A three-part Guzangs series on African hair: how it has been styled, what it has signified, and how those traditions are evolving region by region.
Hair across Africa has long carried lineage, spirituality, and social standing. Woven Histories traces that record across three regions, beginning in the Maghreb and ending in East and Southern Africa. Each installment looks at the styles, the rituals around them, and the contemporary conversation they are now part of.
The series
Part I: North Africa
The opening report sets the framing for the series and centers North Africa, drawing on archival photography that documents the region’s hair traditions and the meanings they carry.
Part II: West Africa
Picking up from Part I, the second installment focuses on West African hair traditions, working from sources including J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere’s Hairstyles photographs of Nigeria and tracing the practices from spiritual context to contemporary expression.
Part III: East and Southern Africa
The closing chapter, by Oury Sene, opens on the eembuvi-plaits worn by Mbalantu women before the Ohango initiation ceremony in Namibia and reads hair across the region as ritual, resistance, and rebirth.
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