Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel

Ishmael Beah

| Sierra Leone |

excerpt of Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014) * It is the end, or maybe the beginning, of another story. Every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child. Every story is a birth… She was the first to arrive where it seemed the […]

Our spells

Virgília Ferrão

| Mozambique |

excerpt translated from Os nossos feitiços (Katuka Edições, 2022) * I checked the time. Three in the morning. The hand holding the pen shook. A sheet of paper and a glass of wine sat next me. The wine tasted bitter as an ominous night, turning my lips into clay. Drinking at dawn was never my […]

Season of Crimson Blossoms

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

| Nigeria |

excerpt of Season of Crimson Blossoms (Cassava Republic Press, 2015) * He scaled her fence yet again, as he had done twice already, at a quarter past eleven because he knew, by careful consideration, that if she had not gone to the madrasa, she would be alone. Having gone round to the front, he peeked […]

Critical But Stable

Angela Makholwa

| South Africa |

excerpt of Critical But Stable (Pan Macmillan, 2021) * The Car Jabulani Khambule settled on the couch in his bachelor pad – a one-roomed cottage that had been built at the back of his mother’s house in Thokoza, Soweto. He liked to call it a cottage because that’s what people in the suburbs called back […]

The First Woman

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

| Uganda |

excerpt of The First Woman (Oneworld, 2020) * Nsuuta shook her head the way grownups surrender to a manipulative child. ‘How does one start the story of our original state?’  "From the beginning."  Nsuuta reached for Kirabo’s hand and entwined it with hers, "In the beginning…" "Kin you were our eyes." for Kirabo, storytelling etiquette […]

Loose Ties

Yara Nakahanda Monteiro

| Angola |

excerpt of Loose Ties (Paivapo, 2021) * The guard wakes up startled with the light beam. He stands. It takes him a while to steady his step. He succeeds. Trying to understand what is happening, he runs to the street. “Tinoni, do we pay you to sleep?” asks Katila knowing the answer. “ I’m sorry.” […]

Tram 83

Fiston Mwanza Mujila

| DR Congo |

excerpt of Tram 83 (Deep Vellum, 2015) * First night at Tram 83: night of debauchery, night of boozing, night of beggary, night of premature ejaculation, night of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, night of prostitution, night of getting by, night of dancing and dancing, night that engenders things that exist only between an […]

Transparent City

Ondjaki

| Angola |

excerpt of Transparent City (Biblioasis, 2018) * Blind Man cut himself o! with a peep of laughter so tiny that it genuinely seemed like a professional actor’s rehearsal, a pretty, soundless smile, like the form or shadow of an absence of sun “i never even seen them naughty films that they’re going to show here […]

Oubliette

Howard Meh-Buh Maximus

| Cameroon |

Linonge was your best friend. It was he who taught you how to smuggle garri and other contraband necessities into school. “Tear a side of your pillow,” he said, “take out some of the foam cushion and then refill it with wrappings of Golden Dust.” It was how you called garri at Saint Joseph, your […]

Going Incognito

story by Winifred Òdúnóku

| Nigeria |

"Be prepared to wear a thick skin before leaving Nigeria. This place doesn't smile at non-oyinbos,", the text that Richard sent me on the previous night to my departure had read. I kept ruminating on the text and chewing each word to make absolute sense of it: be prepared to wear a thick skin before […]

Go home

Itumeleng Molefi

| South Africa |

FROM: keabetswekb62@gmail.com TO: ookeditse.dabula@students.ui.edu.ng DATE: Tuesday, 12 July, 17:54 SUBJECT: Personal essay for scholarship application Hi Ookeditse I hope Ibadan is treating you well. Thank you again for agreeing to help me with this. And an even bigger THANK YOU for not telling Ofentse about this. I know that he loves me and that he […]

1342 Belvedere

R. Kihara Odanga

| Kenya | USA |

I want to say three things quickly then I shut up; because the people who live across the street have a gun, because God has nothing to say to me, because this place is trying to flay me. And so, I am tired; tired of the tiredness that I have taken up for myself because […]

poetry anthology I

Achieng Duro | Ayoola Goodness | Ndaba Sibanda | Gordon B. Anjili

| Kenya | Nigeria |

Achieng Duro a Folk Song  Tar little baby don’t you cry, or the popos gonna put you to sleep tonight, and if you cry or try to fight, then their grips gonna get a bit more tight, and just as you sip into the light, Its gonna dawn on them that you had rights,  So […]

If I Manage to Die of Old Age, That’s Fine

Luis Felipe Gómez Lomelí

| Mexico | Angola |

Dying of old age, dying after the average human life expectancy, is the privilege of a small group. Dying after the average life expectancy of people in the most privileged neighborhoods of the richest countries is an illusion. According to the WHO, in 2016 the world’s average life expectancy was 72 years, and, for Africa, […]

Drive away fear! 

