Culture & Heritage

Before dawn on 10 January, the sound of drums reaches the beach at Ouidah from several directions at once. By the time the light comes up, the town has been …

Europe was not the beginning of civilisation. It was not even close. While European scholars spent centuries constructing a narrative in which human progress flowed from Greece to Rome to …

At 21:00 the night before, the Maoma royal drums begin. Their sound crosses the floodplain in the dark, carrying for up to fifteen kilometres across the Zambezi’s risen waters. It …

There is nothing quite like the Umhlanga Reed Dance anywhere on the African continent. Not in scale, not in longevity, and not in the quality of what it asks visitors …

The Niger River bends through the Sahel like an artery. Along its banks, cities once rose in mud brick and scholarship. Caravans crossed salt plains carrying gold measured in tonnes. …

Rwanda has submitted a bid to list Imigongo and Umuganura on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage register. Imigongo is a centuries-old geometric art form painted with cow dung, while Umuganura is …

African fabrics do more than just cover bodies. They carry stories, values, history, resilience, and identity. In communities where oral history weaves meaning into cloth, each fabric becomes a visible …

Some belief systems do not fade even when people are uprooted; they simply travel quietly within memory, within language, and within ritual. Among the Yoruba people, Ile-Ife is regarded as …

Cultural tourism in Africa isn’t something you schedule neatly into a travel plan. It happens naturally. It happens when someone invites you to sit with them. When you taste food …

Before highways, airports, and shipping containers arrived in Africa, they already had a system for transporting goods globally. They moved goods, ideas, and flavours slowly but intentionally across vast distances. …