Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Assistant Professor, Harvard University

For 10 years, Ghanaian poet Kwame Dawes and his friend the Nigerian writer Chris Abani have sifted through piles of manuscripts looking for Africa’s new poetic talent. Since 2014, the African Poetry Book Fund has been assembling a formidable archive of writing through the New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series.

A chapbook – a small publication usually under 40 pages – is an accessible and honoured format for poets to publish focused selections of their work. In this series, each chapbook features an emerging African poet, and is presented as part of a beautifully designed box set of 10 or more chapbooks. Besides the poetry itself, each box set also showcases the work of a commissioned African visual artist. The artists include Sokari Douglas Camp, Victor Ehikhamenor, Ficre Ghebreyesus and Aida Muluneh, among others.

This ever-growing archive has now published over 100 poets, and offers a window into the diversity of African poetic expression today.

Marking the project’s 10th anniversary is a new anthology called Toward a Living Archive of African Poetry, edited by Jordanian writer Siwar Masannat. It collects Dawes and Abani’s rich introductions to each box set and has a foreword by Masannat. In it, readers learn about the impact of the series, offering a layered and necessary account of how these chapbooks have transformed the visibility of African poets over the past decade.

My work as a scholar of African literature focuses on recovering overlooked histories and interrogating the spaces in which literature is made and circulated.

This new anthology matters because it documents not just poems, but a cultural movement that redefines what an African literary archive can be, and why poetry remains central to that conversation.

Decidedly diasporic

While the series places Africa at the centre of its imagination, its focus is largely diasporic, shaped by Africans living outside the continent. The majority of the poets live in the US or the UK. Poets based on the continent form a minority and are scattered geographically.

The editors acknowledge this imbalance, attributing it to “better access to workshops and craft education” available to diaspora poets. The result is an archive arguably shaped less by the immediacies of the continent and more by the diaspora’s sensibilities and infrastructures.

Nigeria, more than any of the 25-odd countries included in the chapbooks, shapes the aesthetics of the series. This reflects both the density of the country’s literary networks and the curatorial choices of the editors. They rely heavily on personal connections and prize pools to spot new and emerging talents.

A recurring feature of the poets in the series is the “hyphenated African”: Somali-American, Ghanaian-British, Ethiopian-German, Sierra Leonean-American. Some were born in countries outside Africa or migrated as toddlers. Their Africanness is claimed through memory, nostalgia, heritage, or family history, rather than geography.

The editors assert that all the poets “self-identify as Africans in the full and complicated way that Africanness is best defined”. This also underscores how the project expands the category of African poetry. In fact, the transcontinental profile of these writers shows how African poetry today cannot be read solely through a nationalist lens. The hybridity of identity and place becomes central. Many poets occupy in-between spaces – culturally, geographically, linguistically and emotionally.

Still, the series impresses on many other levels. Particularly in its commitment to highlighting the continent’s plural and localised poetics, and in its rare, long-term investment in the future of African poetry.

Gender

The series has been notably attentive to gender parity. Women poets like Warsan Shire, Safia Elhillo, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Momtaza Mehri, Tsitsi Jaji and Vuyelwa Maluleke, among others, form a significant portion of the archive.

Read more: Tutu Puoane: the South African singer on creating her new album out of Lebo Mashile’s poetry

This signals an important feminist turn in African poetics. The chapbook form becomes a space where African women’s voices are nurtured and given international circulation, countering historical silences. The poets here highlight a generational continuity of feminist expression.

Intergenerational

The birth years of poets in the series range from 1963 to 2007, showcasing a vibrant intergenerational dialogue. The older poets often engage in socio-political critique informed by post-independence transitions. Millennial and Gen Z poets frequently explore themes of identity, queerness, internet culture, displacement and decoloniality with linguistic experimentation and digital fluency.

Ghanaian poet Tryphena Yeboah, in her chapbook, A Mouthful of Home, exemplifies this:

I TELL MY MOTHER I WANT A BODY THAT

EXPANDS

Into a map. She wants to know where I’ll travel to. I say

“myself”.

