Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin pledge to cooperate against militant group that has kidnapped 200 schoolgirls African leaders at a summit in Paris have agreed on a regional plan of action to combat Boko Haram, the Islamist group that has abducted more than 200 girls and threatened to sell them into slavery. In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin pledged...
With the contemporary art scene on the continent flourishing, The Culture Trip suggests some of the people worth watching Exiled from Zimbabwe after producing an unflattering portrait of the countrys president, Robert Mugabe, Kudzanai Chiurai , the first black artist to get a BA in fine arts at the University of Pretoria, has become an important figure in African art. Chiurai uses dramatic multimedia...
s first contemporary art museum in ex-slavers' base preserves African culture and gives artists a platform Down a red dust path in Ouidah once stood the Tree of Forgetfulness, which millions of slaves wrenched from what is now modern-day Benin were forced to circle seven times to symbolically erase their collective memory of origin before being shipped to the Americas. Now the town, the birthplace...
s first Global Slavery Index was launched by the American anti-slavery crusader, Kevin Bales, and an Australian philanthropic foundation Walk Free , amid great fanfare . The index claims to give 'the most accurate and comprehensive measure of the extent and risk of modern slavery, country by country, currently available'. It does so in order to spark 'a process of engaging with governments' and to...
New gallery at the Villa Ajavon in the historic city of Ouidah offers permanent home to collection built up by Fondation Zinsou, launched by Franco-Beninese financier Lionel Zinsou ...
s museums. But until now there was no permanent venue for their exhibition in Africa itself. The credit for this initiative is due to the Fondation Zinsou , launched in 2005 by the Franco-Beninese financier Lionel Zinsou, 59. A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the London School of Economics, he started his career as an adviser to Laurent Fabius, then prime minister of France, subsequently...
s a wonder that patients grasp their diagnosis and how to use eye drops. When it all gets too much I stop work. An assistant goes to the waiting room to clap hands. A hush descends. It doesn't last. Several times most days the siren wail of the fire engine pierces the town as it rushes to the site of another road crash. My neighbours...
scene When one of Nigeria's biggest media moguls began collecting contemporary African art three decades ago, he was one of the few Africans in a niche market dominated by western connoisseurs. But as African art becomes more sought-after globally, that is rapidly changing. "Some of the things I bought just for aesthetic pleasure years ago are now worth millions," said the wealthy businessman, who...
s more globalised view of modern art Meschac Gaba was so bewildered by the lack of opportunities for African artists in Europe that he spent five years constructing his own fictional museum, even adding, for extra authenticity, a shop and a restaurant. This week it takes its place at the heart of the British art establishment when it goes on display as one of Tate Modern's newest acquisitions – the...
s playful Museum of Contemporary African Art at Tate Modern reveals how African art is often overlooked It was in the Marriage Room that Meschac Gaba 's vision tore through my expectations of what art is and how it relates to our ordinary, irreplaceable lives. This room in the Beninese artist's Museum of Contemporary African Art is full of wedding souvenirs , from photographs to gifts, that record...
s the middle of a working day, in the middle of the week, but the trickle of worshippers at the Synagogue Church of All Nations is quickly becoming a flood. Around 1,000 people sit silently on plastic chairs cooled by dozens of floor fans at the church – a building reminiscent of an aircraft hangar just off Accra's industrial Spintex Road – watching its founder delivering a sermon on his own dedicated...
s priests try to dispel misconceptions about ancient religion practised by half the country's population But for the gentle hissing of pythons, Dah Dangbénon's voodoo temple could have been mistaken for a new-age hippy gathering. Seated in a semicircle on fraying raffia mats, devotees listened rapturously as the high priest talked at length about oneness with the cosmos. "There can be no equilibrium...
s fastest rising organised crime. Each year, 4 million African children – equivalent to Liberia's entire population – are traded for labour before their 15th birthday. Most come from villages like Zakpota, in central Benin, where hundreds of parents – pushed to the wall by destitution – send their children to neighbouring Nigeria. The working child, it is hoped, will bring in money, and be one less...
s highest rates of poverty. "Because of our handicapped condition, the border agencies don't bother us. Nobody asks us any questions, and we can cross the borders easily," said Isaac one recent evening as a friend helped him on to his Vespa near the frontier. Tiny west African neighbours Benin and Togo have long been havens for smugglers, who slip easily through poorly policed frontiers and shorelines....
s main city, a dozen couples twirled to salsa music. Unlike other west African cities, the people dancing together cut across all social classes. They included a market hawker, a diplomat, besuited men, a migrant worker and a teenager in matching canary-yellow hotpants and stilettos. In Cotonou city centre, salsa music drumming from clubs and roadside bars rises to meet Afrobeat pop. "No modern music...
Heavily subsidised fuel in Nigeria has spawned a fuel smuggling industry in nearby Togo and Benin ...
s Pennington river earlier this week. A statement on the company's website said that six Russians and one Estonian employed as crew members by the company were being held captive , and that efforts were underway to obtain their release. "The emergency unit set up immediately by Bourbon has been set up to aim at their rapid liberation under the safest security conditions," the statement said. "Bourbon...
s finance minister acknowledged that more than three-quarters of the fuel consumed there was illegally imported from Nigeria. In Togo, population 6 million, a 250-litre barrel sells for $300, a small fortune in a country where about two-thirds of the population live in poverty. Some smugglers and local dignitaries have reaped generous rewards, and "micro-petro-states" have sprung up on either side...
ve been out running at daybreak, and return home when my telephone rings. It is Jonas, a nurse at the eye hospital, with sombre news. Fabrice, a son of our senior nurse, has been found dead beside the main road. Police are at the scene. I set off in the car. A large crowd of villagers signals the scene of the accident. At a bend of the newly widened road, just before a teak forest, lies the body covered...
Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...