Along the southwestern coast of Africa lies the Republic of Namibia. With an estimated population of about 3,093,708 based on Worldometers’ elaboration of the latest United Nations data and a territory of 317,874 sq. miles, Namibia is considered a young democracy in Southern Africa after gaining independence from South Africa in 1990.
A Philadelphia native born January 2, 1898, Sadie Alexander shattered racial and gender barriers to become the first Black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1927) and became the first Black woman to practice law in the state. Now, nearly a century after her academic triumphs, the city is poised to install a bronze homage, amplifying conversations around representation in public monuments.
Among the many peace ambassadors are several African women whose contributions have made them trailblazers in conflict mediation and post-conflict reconciliation. Below is a list of African women who remain trailblazers in the quest for peace across the continent.
Americans celebrate with fireworks, lots of parades, concerts, and food as they bond over barbecues with family and friends. While it is a moment of pride and celebration, for many Black Americans, this day holds a deeper, more complicated, and often painful meaning.
When we talk about Africa’s past, it often centers around colonization and how the Europeans dominated the continent. Long before their arrival, Africa was home to powerful ancient kingdoms and empires, some of which were led and protected by women.
African drumming is one of humanity’s oldest technologies. It has been a tool of communication, healing, and ceremony for tens of thousands of years. Rhythms from Mali, Ghana, Senegal, and beyond endured in the forced crossings of the Middle Passage.
The vast halls of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris are hauntingly silent this spring. One prominent case, a towering wooden talking drum known as the Djidji Ayokwê, has just been removed. Its empty plinth is a stark emblem of centuries-old colonial plunder and the long road toward restitution.
Long before formal nursing schools or medical licenses, Black women brought life into the world under the shadow of slavery. Enslaved midwives labored in cramped cabins, relying on generations of oral knowledge to care for mothers and infants alike.
In 1803, at a quiet stretch of the Georgia coast, a group of enslaved Igbo captives made a choice that would echo across centuries and across time. Known as the Igbo Landing, the captives’ collective act of defiance in which they walked into the water, choosing death over bondage, became more than just an event. It became a story of spiritual resistance that lives on in Black memory today.
When Fela Anikulapo Kuti walked the earth, he did so like a man possessed. Not by spirits though the Shrine knew its fair share of ritual but by a vision. Afrobeat was protest, pageantry, and prophecy all in one: 12-minute sermons with horns, funk, pidgin English, and takedowns of military dictators, colonial puppeteers, and capitalist saboteurs.