The act of travel becomes a metaphor for self-mapping that captures how younger African poets reimagine movement, belonging and home as internal, affective geographies.

In contrast, South African poet Ashley Makue, in her chapbook, i know how to fix myself, offers a more visceral expression of embodied trauma and inherited violence:

my mother is a war zone

they don’t tell her that

these men that pee in her

and leave with gunpowder in their chests

Living archive

The New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series has been an extraordinary intervention in the history of African poetry. It has foregrounded a generation, opened an aesthetic safe space, and created a beautiful, living archive.

Dawes and Abani introduce each of the box sets with two introductions – what they call “simultaneous conversations” – and they often debate identity, the style of the poetry, circulation, and other issues.

This is more than an impressive catalogue; it is a breathing archive of African poetic consciousness, one that resists static definitions. It captures the fluidity of identity, the urgency of voice, and the diverse shaping of African poetry today.

What it tells us: that African poetry is thriving, diverse and globally mobile. What it does not tell us: how poets working entirely from the continent might imagine and enact African poetics differently.

But by foregrounding new and emerging voices, the Africa Poetry Book Fund affirms that poets remain vital chroniclers of the African experience, articulating emotion, history and imagination in ways that other forms of writing often cannot.

They don’t just do this through publications, but running prizes, supporting African poetry libraries and maintaining a digital archive.

– African poetry is celebrated in a groundbreaking publishing project
– https://theconversation.com/african-poetry-is-celebrated-in-a-groundbreaking-publishing-project-267772

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kristin Brig, Lecturer in Public Health & Society, Washington University in St. Louis

The water infrastructure politics of eThekwini, the municipality that includes the city of Durban, have been splashed across the digital pages of South Africa’s news outlets in recent years.

They’ve covered the 2022 floods that damaged kilometres of pipes, water tanker purchases as a response to increasing water scarcity, and the disconnection of residential water storage tanks from municipal pipes to cope with leaky infrastructure. Like other South African municipalities, eThekwini has fallen behind on maintaining its piped water infrastructure and has looked to stopgap solutions.

The city’s water politics has a long history. Some of the infrastructure issues can be traced back to the mid-1800s, when it was a British imperial port.

I’m a historian with an interest in coastal communities and urban life. As part of my work on water as a public health concern in colonial cities, I spent months in the Durban Archives Repository, going through correspondence, reports, business contracts, newspaper clippings and town council minutes.

The records revealed how the system of colonial-era water infrastructure worked – and for whom.

The first water technologies in Durban were British-styled wells. Anyone could use them, for free. They brought people of different origins and class together for practical purposes but also created anxiety about social difference. For colonial officials, the public had to follow British standards or lose access to the infrastructure altogether. They created Durban’s first water-policing system, purportedly for better public health and conservation. While wealthier and white people eventually came to rely on piped water, poorer and black (Zulu and Indian) people were excluded.

This system formed the basis for the uneven access to water that today’s residents experience. People still depend on private water infrastructure as the municipal system struggles.

Nineteenth-century infrastructure

Founded by British traders as Port Natal in 1824, the colonial borough of Durban depended on stand-alone water infrastructures from the beginning. Brick and cement wells were the first technologies from which residents drew water, since they were easy to build and maintain. Most wells had either a bucket or a pump attached to them. Pumps attached to wells became common after the borough made most wells publicly available in the mid-1850s.

Water tanks, on the other hand, were private technologies which mainly lay underground. Only wealthier households and businesses could afford to build them. They became prominent in the 1870s.

It’s hard to know exactly how many of these infrastructures existed in total. By the 1870s, though, official reports indicate that about 18 public wells and pumps across the town served the bulk of the town’s approximately 20,000 inhabitants.

Piped water came to Durban in the 1880s, supplied initially by the spring at Curries Fountain. In 1889, the city’s laws were extended to cover private tanks that were filled from the municipal pipes. Even so, much of the population still relied on standalone infrastructures for water supplies.

