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 […]
Before the Album, Rapsody Went to Ghana
Rapsody did not come to Ghana for a show. There was no tour routing to explain the visit, no announced album cycle. She came to walk the country, and she came with questions about where she was from. Amino’s 2025 film, “Rapsody in Ghana, A Conversation With Joseph Amino,” follows those questions through markets and […]
Kente and the Politics of Being Read
On June 8, 2020, a group of Democratic lawmakers knelt on the floor of the United States Capitol for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the duration then believed to mark how long a Minneapolis officer had knelt on George Floyd’s neck, later revised at trial to nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Several of them wore […]
The Machine Can See You. It Still Can’t Pay You.
Somewhere in a court-approved spreadsheet, nearly half a million books have become line items. Whatever a book once was in the making of it, the years of revision and abandonment and recovery before it ever reached a reader, it now exists in that file as an eligible work with a claim status, a payout estimate, […]
Architecture Learns to Play
A tennis court is already a diagram, with its rectangle and net and service boxes laid out in white before anyone arrives, and Backyard Community Club, the new tennis facility that DeRoche Projects has just completed in the dense Accra neighbourhood of Osu, takes that familiar diagram and complicates it in ways that turn out […]
The Scaling Gap, in Beauty
In Accra, Victorine Sarr is managing customer orders while navigating shipping delays, rising supplier costs, and limited local manufacturing capacity. In London, Mimi Koné is building her beauty brand with closer proximity to retailers, investors, and international distribution networks. Both founders operate within the same global beauty industry, but not within the same systems of […]
The Hotels That Actually Know Where They Are
The Hotels That Actually Know Where They Are Cultural programming has become one of hospitality’s most overused promises. Here’s how to tell the difference between a hotel that has genuinely embedded itself in a place — and one that has simply dressed the lobby. Credit: HBD Principe – Oca Sundy Restaurant, Sundy Praia, Príncipe Island […]
How to Dress for a Rave (Across African Cities)
To dress for a rave, one must first recognize how raves are buzzing all over our social radar
Bal d’Afrique, on African Ground
Byredo’s new campaign was shot in Accra with a West African cast, a Burkinabè choreographer and a creative team spanning the continent and its diaspora. It may be the most structurally ambitious fragrance campaign of the year. Photography by Philip-Daniel Ducasse for Byredo Byredo’s new Bal d’Afrique campaign was shot in Accra, Ghana, and built […]
Kusi Kubi on PALMWINE IceCREAM SS26, Craft, and His Mother’s Wardrobe
PALMWINE IceCREAM, the Ghana–London brand led by designer Kusi Kubi, released its SS26 campaign this week