The British may have looted the Benin Bronzes from the West African Kingdom in the 19th century, but they couldn’t remove the art form.

Artisans still use the country’s red soil to create bronze sculptures, just as their ancestors did decades before.

However, it’s a dying trade. The cost of raw materials is soaring and local craftsmen are struggling to make ends meet.

In this short film, we visit a workshop where beautiful Benin bronzes are still moulded, for now at least.

It’s a stark reminder the stolen treasures which once decorated Benin’s royal palace have to be returned.

#britain #benin #bronze #artisan

Most African countries adopted a Eurocentric form of education at Independence. But there is a school in Kenya disrupting the colonial form of education. Children in Freedom School, the first of its kind, offers an Afrocentric system of learning. It focuses on incorporating African culture and teaching its students about their roots and history. It even teaches and examines students in their mother tongue, something that’s banned in some western-styled classrooms.
We paid a visit, and definitely give them top marks!
Click the video and tell us how highly you grade what they’re doing.


#african #culture #eurocentric #education #independence #children #freedomschool #mothertongue

⁣Mutabaruka : Black Americans Situation Is No Better Than It Was 100 Years Ago

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In this reasoning Rastafari dub poet, musician, actor, educator, and radio host Mutabaruka criticizes Jamaican dancehall music for its promotion of extreme violence, drug use, sexual promiscuity and destructive behavior.

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#mutabaruka #dancehall

The speed at which Africa is realigning with the new multipolar world, finding its footing and expelling imperialists from the continent has left Western media breathless. Believing their own propaganda line - that Africans need the West for stability and growth - they are clutching at straws trying to understand Africa’s self-confidence in reclaiming its destiny.

In this CNN interview, host Zain Asher echoes the West’s fear of an awakened continent when she wonders why Nigeriens are happy to depose a ‘democratically elected’ leader, then asks DC think-tanker Aneliese Bernard if the coup in Niger can be somehow undone.

The African Stream team unpacks this Western narrative in our latest reaction video - go to our YouTube channel for the full version.

#africa #world #continent #imperialists #westernmedia #propaganda #confidence #cnn #interview #nigeriens #democracy #elected #leader #coup #africanstream

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In this reasoning Rastafari dub poet, musician, actor, educator, and radio host Mutabaruka criticizes West Indian people who deny their African ancestry.

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⁣Swakopmund is a very popular Namibian seaside resort but very few people talk about the history of this city. It was founded as the main harbour for Germany in South West Africa. It was here that the first concentration camps emerged. According to statistics, approximately 40 percent of the prisoners in Swakopmund died during their first four months of captivity, and any prisoner who was brought to the camp was likely to be dead within ten months.
The genocide in Namibia that took place between 1904 and 1908, was one of the darkest chapters in German history. The colonial forces systematically exterminated thousands of Herero and Nama people through mass killings, forced labour, and captivity in concentration camps.
The wounds of the past are still deep. ‘Genocide is not history, but the reality of our lives. The land we have lost then has not been returned,’ says Nandiuasora Mazeingo, President of the Herero Genocide Fund. The scars of the German genocide continue to shape the lives of Namibia's people. Will they be able to get justice?

We Are Back from GHANA, Feedback from the pilgrimage and updates from the Continent

⁣A group of friends who each have to navigate their own destiny, growing up on the bustling streets and neighborhood of Isale Eko, Lagos.

⁣ast year, France withdrew its troops from Mali. This marked the end of a nine-year military operation, aimed at resolving the internal conflict and liberating Mali's territory from Al-Qaeda terrorists. However, according to locals, the French left without providing any tangible assistance, causing further destruction and numerous deaths among the civilian population. ‘Operation Barkhane was launched as part of a French plot to partition Mali’, believes political activist Aboubacar Sidick Fomba. Today, Malians are ready to fight against the dark legacy of colonisation. Will they succeed?

Le Pan-Africainiste joins the DD Geopolitics podcast to discuss the current situation in Niger including why there are hopes for the coup among the people, exploitation of Niger by France, its own elite and Nigeria itself, and why the CFA Franc is a complete rip off. All this and more.