As time went by, conflicts began to brew. The rising population placed a strain on these stand-alone infrastructures, which offered varying amounts of water depending on rainfall patterns. Arguments sparked when a community drew too much water or polluted a well, creating a local water scarcity.

Clashes and restrictions

White colonists blamed much of the water scarcity and contamination on African labourers who worked as household or business servants, sanitary workers and launderers. These positions demanded a close relationship with fresh water collection and use, which meant African labourers became the main users of wells, pumps and tanks.

Labourers did not always use water technologies according to colonial expectations, however. Local people were accustomed to using open water sources like rivers and streams, not restrictive iron and brick infrastructures. So, they modified their traditional work at open sources, like washing objects and produce, to the new technologies they had to use.

That sometimes created problems, according to the archive records. They accidentally broke handles and chains when pumping too quickly. They drew water from tanks without using a filter, which was officially perceived as a disease risk. They publicly washed clothing, bodies and food at wells, where the dirty wash water flowed back into the enclosed water supply.

Colonists exploited this situation to place restrictions on how labourers could use stand-alone water infrastructures. Borough officials crafted new laws that forced colonised residents to conform with British standards. They punished those who did not comply with fines, verbal lashings and even jail time.

Durban was part of a colonial system predicated on white supremacy. The government sought to maintain segregation between white colonists and African and South Asian residents. So, it imbued its water technology regulations with the notion that some water management actions – British – were “healthier” than others, namely African and South Asian. If someone used a technology contrary to British standards, then they faced restricted access to public technologies and the water they provided.

Water system legacy

Stand-alone water infrastructures still exist across eThekwini. Many residents of informal settlements and formerly racially segregated areas remain officially unconnected with municipal pipes. They instead depend on local wells, pumps and illegal individualised connections. An increasing number of households are investing in water tanks as the municipal water system becomes more unreliable.

Read more: The lack of water in South Africa is the result of a long history of injustice – and legislation should start there

Things have, of course, changed since the 19th century. However, the municipality continues to require residents to use these technologies within regulatory boundaries if residents want to maintain access to them. Cutting off municipal water supply to private storage tanks is an example.

Infrastructural stopgaps further expose a water system that was never meant to supply every resident equitably and without restriction. These actions tell us that today’s officials have inherited and inadvertently continue a water system that was meant to exclude more than include, to punish more than teach, to restrict more than provide.

– Access to water has a long racial history in Durban: I followed the story in the city’s archives
– https://theconversation.com/access-to-water-has-a-long-racial-history-in-durban-i-followed-the-story-in-the-citys-archives-267302

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Nnamdi O. Madichie, Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Unizik Business School, Nnamdi Azikiwe University

Short comedy videos circulating on social media have created a booming industry in Nigeria in the past few years. The country’s comedy creators put their skits out on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to reach a massive audience.

As these online comedians gain followers they make their money from advertising, by endorsing brands as influencers, and through collaborations. In Nigeria the industry is popularly called the skit economy.

This phenomenon represents more than a major new entertainment trend. It highlights the ingenuity of young Nigerians in using technology to create livelihoods and influence culture. In the process, they contribute to national economic growth.

The skit industry has joined the likes of Nollywood film, Afrobeats music and local fashion to put the country on the entertainment map globally.

The rise of the industry is chronicled in the 2024 book Skit Economy: How Nigeria’s Comedy Skit-Makers Are Redefining Africa’s Digital Content Landscape, by entrepreneurship scholar and polling guru Bell Ihua. His work is supported by findings from the Africa Polling Institute.

As he explains:

The Nigerian entertainment industry is undoubtedly creating job opportunities and contributing to the country’s diversification from oil … The industry is rated as the second most significant employer of youths in Nigeria after agriculture, employing over one million people.

According to his book, skit-making is estimated to be Nigeria’s third largest entertainment industry sector, with a net worth of over US$31 million.

As a marketing scholar focusing on the cultural and creative industries and digital entrepreneurship who has had the privilege of interviewing Ihua, I’d like to share my thoughts about his book.