Merdi Mukore

| DR Congo | France |

A man pummeled by police for about twenty minutes. The image is brutal and some would be able to rapidly deduce that the scene unfolded in one of those countries designated as poor students in the School of Human Rights. The video, captured by a surveillance camera, shows a music producer beaten by law enforcement […]

Afrolit Sans Frontieres: Behind the Scenes, In Front of the Camera

by Zukiswa Wanner

| Angola | Brazil | Cameroon | Cote d'Ivoire | DR Congo |
 Egypt | Ethiopia | Eritrea | Ghana | Jamaica | Kenya | Liberia | Malawi | Martinique | Mozambique | Namibia | Nigeria | Sierra Leone | South Africa | Sudan | Uganda | US | UK | Zambia | Zimbabwe |

The Birth It’s the early days of coronavirus on the continent. In South Africa, the first known covid case is announced on March 5. Patient zero is a South African who had just returned from a vacation in Italy. A day later, I leave Johannesburg, where I had gone to attend an arts event, to […]

Door of No Return

Natasha Omokhodion-Banda

| Zambia |

She hums. The vibrations of her voice reverberate against the walls of the room, giving way to a new sun. The penumbra on the wall reveals familiar furniture pieces as blue light slowly fills the room. Her spirit joins the soul of that in the deep of her being – causing them to float as […]

From the Lost City of Hurtlantis to the Streets of Helldorado (Or, Franco)

Rémy Ngamije

| Namibia |

I know Franco is in a fucked up place because he still refers to his ex as his girlfriend by accident when his mood is chipper. It just slips out, like a squeaky fart, and no matter how much he clenches up after that it’s already too late. Things are never the same after someone […]

Of the Poet and the Café

Girma Fantaye

| Ethiopia |

“የንጋት ወፍ ጥሪ” There wasn’t a single day Woubshet didn’t wake up at dawn grumpy. His neighbors to the left and right of his rented room were like law-appointed alarm clocks for him. The loud prayers of the woman who just recently converted from Orthodox Christianity to ‘Pente’ to the left, and the roof-piercing music […]

A Certain 36th of November

Merdi Mukore

| Congo |

Once upon a time, according to my father, there was a land where an assortment of people lived in a building without a ground floor, comparable to our plot. This assortment of people constituted a Nation-House in the same manner that the occupants of our plot make up a family. The head of our family […]

These Things that Our Mothers Don’t Dare Talk About

Laurence Gnaro

| Togo |

My mother had taught me how to clean that part of me whose name I didn’t have the right to pronounce without taking care to explain the job to me. I am thus engaged in a quest for answers to the numerous questions that assailed my spirit concerning the nightingale as a young girl. No […]

"Once" and "Plot"

Yara Monteiro

| Angola |

Once Remember? When you were a beast of the sky, a beast of the water, a beast of the bush, a beast of the core?  Remember the entirety of our home, ancient time where life blossomed?  Our bodies made of earth,  Our gestures free, colorful, irrigated with the saliva of turf.  Gestures still to analyze, […]

Tiniguena — “This Land is Ours”

| Guinea Bissau |

Community participation, conservation, and transformation The name “Tiniguena” originates from the language of the Cassanga ethnicity and means “this land is ours.” Tiniguena is a Guinea-Bissauan nongovernmental organization founded in 1999 that is part of an emergent movement of civil organizations that aim to foster a new dynamic of effective popular participation in the construction […]

Anticolonial Narratives from the Africas

| Brazil | Guinea-Bissau |

Cleber Ribeiro: What is Visto África? How did it come about and what is its goal? Vensam Iala: Visto África is a project that began in 2012, following my arrival in Brazil. I arrived in Brazil in 2010 and went straight into my studies at São Paulo State University (UNESP), in Assis, where I got […]

Miguel de Barros

Raquel Paris

| Guinea Bissau |

Miguel, I would like to hear where you come from, and I thought we could begin with you speaking a bit about your childhood and about your youth, because we know that it's in these moments that there's usually a schism or some major event. Miguel de Barros: I will not speak about myself, I’ll […]

Is it possible to build another intellectual paradigm for entrance and graduation from university?

Filomeno Lopes

| Guinea Bissau |

“Education,” says Paulo Freire, “is an act of love, and therefore an act of courage. We can’t be afraid to debate. To analyze reality. We can’t run from creative discussion without running the risk of it being a farce.” For Freire, this is because “existing is a dynamic concept. It requires an eternal dialogue between […]

Sofia Djama and the movement to retake algerian cinema

Daniel Stefani
Gabrielly Pereira

| Algeria |

Sofia, thank you for being here at the International University of the Peripheries in Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Could you introduce yourself? However you like.   Sofia Djama: I’m Algerian, my name is Sofia Djama and I was born in Oran, which is a large city in western Algeria by the sea. I grew up […]

To teach the joy of learning

Ondjaki

| Angola |

Time goes on and it has become necessary to take on—as adults, parents, professors, directors and educators—the difficult challenge of reviewing both our own knowledge and the way in which we pass on this knowledge. Moreover, it has come time to revisit the place and function of the school, not only as a place of […]