Dear Okyeame readers,
Our hearts are heavy this week as the novel coronavirus spreads to every corner of the world, taking lives and disrupting societies on every continent. While official figures show that Africa has fewer cases than most regions, the numbers are rising every day.
We know your timelines and inboxes are inundated with terrifying news about COVID-19, but here’s one positive headline you may have missed: a British company has hired an innovation lab in Dakar to build a new coronavirus test that will deliver a diagnosis within ten minutes.
For the rest of this dispatch, however, we’re turning away from the news of our newsletter to bring you some of the fun and inspiring things we’ve been enjoying recently.
And, of course, don’t forget to wash your hands, fam.
WATCH
This video comes from the people behind “For Africans,” an Instagram account that curates images of daily life in Africa. Slide into their DMs to submit your own photos. (Poverty-porn not accepted!)
A few dispatches back, we mentioned Netflix’s announcement of its first original African show. The series has since launched and is the perfect quarantine binge.
A Senegalese designer put together a photo and textile exhibition highlighting the the style of the Sérère people in southern Senegal.
The Malian man making waves as a hair braider in Detroit
Love Brewed in the African Pot, a classic.
LISTEN
Have you heard George’s Podcast?
Revisiting Ancient Ethiopia
Hip Hop’s Secret Weapon
(If you have audible) We Need To Talk About The British Empire
Afropop
And African Vinyl in the 21st Century
READ
Chimamanda Adichie wants to meet you
Yoruba talking alphabet
Finding a home for African languages in African fiction
Becoming a woman
Take care,
Anakwa and Katie