absence that totalled twenty years, going to school and then working in the US. I decided to come back home to start ZIVA, a New Media Arts school. ZIVA, besides being an acronym for Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, is also a Shona word meaning “knowledge.”…
At the heart of ZIVA’s mission is a desire to create a new visual language – a language inspired by history, a language that is informed by but not dictated to or confined by European design, a language that is inspired by all the arts (sculpture, textiles, painting and Afrikan religion), a language whose inspiration is Afrikan. We are at a crossroads in the history of design right now with the young designers of the Western world rejecting the straitjacket confines of what design is and is not.
“African alphabets debunk the myth of the dark continent, they lay to rest the lies born out of ignorance that have been leveled at our beautiful Mama Africa” - Saki Mafundikwa
This less than 6-minute video is packed with so much information and essential knowledge about the history and importance of certain African writing systems and their value. As Saki emphasizes, this sort of information holds an incredible amount of weight in relation to our identities, and retracing these histories is of paramount importance.
The only area that I disagree with him on is when he says that the lies propagated about Africa(ns) were born out of ignorance - I’d be a little more specific and say that they were conceived from a place of hatred. Those who enslaved and colonized us despised us too.
Also, I love his subtle rejection of the word ‘tribe’.
Books
Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian history and thought Howard University Press. 1986. Allison Blakely Northwestern University Press, May 30, 2006
Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness. Northwestern University Press, May 30, 2006. Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Nicole Svobodny, Ludmilla A. Trigos
Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg. Hugh Barnes
Beyond the Color Line: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (Duke UP, 2002). Kate A. Baldwin
A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956-1964 (Cold War International History Project) Sergey Mazov
Soul to Soul: A Black Russian American Family 1865-1992 Yelene Khanga
Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union (May 1988) Robert Robinson
Red and Hot: The Fat of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1980 S. Frederick Starr
Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: Three Centuries of Encounters (Editor Maxim Matusevich)
The Black Russian Vladimir Alexandrov (not yet released)
Negri v Amerike/Blacks in America - Claude McKay
Petropolis Anya Ulinich
Это я – Эдичка. Эдуард Лимонов
The Last Communist Valerie ZatoichiValerie Zatoichi
Original’nyi chelovek Leonid Andreyev.
Мистер Твистер Samuil Marshak’s poem «
Articles
Kesha Fikes and Alaina Lemon in their 2002 article “African Presence in Former Soviet Spaces.
W McClellan “Africans and Black Americans in the Comintern Schools, 1925- 1934.” (1993 (through jstor)
Rossiia i Afrika: Dokumenty i Materialy, XVIII v. – 1960 g. [Russia and Africa: Documents and Materials, 18th Century – 1960] Apollon Davison
Mazov’s “Afrikanskie Studenty v Moskve v God Afriki” [African Students in Moscow in the Year of Africa]
Julie Hessler’s “Death of an African Student in Moscow.”
Claude McKay - Soviet Russia and the Negro
And anything by Maxim Matusevich-
An Exotic Subversive: Africa, Africans, and Blackness in Soviet Popular Culture and Imagination
Probing the Limits of Internationalism: African Students Confront Soviet Ritual (find pdf)
Film/VIdeos
Black Russians. ThirdWorldNewsreel
“Black Russians -The Red Experience” documentary trailer
Circus
If you have anymore to add please let me know. I will be updating it regularly.
Also, if you want to get to it, I made a separate page for it.
(via thefemaletyrant)
FULL MOVIE: The First Grader (Dir. Justin Chadwick, 2010)
The First Grader is a 2010 biographical drama film directed by Justin Chadwick, starring Naomie Harris, Oliver Litondo, and Tony Kgoroge, and based on the true story of Kimani Maruge, a Kenyan man who enrolled in elementary education at the age of 84 after the Kenyan government announced universal and free elementary education in 2003.
Penguin fossils from 10 million to 12 million years ago have been unearthed in South Africa, the oldest fossil evidence of these cuddly, tuxedoed birds in Africa.
