How did popular music become the battlefield of Uganda's future? And what are the consequences?
The killing of James Muriithi in Kenya served as yet another anecdote to the brutalization of the poor in Kenya, but it isn’t yet fully accepted as such, not least within police circles.
Within the political dysfunctionality of this country in which the media revels in the sensational, Kakamega seems to have produced more than its fair share of colourful characters.
The 60s, 70s and 80s are often described as the Golden Age of Indian cinema and Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu had a large number of cinemas devoted to showing films made in Bombay.
Culture is at the centre of the quest to resolve identity issues in Kenya’s arts scene. Artists and experts continue to dialogue on whether we have a truly Kenyan beat.
Zindzi Mandela’s childhood was difficult and tumultuous. However, even with a father in jail and a mother constantly harassed by the authorities, she chose to embrace little pleasures amidst the turmoil.
Afrobeats musicians and music audiences around the world are immensely indebted to Fela Kuti for the enormous sacrifices he made to lay the solid foundations on which the genre stands.
The locals called them Ninjas, for if they were not, how then could these children survive their hard lives? How could they endure their pain without breaking?
In Kenya, rising water levels in lakes along the Great Rift Valley have forced thousands of people from their homes, submerging huge areas of farmland. Schools, hospitals, roads and water pipes have been destroyed. Crucially, there is a real fear that Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria, one fresh and the other saline, will contaminate each other. Ferdinand Omondi writes about this threat of an ecological disaster.
Kenyans are reportedly “being taken by storm” by Parler, a newish right-wing social media platform. But do they really know how toxic the storm sweeping over them is? The platform is racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, white supremacist – and that’s only for starters.