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⁣
Wildlife activists in take on poachers in an effort to end illegal ivory trade in Africa.

⁣A call to action for the officials who have the power to mitigate the danger caused by foodborne pathogens that kill thousands of people in the U.S. every year.

⁣In the 1960s most African countries gained their independence but more than six decades later they still experience political and economic pressure from the West. African current laws concerning resource extraction make it as easy as possible for private corporations to take resources out of the continent. And in most of the countries production licences that were issued by former colonial institutions are still in place. However, Africans’ growing awareness that they can form their own self-governance creates more freedom of choice for African countries, and makes them less dependent on the Europeans.
In 2022 Mali openly defied French neo-colonialism and forced the international coalition to withdraw troops from the country after decades of presence. ‘All of Africa is watching Mali right now. We are adjusting our course in Africa here in Mali. <...> I think we are gradually moving towards our sovereignty’, says painter and art history professor Oumar Kamara. He believes that European democracy doesn’t match African culture. ‘But in Russia, I realised that we were respected in Africa. They had a totally different policy and opinion concerning African countries. Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever colonised any African countries’, adds the scholar. Thus, in their battle for freedom, a growing number of Africans are willing to have closer ties with Russians, as they think Russia can give them security. What future awaits rapidly growing African society?

⁣Benin is considered the home of voodoo, a religion often portrayed as black magic. Many voodoo rituals are shrouded in mystery and misunderstood. So are voodoo convents that are scattered across southern Benin. Local children spend months and even years behind the convent walls because their parents send them there. They believe it would appease the spirits in case of an illness or bad luck.
In voodoo monasteries, children are given new names and are forbidden to use their old ones, wear old clothes and speak their native language. Instead, they study voodoo customs and language and are initiated into secrets. Leaving a voodoo monastery requires a special ceremony that costs parents $50, an unaffordable sum for most in Benin.
Voodoo priests and supporters say keeping children in convents is necessary to preserve voodoo culture and traditions, but activists disagree. Children confined in convents miss out on education and sometimes have no one to return to because their parents are not around anymore. Activists from organisations like ReSPESD seek to reduce the time children spend in convents and cut the price of a release ceremony.
Activists are also working with local leaders in the programme, explaining the importance of education for Beninese children. While many are ready to change, some remain adamant. Hear from voodoo priests, local kings and children about life inside the convents and what voodoo means to them.

⁣Invisible History sheds light on the invisible history of plantations and the enslaved in North Florida. Using visually compelling imagery it explores the history of a people who contributed so much to what the region is today. While this project focuses on northern Florida, it is a microcosm of the idea of how slavery shaped all of America. The project benefited from the expertise of faculty from Florida State University and Florida A&M University, as well as the support of local museums and archival resources. The documentary represents a true coming together of community to support the telling of our shared history.

⁣A cattle herder and his family who reside in the dunes of Timbuktu find their quiet lives -- which are typically free of the Jihadists determined to control their faith -- abruptly disturbed.

⁣Amanar Tamasheq parts from the exciting adventure of the director on a trip with the Tuaregs rebels in the desert of Mali, to convert the camera into the most powerful weapon. The terrible history of this people, always under threat, is built through their own words in a text that, from their own statements reworked, overlaps in the form of subtitles to images. These, far in the highest degree of language that normally tells the violent, they gain political power and radical rarely seen

⁣In his first feature-length documentary shot between 2003 and 2004, Sébastien Wielemans heads into the Sahel Desert in Niger and immerses himself in the world of the Tuareg, a traditional nomadic people.

⁣The Tuareg live in the Sahara dessert at the foot of the mountains of Algeria. After a couple of invasive visits by white troops, very few remain living the traditional life of status veils and tea drinking.

The documentary series “Disappearing World” was originally broadcasted between 1970-1975.
As an anthropological landmark of its time, the series tells the story of traditional communities endangered by the modern world’s progressions.
The series stands as a historical document of daily life in remote and threatened societies, such as the Cuiva, Embera and Panare Indians of Colombia, the nomadic Tuareg of the Sahara, the Kurdish Dervishes, and the Meo of China.