Category: Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Todd Pezzuti, Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

From Lagos to Cape Town, Santiago to Seoul, people want to be cool. “Cool” is a word we hear everywhere – in music, in fashion, on social media. We use it to describe certain types of people.

But what exactly makes someone cool? Is it just about being popular or trendy? Or is there something deeper going on?

In a recent study I conducted with other marketing professors, we set out to answer a simple but surprisingly unexplored question. What are the personality traits and values that make someone seem cool – and do they differ across cultures?

We asked nearly 6,000 people from 12 countries to think of someone they personally knew who was “cool”, “not cool”, “good”, or “not good”. Then we asked them to describe that person’s traits and values using validated psychological measures. We used this data to examine how coolness differs from general likeability or morality.

Read more: What makes a person seem wise? Global study finds that cultures do differ – but not as much as you’d think

The countries ranged from Australia to Turkey, the US to Germany, India to China, Nigeria to South Africa.

Our data showed that coolness is uniquely associated with the same six traits around the world: cool people tend to be extroverted, hedonistic, adventurous, open, powerful, and autonomous.

These findings help settle a long debate about what it means to be cool today.

A brief history of cool

Early writing on coolness described it as emotional restraint: being calm, composed and unbothered. This view, rooted in the metaphor of temperature and emotion, saw coolness as a sign of self-control and mastery.

Some of these scholars trace this form of cool to slavery and segregation, where emotional restraint was a survival strategy among enslaved Africans and their descendants, symbolising autonomy and dignity in the face of oppression. Others propose “cool” restraint existed long before slavery.

Regardless, jazz musicians in the 1940s first helped popularise this cool persona – relaxed, emotionally contained, and stylish – an image later embraced by youth and various countercultures. Corporations like Nike, Apple and MTV commercialised cool, turning a countercultural attitude into a more commercially friendly global aesthetic.

This is what makes someone cool

Our findings suggest that the meaning of cool has changed. It’s a way to identify and label people with a specific psychological profile.

Cool people are outgoing and social (extroverted). They seek pleasure and enjoyment (hedonistic). They take risks and try new things (adventurous). They are curious and open to new experiences (open). They have influence or charisma (powerful). And perhaps most of all, they do things their own way (autonomous).

This finding held remarkably steady across countries. Whether you’re in the US, South Korea, Spain or South Africa, people tend to think that cool individuals have this same “cool profile”.

We also found that even though coolness overlaps with being good or favourable, being cool and being good are not the same. Being kind, calm, traditional, secure and conscientious were more associated with being good than cool. Some “cool” traits were not necessarily good at all, like extroversion and hedonism.

What about South Africa and Nigeria?

One of the most fascinating aspects of our study was seeing how consistent the meaning of coolness was across cultures – even in countries with very different traditions and values.

In South Africa, participants viewed cool people as extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous – just like participants from Europe to Asia. In South Africa, however, coolness is especially distinct from being good. South Africa is one of the countries in which being hedonistic, powerful, adventurous and autonomous was much more cool than good.

Read more: Which African countries are flourishing? Scientists have a new way of measuring well-being

Nigeria was the only country in which cool and uncool people were equally autonomous. So basically, individuality wasn’t seen as cool. That difference might reflect cultural values that place a greater emphasis on community, respect for elders, or collective identity. In places where tradition and hierarchy matter, doing your own thing might not be cool.

Social sciences, like all science, however, are not perfect. So, it’s reasonable to speculate that autonomy might still be cool in Nigeria, with the discrepancy resulting from methodological issues such as how the Nigerian participants interpreted and responded to the survey.

Nigeria was also unique because the distinction between cool and good wasn’t as notable as in other countries. So coolness was seen more as goodness than in the other countries.

Why does this matter?

The fact that so many cultures agree on what makes someone cool suggests that “coolness” may serve a shared social function. The traits that make people cool may make them more likely to try new things, innovate new styles and fashions, and influence others. These individuals often push boundaries and introduce new ideas – in fashion, art, politics, or technology. They inspire others and help shape what’s seen as modern, desirable, or forward-thinking.

Coolness, in this sense, might function as a kind of cultural status marker – a reward for being bold, open-minded and innovative. It’s not just about surface style. It’s about signalling that you’re ahead of the curve, and that others should pay attention.

So what can we learn from this?

For one, young people in South Africa, Nigeria, and around the world may have more in common than we often think. Despite vast cultural differences, they tend to admire the same traits. That opens up interesting possibilities for cross-cultural communication, collaboration and influence.

Second, if we want to connect with or inspire others – whether through education, branding, or leadership – it helps to understand what people see as cool. Coolness may not be a universal virtue, but it is a universal currency.

And finally, there’s something reassuring in all this: coolness is not about being famous or rich. It’s about how you live. Are you curious? Courageous? True to yourself? If so, chances are someone out there thinks you’re cool – no matter where you’re from.

– What makes a person cool? Global study has some answers
– https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-person-cool-global-study-has-some-answers-261266

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gibson Ncube, Senior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University

Zimbabwe-born, Canada-based Chido Muchemwa’s debut short story collection, Who Will Bury You?, was published late in 2024 and immediately attracted the right kind of attention.

