GUEST EDITOR'S NOTE
by Laila Lalami

I have often noticed that whenever one hears about “Africa,” whether on the news, or in music, or in arts, or in literature, the inevitable focus is always the portion of the continent that is geographically south of the Sahara desert. For instance, the “plight of Africa,” that favourite headline of European and American newspapers, usually refers to AIDS or child soldiers or foreign debt or whatever new cause hipsters find fit to embrace at the moment. (Click here to read all...)

During the most recent African Cup of Nations, a soccer tournament held this year in Ghana, Arab audiences were able to watch Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan (all members of the Arab League) compete for the title of best soccer team in Africa. All games featuring any of these nations were dutifully broadcast in the United States by the Saudi-owned TV station, ART. Arabs in America needed to watch their fellow Arabs and perhaps join in the prayers of the Tunisian Issam Shawali who, I was told by a Tunisian friend of mine, is a world-renowned sportscaster. He is a man whose narrative of the game fuses the best and worst of Arab culture—unabashed displays of patriotism when Tunisia is on the field; poetic praise for Arab nationalism when any of the other teams are playing; and fervent prayers for all on all occasions. (Click here to read all...)

When Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, my father, then still a teenager, went out to demonstrate in front of the Belgian Consulate General in Casablanca. Thousands of students joined him, and were severely beaten by the riot police. That same year, my mother, a Swedish au pair in Brussels, felt the brunt of some Belgians’ hostility towards her country, which was fuelled by UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld’s perceived, but in fact imaginary, bias in favour of Lumumba. Insults were hurled and tyres flattened. (Click here to read all...)

Beijing 2008 has come and gone. Even as the dust settles on the track where athletes competed for honours, the pain of another disgraceful outing is yet to leave the mind of the average sports fan on the streets of Lagos. While the 29th Olympiad will be remembered for the unprecedented number of world records broken in various events by athletes, Nigerians will predictably fast and pray to God or the devil (whichever of them answers such prayers), asking that they be struck with selective amnesia. (Click here to read all...)

With all the talk about carbon trading as a way to slow global warming, one would think there must be lots of opportunity to get involved. (Click here to read all...)

The city of Beijing in China is undergoing an industrial revolution unlike anything the world has ever experienced. In per capita terms, China is not well-endowed with natural resources. This has led her to look beyond her borders for raw materials to fuel her growth. With a population of 1.3 billion—300 million of whom belong in the freshly minted middle class—there has been an unprecedented increase in their demand for global commodities. It is estimated that China’s consumption of oil will increase 800% by 2030, and, iron ore by 500% at the end of the same time period. The resource-rich continent of Africa has become a natural partner in China’s quest for economic growth. (Click here to read all...)

Once again I’d like to show my appreciation for everyone who stood by us over the course of our campaign. Indeed it’s been a defining moment, not just for our party but for our country. (Click here to read all...)

Since its release in late 2006, Nouri Bouzid’s Akher film (which literally means “The Last Film”), has received broad acclaim in the Arab world, Africa, Europe and North America. After winning the Tanit d'or (Gold Tanit) in the 2006 Carthage Film Festival, it went on to take the Best Screenplay Award in the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, and more recently, the Ibn Rushd Prize. The latter is named after the Andalusian Muslim philosopher, Ibn Rushd or Averroës, and is awarded annually by the Germany-based Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought. (Click here to read all...)

There is a sense of emptiness, a certain kind of loss, grief even, that one feels when the last page of a good book is turned and the cover is shut. That’s what I felt when I came to the end of Sefi Atta’s new novel, Swallow. (Click here to read all...)

Harmattan poured from the sky as if hurled by a giant hand. It gathered in the grooves of the rooftops and dribbled onto the dry earth. Dawn came hesitantly, limning the edges of the fog. (Click here to read all...)

We’ve only just begun
Grasp the twisting mire of this history

On the road to criminal ancestry
A sheath gone wander

(Click here to read all...)

What in your view is the problem with education in Nigeria?
The so-called education in Nigeria is not really education; it is neo-colonial brainwashing. It is a type of Bantu education for the Nigerian Bantustan: (Click here to read all...)

Explore the myriad attractions of city living.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

I am recalling now that last summer before I was sent away. It was 1979, and the sun was everywhere. Tripoli lay brilliant and still beneath it. Every person, animal and ant went in desperate search for shade; those occasional grey patches of mercy carved into the white of everything. But true mercy only arrived at night, a breeze chilled by the vacant desert, moistened by the humming sea, a reluctant guest silently passing through the empty streets, vague about how far it was allowed to roam in this realm of the absolute star. And it was rising now, this star, as faithful as ever, chasing away the blessed breeze. It was almost morning.

The back cover of the first Heinemann edition of Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, published in English translation in 1969, featured the following statement by Edward W. Said, one of the most influential literary and cultural critics of the second half of the twentieth century: “Season of Migration to the North is among the six finest novels to be written in modern Arabic literature.” Almost two decades earlier, another critic, Albert Guerard, wrote in his introduction to the 1950 New American Library edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that it was “among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.”

In March 2005, I went to Darfur as a member of Doctors without Borders. The initial massacres and carnage had been completed—what remained was a horrific juxtaposition of presence and absence along the one dirt road that split the desert in the Western province: few, but large, concentrations of white-tarp towns that had sprung up overnight, each located down or up the road from charred villages.

The name “Akin Beads” may not mean much to you yet, but by the power of God almighty, whom Akin Sobola, creator of this fledgling accessories line, mentions every other sentence, it should soon—once Akin can figure out how to properly incite the buying impulses of the public with better packaging and branding for his paper jewellery.

About half a million women die as a result of childbirth every year. 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. Worldwide, the maternal mortality ratio is 400 women per 100,000 live births. In sub-Saharan Africa, the figure is 1000 per 100,000 women and in some parts of Nigeria, it reaches 1500 per 100,000.