The Nigerian film industry has been described as a phenomenon, an original African invention that has taken the world by storm. How did it all begin? Sunny Okim, one of the first set of Nigerian journalists to focus on Nollywood, traces the history of the movie industry.   Living in Bondage Some 25 years ago, a young Nigerian university graduate …

Femi Awoniyi on how the Nigerian film industry created a new popular African art form in only twenty-five years. “Africans are not banished to the margins of narrative or subsumed in landscape. Rather they become the movers of our story. Their humanity is not negotiable; it is not in the story teller’s gift to bestow, to withhold or to grant …

Thousands of people are fleeing villages in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon less than a week after President Paul Biya declared war against Anglophone separatist groups. Fleeing villagers complain troops are engaging in rape, killings, and harassment, but the military says they are out to defend the population. The number of people travelling along the Kumba Mamfe Road in the …