AFRICA

That evening, the prophet singled me out & asked the church to fervently pray for me

I. What defines Ìdí-ẹgbẹ́ as Ìdí-ẹgbẹ́ is the huge baobab tree there. I can’t guess its age, but by the hypothesis by which science uses to predict the age of ancient trees, we can agree it is centuries old. Everybody met there including Sunday Alálùjọ̀nú, its devotee. Ìdí-ẹgbẹ́ is called Ìdí-ẹgbẹ́ because it used to […]

I’m doing something crazy. There is in fact no exact English word to describe it. It is called fait divers which is a French phrase for very brief newspaper reportage of unusual happenings and dark occurrences, like accidents or crimes, that befall ordinary, insignificant people.

Flourish Joshua is a (performance) poet from Nigeria, a NaiWA poetry scholar, 2nd place winner of the 7th Ngozi Agbo Prize for Essay, Managing Editor at NRB, Interviews Editor at Eremite Poetry & Poetry Reader at Bluebird Review and Frontier Poetry. He is published (or forthcoming) on London Grip Poetry, Ghost City Review, Brittle Paper, Indianapolis Review, Bluebird Review, and elsewhere. Say hello on Instagram/Twitter @fjspeaks.

In publishing and creative industries, conversations around diversity sprung up among stakeholders — writers, editors, agents, publishers and marketers. Amongst several shocking revelations, a few facts hit hard: books and stories written by African writers are edited and marketed by their white publishers to target a western audience. It also exists as a barrier to entry, so writers conform to stereotypical storytelling patterns that fixate on hard issues like rape, immigration, race, poverty and politics, to be published or win certain prizes.

Hadero shows us two worlds, dialectical at best: one of ease and comfort, enjoyed by foreigners, and the other of lack and precarity, experienced by locals. The “new” Ethiopia, depicted in her story, has no space for the poor and their “homes made of cloth and rags and wood.” This depiction typifies the irony at the heart of capitalist modernity pursued by the neocolonial elite.

This post is co-published in partnership with our Brick House colleagues at Olongo Africa

I find myself randomly in my day, ‘seeing’ beyond the final pages before me, clamouring for more of Iryn’s words – there has to be more beyond the words currently captured in The Separation.

Crime and punishment in the illegal wildlife trades

"I for lef Ghana," a pidgin phrase meaning “I need to leave Ghana,” has grown increasingly popular on Twitter in Ghana recently.