The new discovery, detailed in the March 26 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, could shed light on why the number of penguin species plummeted on Africa’s coastline from four species 5 million years ago to just one today — Spheniscus demersus, or the jackass penguin, known for their donkeylike calls.
Daniel Thomas, a researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, and colleague Daniel Ksepka of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center were studying rock sediments near a steel plant in Cape Town, South Africa, when they uncovered an assortment of fossils, including 17 pieces that turned out to be backbones, breastbones, legs and wings from ancient penguins.
The bones suggested these ancient birds ranged from 1-to-3 feet tall (0.3 to 0.9 meters). For comparison, Africa’s living jackass penguin, also called the black-footed penguin, stands at about 2-feet tall (0.6 meters) and weighs between 5.5 and 8.8 pounds (2.5 and 4 kilograms). [Happy Feet: A Gallery of Pudgy Penguins]
The discovery pushes back the penguin fossil record in Africa by at least 5 million years.
Because the next oldest fossils from Africa date to 5 million years ago, it’s tricky to determine exactly why most penguin species disappeared from Africa.
“It’s like seeing two frames of a movie,” Ksepka said in a statement. “We have a frame at five million years ago, and a frame at 10-12 million years ago, but there’s missing footage in between.”
One possibility is that changing sea levels eliminated most of the penguins’ nesting sites.
About 5 million years ago, sea levels were 296 feet (90 m) higher than today, and the low-lying South Africa became a patchwork of islands. Those islands provided beaches for several penguin species to create nests and rear their young while sheltering them from predators.
Once the oceans fell, most of those beaches would become mainland.
Africa’s remaining jackass penguins are also on the decline. Their numbers have plummeted by 80 percent, in part because humans are overfishing their staple foods, sardines and anchovies. African penguins are being bred in captivity; for instance, a successful breeding season at the New England Aquarium in 2010 ended with the birth of 11 new African penguin chicks.
In addition, Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation, along with South African and international partners, is working to establish breeding colonies of the African penguin closer to fish resources, to ensure successful chick-rearing, according to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
VIDEO: The Benefits of Cultural Exchange: Training Lifeguards in Senegal
Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, is an urban epicenter surrounded by water on three sides. With thousands of people visiting the city’s beaches daily, both for work and play, the understaffed and ill-equipped lifeguards find it hard to cope with the daily emergencies and fatalities that arise.
Recently, UK-based lifeboat charity RNLI flew in two lifeguards to help train a volunteer beach patrol personnel by nurturing and sharpening the skills of these incredible Senegalese lifeguards.
The result - invaluable training that is potentially life-saving and will be passed on for generations to come.
For the community of Makoko of Lagos, Nigeria, life on the water is nothing new. Prone to flooding, residents have dealt with encroaching waters for generations by building houses on stiltsand using canoes as their main source of transport.
Nigerian-born architect Kunle Adeyemi has a vision for the city of 250,000 people that involves constructing a group of floating structures that have better access to sanitation, fresh water, and waste disposal.
His first endeavor would be to build a three-story school held afloat by plastic drums.
In 1964, still living the dream of their recently gained independence, Zambia started a space program that would put the first African on the moon catching up the USA and the Soviet Union in the space race.
Only a few optimists supported the project by Edward Makuka, the school teacher in charge of presenting the ambitious program and getting its necessary funding. But the financial aid never came, as the United Nations declined their support, and one of the astronauts, a 16 year old girl, got pregnant and had to quit.
(more)
The Ibrahim Scholarships are a range of programmes to support aspiring leaders for the African continent. The scholarships reflect a range of priorities for African development.
From a focus on the education of women in Sudan to support for historically marginalised Nubian people in Egypt, the Foundation is committed to showcasing the best talent from the African continent, particularly amongst those groups who are often denied the opportunity to contribute to their society’s development.
Investing in the future of young people in Africa is key to improving the continent’s governance. The Foundation highlights areas in which dramatic impact can be demonstrated when young Africans are given the opportunities they deserve to build their own and their countries’ futures.
