Another Africa art. music. film. literature.
MOVEMENT
Why do people move?
The peoples of Africa have been on the move across the continent's diverse landscape and beyond since the beginning of human history. Africans move for many reasons.
Forced Relocation
Africans have moved throughout their continent and around the world for many reasons.
With the arrival of
Europeans in the 1700s, millions of West Africans were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to the Americas as slaves. The journey of African slaves to the New World was often horrific.
Julien Sinzogan 'Les Voiles du Retour' 1998.
Economic Migration
Africans have moved from their towns and villages in recent years to cities, plantations and mines in search of economic opportunity.
In his 1946 novel Mine Boy, Peter Abrahams tells the story of Xala, a young boy growing up in South Africa during apartheid. Xala leaves his home to find work in the gold mines of Johannesburg.
Ghana Gold. George Osadi
Exiled
The band Tinariwen are Tuareg from the southern Sahara desert in Mali. Their nomadic descendents have made their way across desert sands for thousands of years.
Tiniwaren's song “Cler Achel” (“I Spent the Day”), is about the droughts and exiles of years past:
It’s a time which separates the beloved from those they love
And when you think of them, painful obsessive thoughts are all that come.