What becomes clear as you read it is that social media platforms have not only amplified the reach and impact of skits. Online platforms have allowed creators to reach global audiences while preserving the culture, language and stories unique to their communities. Skit creators prove the potential of comedy as a medium for both entertainment and cultural diplomacy.

However, as the industry grows, argues Ihua, the skit economy must navigate new challenges related to representation and ethics.

What’s in the book

The book’s eight chapters cover Africa’s digital content landscape, taking into account the continent’s youth bulge and the evolution of social media and content creation.

Ihua then explores Nigeria’s booming cultural and creative industries before homing in on comedy skit-making in chapter 4. It attempts to classify various types of digital content creation in Nigeria and outline the trends in online videos before embarking on an in-depth national study on comedy skit-making in chapter 7. He then considers implications for public policy and future research in the field.

What makes the book so compelling is that it recognises skit-making as an ecosystem on its own terms. It then defines what that ecosystem looks like in Nigeria. In the process Ihua makes it clear why books like this matter.

They are a call for taking entertainment seriously and investing future research in it. Social media and digital technology have reconfigured an unsung economic sector that’s capable of including the bulging youth population in the national conversation. This is despite limited institutional support.

What’s driving the boom

Ihua traces its boom to COVID-19 lockdowns that began in Nigeria in 2020:

They provided a source of laughter and relief to many Nigerians, as most people found it safer to stay at home and get entertained with skits.

Today, writes Ihua, two-thirds of Nigerians watch comedy skits frequently. According to his study they serve as stress relief and social commentary.

With 63% of Nigerians under 25 and high social media uptake, skit-making taps into abundant creative energy and mobile-first audiences.

Value

The Skit-Economy highlights how skit comedians create direct and indirect jobs (editors, social media managers, brand consultants). They generate income through endorsements, platform monetisation (the revenue they get from advertising on a space like YouTube), and various partnerships and collaborations.

Read more: Detty December started as a Nigerian cultural moment. Now it’s spreading across the continent – and minting money

Their cultural value is not just measured in their global influence. Skits reflect everyday Nigerian realities with humour and satire, influencing local public opinion and reinforcing national identity.

As prominent Nigerian entrepreneur and cultural worker Obi Asika notes in the book’s foreword:

Their success … stems from a combination of talent, creativity, innovation, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a deep understanding of their audience’s preferences and cultural nuances.

Challenges

However, Ihua identifies a number of challenges facing the industry.

Financial rewards are unequal. Only top creators earn sustainably. For many skit-makers revenue is unstable.

Working from Nigeria means dealing with infrastructure deficits. Electricity supply is unreliable, the internet is expensive and there is limited access to digital production tools.

Read more: Nigerian TikTok star Charity Ekezie uses hilarious skits to dispel ignorance about Africa

Nigerian skit-makers also operate in a climate where there are weak intellectual property protections. Piracy and unauthorised reuse undermine earnings.

The job can be an ethical minefield. Pranks can be harmful. They can perpetuate stereotypes and be insensitive to minorities.

These challenges are enhanced by a policy vacuum. There is little government recognition or support for digital creatives in Nigeria.

An African future?

For Ihua, skit-making is a good example of how new digital industries can aid in absorbing Africa’s growing youth workforce. With adequate support, skit-making can help provide dignified livelihoods.

So, for Ihua these creators are not merely entertainers. They’re also job creators, cultural ambassadors, and catalysts of digital transformation.

For Africa broadly, the rise of skit-making underscores the continent’s potential to innovate in ways that are uniquely aligned with its youthful demographics and digital future.

Nigeria’s skit economy offers a blueprint for the continent. Already, skit-making is spreading to other countries, like Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. The lines are blurring between stand-up or TV comedians and skit makers.

If nurtured with the right infrastructure, policy, and industry support, the skit economy could evolve from an informal hustle into a structured pillar of Africa’s creative economy. This could further solidify the continent’s role in the global cultural imagination.

– The comedy economy: Nigeria’s online video skits are making millions
– https://theconversation.com/the-comedy-economy-nigerias-online-video-skits-are-making-millions-267784