Here was an unexpected range of themes: queer identity, dislocation in the diaspora, the lingering complexities of family and cultural belonging. The 12 stories, set between Zimbabwe and Canada, trace moments of rupture and reconnection across time and geography. And they’re mostly about women. Women, selfhood, loss and love.

Gibson Ncube, who researches queer African fiction, unpacks why it’s such a good read.

What are some of the stories about?

The recurring questions in Who Will Bury You? are: who will remain when we are gone – who will understand us, who will grieve for us, and who will honour the truths we live by? These questions are animated through emotionally layered stories that centre the lives of Zimbabwean women and queer characters.

Written with subtlety and care, some of the stories draw on Zimbabwean folklore, allowing Muchemwa to bridge the mythical and the present-day. She demonstrates how ancestral narratives continue to shape how people experience love, loss and belonging.

The title story introduces a Zimbabwean “church going woman” and her daughter, who is living in Canada and has embraced a lesbian identity. In Zimbabwe, same-sex relationships remain criminalised under laws inherited from colonial rule and reinforced by state-sponsored homophobia. Political leaders often frame queerness as un-African or morally deviant.

The story is told through alternating perspectives and offers a portrait of intergenerational estrangement, cultural friction, and love strained by silence. What one of the characters calls “things that might never feel sayable”. The theme of queerness recurs in several other stories like This Will Break My Mother’s Heart and If It Wasn’t for the Nights.

Muchemwa allows these stories to gather meaning through multiple vantage points. She seems to resist resolution in favour of complexity. The collection is a significant contribution to the small but growing body of Zimbabwean literature that openly addresses queerness.

What’s Muchemwa saying about queer African life?

One of Muchemwa’s most powerful acts in the book is to treat queer life not as peripheral, but as central to the cultural, emotional and political worlds her characters inhabit. Queer desire, intimacy and estrangement are not exceptional disruptions. They are ordinary realities that are woven into everyday life. In these stories, queerness is at once a site of tenderness, conflict and hope. The effects of religion and colonial morality continue to shape how love is expressed and denied.

Read more: 7 queer African works of art: new directions in books, films and fashion

The stories challenge the erasure of queer voices by positioning them at the heart of families and communities. Queer characters are neither idealised nor victimised. They are allowed to simply be joyful, ambivalent, flawed, and resilient.

Aside from identity, what are some of the other themes?

The book also grapples with questions of memory, history and myth. In Finding Mermaids, Muchemwa blends contemporary reportage with folklore. A journalist and her grieving mother investigate the disappearance of young girls in a rural Zimbabwean town who are suspected to have been captured by njuzu, water spirits.

Other stories, like Kariba Heights and The Captive River, explore the legacies of colonialism and the spiritual power of the Zambezi River. In these stories, Muchemwa is attentive to how land, history and belief have an impact on personal experiences.

Living away from home, in the diaspora, is also a theme. Zimbabwe’s collapsing economy and ongoing political instability have driven many to seek better lives abroad, looking for jobs or educational opportunities.

Characters in Toronto grapple with cultural dislocation. They long for home as they tackle the challenges of forging new forms of kinship abroad. The Toronto that Muchemwa renders is richly textured. It’s far from a generic western backdrop. It is portrayed as a space of possibility and tension in which characters remake themselves in the face of displacement.

Why is it a special book to you as a scholar?

Muchemwa’s prose is precise, controlled, and emotionally resonant. She writes with confidence, trusting the power of implication and delicate shifts in tone. The plots of the stories are simple. They are not driven by dramatic revelations. Rather, by accumulative emotional insight. Her characters often seem to border on the edge of decision or reconciliation. In fact, their silences are as revealing as their speech.

Throughout the collection, there’s a sense of hushed intensity. The question of who will be there – at the end, in crisis, in love – lingers and ties the stories together. Even as her characters move between countries, generations and identities, they remain tied by their desire for recognition and care.

Read more: Books: folklore and fantasy combine in Langabi, a supernatural historical epic from Zimbabwe

Muchemwa’s debut contributes to a growing body of contemporary African writing that focuses on intimacy, friendship and queerness as legitimate and urgent narrative concerns. Who Will Bury You? offers a fresh take that avoids the clichés and stereotypes often associated with African literature – what Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has famously called the single story.

Rather than dwelling on recurrent tropes of suffering or political crisis, Muchemwa’s stories place a spotlight on private lives and emotional entanglements. They compel us to be attentive to the quiet yet consequential turmoil that takes place within families and intimate relationships.

The collection does not avoid the cultural and religious violences that have an impact on everyday life. But Muchemwa faces them through the perspective of those who survive, and remake, these constraints on their own terms.

Who Will Bury You? is a carefully crafted collection that demands close attention. It’s a book about women who refuse to be easily defined. With this collection, Muchemwa asserts herself as a compelling new voice in Zimbabwean and African literature. Her debut represents new African storytelling which continues to expand the narratives of African writers. It dares to centre the personal, the queer, and the emotionally complex.

– Who Will Bury You? Short stories from Zimbabwe about women who refuse to be easily defined
– https://theconversation.com/who-will-bury-you-short-stories-from-zimbabwe-about-women-who-refuse-to-be-easily-defined-261291