Tom Skye, a frequent visitor to Côte d’Ivoire and the author of a travel book on the country, writes on the evolution of Ivorian music, tracing the roots of its modern expression to its very distant past. Music is everywhere in Côte d’Ivoire. It’s played and performed on buses, trains, beaches and football pitches, and in bars, restaurants, workplaces and …

How Africa can learn from Germany’s successful ongoing transition to renewable energy was the theme of the 10th German-African Energy Forum, which took place recently in Hamburg, reports Femi Awoniyi. Willi Meixner, chief executive of the Power and Gas Division of Siemens AG, has advised African countries to focus on creating an encouraging regulatory environment if they are to attract …

The journey has been an arduous one. The historian Paulette Reed-Anderson informs us that in 1682, a ship bearing slaves from Africa docked in Hamburg. Twenty-five years later (1707), African musicians are employed in Prussian military units and Mohrenstrasse is christened in Berlin. By 1877, however, the first of the dreadful Völkerschauen (‘ethnographic exhibitions’) were staged in Hamburg and Berlin.  …