In Lagos & Accra, an Underground Queer Ballroom Scene Thrives Again
When Timileyin Olaide Kayode started Pride in Lagos in 2021, he didn’t anticipate how big it would become. He only knew there was a need for queer Nigerians to have a visible, collective space to exist and celebrate themselves. Five years later, it has grown into a major Owambe ball and the very reason a […]
The Back of the Field
Across Buea, Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo, a running boom is exposing the hidden economics of belonging. Who pays to keep a community free, who profits when it grows, and why not one of six global brands would say what any of it is worth.
Heal by Hair: How Communities, Culture, and Trust Are Redefining Mental Health Across Africa
In Siou, a village in Togo’s Kara region, a week before the Évala celebrations, the Heal by Hair Festival revealed a powerful truth: mental health is not only a medical conversation. It is a cultural, social, and collective responsibility. “We speak a great deal about healthcare infrastructure. We speak far less about infrastructures of trust. […]
The Africa Azzedine Alaïa Carried
Azzedine Alaïa left Tunis as a young man and built his life in Paris, but the leaving was never really finished. “Azzedine Alaïa and Africa,” Olivier Saillard’s exhibition at the couturier’s foundation in the Marais, takes that unfinished departure as its subject. There are around fifty pieces, most of them from the collections Alaïa made […]
Puma Brought the Continent to Downtown LA. The Postcards Were the Tell
A week before the 2026 World Cup, Puma turned its Salehe Bembury launch in downtown LA into a study in designing an African football moment for the diaspora — and the postcards, not the product, told the real story.
Marriage Was Always the Plan for These African Men. Until It Wasn’t
The average African man is often assumed to want marriage, or at least that is the expectation many grow up with. For centuries, marriage has been positioned as one of adulthood’s defining milestones, a marker of success and fulfillment against which many men are quietly measured. In many communities, that expectation begins early. Almost as […]
After the Applause: Heritage Textiles and the Economics of the Runway Moment
Florentina Agu went back to the wood carving workshops she had visited as a child, and many of the artisans her family had once worked with were dead. The ones still alive were in difficult circumstances. Agu’s father had run a wood carving studio in Nigeria that produced parquet flooring and carved objects for sale […]