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Nigerian reggae singer Majek Fashek has died aged 71. His manager, Omenka Uzoma Day, confirmed the news on Monday via a short video on Instagram, saying the “the legend has gone to be with the Lord, but this time we should all celebrate him”. View this post on Instagram Today been having pressure calls,well it is true that the African …

British rapper Ty, who was nominated for the prestigious Mercury music prize, has died after contracting coronavirus, according to a fundraising page set up to support him. Stars including Roots Manuva paid tribute to the 47-year-old Londoner, real name Ben Chijioke, who died last Thursday. Ty released his debut album “Awkward” in 2001, the first of five. His follow-up, “Upward”, …

Legendary Nigerian drummer and co-founder of Afrobeat, Tony Oladipo Allen, died suddenly at the age of 79 in Paris on Thursday. The musician had suffered a sudden heart attack and was taken to hospital where he gave up the ghost, his manager, Eric Trosset, announced. Allen was a founding member of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s very first band and he’s credited by …

The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen was founded in 1954 and is not only one of the oldest short film festivals in the world but also one of the major international platforms for the short form. Every year in spring the festival takes place in Oberhausen with this year marking the 66th anniversary. The Corona pandemic has however put a …

Fresh, powerful highlife band Santrofi from Ghana first appeared at festivals around Europe in the summer of 2019, from Roskilde to Sines and WOMAD. They also stunned their audience at WOMEX 2019 in Finland. Their long-awaited debut album ‘Alewa‘ is finally out now on Outhere records (available on all formats: LP/CD/digital). The album brings a new wave of fresh highlife …

Can African writers in the Diaspora simply be writers who write as they are inspired without checking if they are stepping beyond boundaries? Should writers have any geographical or ethnic boundaries at all?  These are questions that African writers, who seemingly have to fulfil the conventional expectations of readers on what they’re supposed to write about, are confronted with. Using …

Award-winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie dissects the complexities of race, class and hair in her novel Americanah, writes Michael Nnaji*. Born and bred in the Nigerian university town of Nsukka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie already has two universally acclaimed novels, Purple Hibiscus and Half of A Yellow Sun, and the collection of short stories The Thing Around Your Neck, as …

School teacher Christine List writes on her experience taking her pupils to the African past in a literature class. The high school students read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for the project. List narrates her pupils’ mixed impressions of the literary voyage It had been four weeks since the students have been studying Africa in their geography project. During the …

Beatrice Onyele’s “Chikwe: es bleibt ein Traum” represents a significant contribution to the growing body of work now known as “Migrant Literature”.

The businessman, who is based in Duesseldorf, talks about his title, what it means, the responsibilities it entails for him, among other issues, in an exclusive interview.

Nigerian singer Niniola has launched the music video for her latest single “Fantasy”, which was originally released in February. The video features Grammy nominee and Afrobeat icon Femi Kuti The track, produced by Kel-P, features rich vocals from Niniola, and classy saxophone riffs and horn arrangements from Femi Kuti. “I used to watch videos of Fela Kuti and Femi Kuti, …

When Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré passed away in his sleep on 7 March 2006, after a long illness, the national radio stations in his home country stopped their regular programmes and started playing his music all day long. By all means, it was a fitting tribute to one of Mali’s greatest musicians. With his unconventional approach to traditional Malian music, …

Africa’s literary giant Chinua Achebe died aged 82 on 21 March 2013. In celebration of the memory of the world-renowned Nigerian novelist, we republish here his speech in Frankfurt’s St Paul’s Church on 13 October 2002 after he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. It’s one of his most important and enduring messages to Africans and the …

Afro-jazz legend Manu Dibango is dead. The family of the Cameroonian singer and saxophonist announced his death at 86 of the new coronavirus on his Facebook page on Tuesday (24 March). “It is with deep sadness that we announce to you the loss of Manu Dibango, our Papy Groove,” a statement on his official Facebook page read. Dibango’s agent Thierry …

Our contributing editor Alexander Macbeth writes on how the Ghanaian novelist focuses on the experience of women from their perspective, exposing how male authors have long neglected the true desires and challenges of the continent’s women. Amma Darko’s tales of wise grandmothers, resilient daughters and strong-willed victims, often caught in difficult circumstances, have made her a favourite on both sides …

Rokia Traoré has been arrested in Paris over a child custody dispute. She was arrested on Tuesday as she arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, in Paris. The Malian is being held under a European arrest warrant issued by a Belgian court in a case involving the singer and her estranged Belgian partner over the custody of their daughter. The …

African Diasporas is a scholarly examination of the Afro-German literature through a comparison with African-American literature and the role it has played in the creation of a Black community in Germany. Literature has been the chief tool of people of African descent in Germany in their efforts to reclaim their African heritage and carve an identity for themselves. Through a …

Deejaying used to be a male-dominated affair.  Not any more as women are gradually joining the fray. Philly Ojalla aka DJ Aisher, as she is popularly known by her fans, is giving male DJs a run for their money. She stole the show at the Battle of the DJs contest in 2016 in Frankfurt, pulling the biggest crowd to the …

A book about the migration experience of a young African shows how the search for the Golden Fleece could end in disaster Illegal in Berlin is the story of Tony, a 26-year-old university educated man, who leaves his native Nigeria, abandoning a job as an engineer with an oil company, to seek the realisation of his dream of a better …

The Senckenberg Library of the University of Frankfurt runs a web-based library for Africa. The Internet library on sub-Saharan Africa ilissAfrica (www.ilissafrica.de) offers useful material on African history and culture, with special emphasis on the German colonial history in Africa. In an exclusive interview with our correspondent Muhammed Faisal Garba, the librarian of ilissAfrica, Nadia Cohen, talks about the objectives …