American University in Cairo
The Foundation provides two graduate fellowships and two full undergraduate scholarships to students of Nubian origin, with a working knowledge of the Nubian language, who wish to support the enrichment and preservation of Nubian culture and heritage.
For further information please contact enrolauc@aucegypt.edu, +202 797 5011/2London Business School
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation scholarship for sub-Saharan Africa supports outstanding students on the full-time MBA programme at London Business School. Each year one scholarship, providing full payment of fees, is awarded to an exceptional MBA candidate from sub-Saharan Africa with financial need.
For further information please contact mbainfo@london.edu, +44 (0)20 7000 7000School of Oriental and African Studies
The Governance for Development in Africa Initiative aims to build the skills of bright young Africans.
For further information please contact Angelica Baschiera ab17@soas.ac.uk, +44 (0)20 7898 4370Together for Sudan
The Foundation provides support for Together for Sudan to sponsor higher education for female students in all faculties, with a particular emphasis on business studies.
For further information please contact enquiries@togetherforsudan.orgUniversity of Birmingham
The Foundation provides a scholarship for an MSc in Governance and State-Building at the University of Birmingham. The two-year programme includes a six month internship at the Foundation Secretariat. An exceptional African national receives full tuition fees, a living allowance and airfare to the UK.
For more information and to apply
www.birmingham.ac.uk
![fotojournalismus:
World Press Photo 2013
Contemporary Issues, 1st prize singles
03 April 2012 - Nairobi, Kenya
Pausing in the rain, a woman working as a trash picker at the 30-acre dump, which literally spills into households of one million people living in nearby slums, wishes she had more time to look at the books she comes across. She even likes the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day besides picking [trash],” she said.
[Credit : Micah Albert/Redux]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/5726e7b67b7e47e75c873ce3d5d81499/tumblr_mi9wigpFa71r44q44o1_500.jpg)
Contemporary Issues, 1st prize singles
03 April 2012 - Nairobi, Kenya
Pausing in the rain, a woman working as a trash picker at the 30-acre dump, which literally spills into households of one million people living in nearby slums, wishes she had more time to look at the books she comes across. She even likes the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day besides picking [trash],” she said.
[Credit : Micah Albert/Redux]
An all girls school
Bida, Northern Nigeria
1900s.the expression of that one girl in the top left.
(via nocturnalphantasmagoria)
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: On February 11, 1990, after 27 years in prison, anti-Apartheid activist, lawyer, political leader and counter-terrorist freedom fighter Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was released from prison.
After being convicted of sabotage in 1964, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison and spent 18 years in the brutal and infamous prison known as ‘Robben Island’, a few miles of the coast of Cape Town, along with the likes of Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki (father of former president Thabo Mbeki), John Nyathi Pokela, Tokyo Sexwale, Robert Sobukwe and current president of South Africa Jacob Zuma.
In 1989, F.W. De Klerk became South African president and as part of the road to ending Apartheid, he lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and ordered the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners.
In 1993, Mandela and De Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1994, after a successful campaign as leader of the ANC, Mandela was became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, as well as the country’s first ever black president.
Top: Dogon woman winnowing millet. It has been pounded in a mortar to remove the husks.
Bottom: A woman in South Carolina winnowing chaff from grain using a fanning basket.
Courtesy of the Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia.
Our schools don’t teach us how knowledge, traditions and culture from Africa are present in the Americas. I mean, they DO, but I swear it seems like they glance over or whisper the info to students. That’s why it’s important for our families and communities to relay this info to our youth and not depend on our schools to do so.
Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
EVENT: British Council Culture Shift Kenya II
DATE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013 TO WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2013
Come participate in a creative sprint organised by the British Council. You will work in teams to create eye-opening ideas that will expand Kenya’s capability in digital film, video and animation.
We are recruiting creatives and technologists to work on themes set by local creative agencies. The agencies are looking for new ideas on how to make, distribute and show these digital media, as well as to embed them in other forms. The two winning teams will be awarded a total of £5000 to develop their ideas further, and ongoing mentoring will be arranged where possible.
The goal of the event is to create new working relationships and to expand the local digital media ecosystem in locally relevant ways.
