Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels

Home

Crowdfunding Education (SSIR)

Twelve-year-old Chidi Makama, who lives in the slums of Makoko, Lagos, has spent most of his childhood being chased out of school, bullied, and punished by teachers because his family could not pay his tuition. He even attempted to homeschool himself but couldn’t afford the learning materials like books and a computer.
Makama’s situation is not uncommon for Nigerian children. According to the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), more than 20 million child...

How The Shade Room’s Angelica Nwandu Went From Gossip Girl to Media Mogul

Angelica Nwandu had always had a weakness for celebrity gossip. So when she found herself unemployed in 2014 after quitting her job as an accountant to follow her dreams of becoming a screenwriter, she spent her free time in her cramped apartment in downtown Los Angeles consuming it and dishing about it with her friends, one of whom urged her to launch her own gossip site. The suggestion became an Instagram account she called The Shade Room (TSR). Nwandu’s first post explained the name. “I said,...

The Unfair Reality of Having to Code-Switch as a Black Student

Stacey says she feels "the pressure of representing my entire race in a positive light, specifically in the classroom." This extends to how she presents herself, including how she dresses. "It is so exhausting constantly switching between different characters, because I feel like I'm hiding my authenticity," she says. "If I could get away with it, I'd say exactly what I want to say the way I want to say it. But nobody seems to want that."Many students like Stacey alter their behaviors to fit in,...

How Africa’s Internet Culture is Amplifying Afrobeats to a Global Audience – Rolling Stone Africa – Music, Culture, Style and More

/*! elementor - v3.23.0 - 25-07-2024 */
.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{wid...

Nico Santos on Championing Queer Representation in Hollywood

Though he is now an established name, Nico Santos’ rise to the top was the result of years of hard work. From performing at open mic comedy shows before landing his roles playing Mateo in the NBC sitcom Superstore and as the snarkily fashionable Oliver Tsien in the blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, his career defining moments where things that he had to make happen himself.“I grew up in Manila before moving to the US with my brother at 16,” the comedian shares with Vogue Philippines in the middle o...

The Sacred Power of Getting Birthing Braids as a Black Mom

"I was falling into a state of deep sadness and fear, so I decided to distract myself with a hair appointment. But getting those box braids provided something I was afraid to say I needed at the time: confidence to weather all the unknowns of the postpartum period and the reassurance that, much like my hair, I could hold it together for my babies," says Weatherall, 28. The proud mom of twins now realizes that styling her hair was a coping mechanism for all of the unknowns associated with giving...

Hulu’s Queenie Is a Treat for Fans of Chaotic Coming-of-Age Stories

Book readers who are pessimistic about TV adaptations have nothing to fear from Hulu’s adaptation of Queenie. The British series, based on the novel of the same name by Candice Carty-Williams, tells the tale of South London Gen Z-er and budding journalist Queenie Jenkins (Dionne Brown) as she deals with her love life and trauma, and a tendency to self-sabotage.

Queenie is a smart, funny series that offers a brilliant commentary on love and friendship. Carty-Williams, who also serves as showrunn

Changing the Lives of the Underprivileged: How the Headfort Foundation is Ushering in a New Era of Restorative Justice and Peace in the Nigerian Society.

In the noisy hallway of Alausa high court in Lagos on a December Monday morning, over a hundred people sit on the floor waiting for their cases to be called. As lawyers and officials dash between them, dressed in a faded two piece and sandals sits 25-year-old Falana Arigbo.

In August 2015, hair dresser Falana, came across a disturbance on her way home from work. Before she knew what was happening she ran, and was immediately arrested and charged with armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed

Flyana Boss Takes Us BTS of Their First Headlining Tour

Bobbi and Folayan, the dynamic duo who make up the hip-hop group Flyana Boss, radiate the essence of Black girl joy. Last summer, their social media takeover was undeniable as videos of them energetically performing their hit single “You Wish” flooded the platform. As they sprinted through Times Square, Disneyland, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they seemed to manifest their evolution from musical newbies to mainstream superstars. Last week, when they called us from the road in San Francisco, t

Black Barbershops Are Changing Thanks to the Queer Community | POPSUGAR Beauty

"The ignorance in the conversation was out of control that day. I mean transphobia, homophobia, even [stuff] about mental health . . . I just got fed up," Jackson, 25, tells POPSUGAR. "After years and years of those experiences and having to do the deep sigh every time I walked in, I decided to take matters into my own hands and spent months cutting my own hair before I found myself a queer-friendly barber online."

For queer Black folks like Jackson, the traditional Black barbershop — a centerp

The Rise Of A-Beauty: The African Brands To Know

K-Beauty and J-Beauty have had their moments in the spotlight. Now, it’s the turn of A-Beauty: a term used to describe skincare, hair care and makeup products originating in Africa. African Beauty is embedded in ancient wisdom and age-old customs of using natural ingredients to nourish and heal. Moroccan oil, karite shea butter, copra oil, baobab oil and marula oil (to name just a few) have been honoured in Black communities worldwide for centuries and used for everything from hair care to skin

Why Are More Black Women Getting Nose Jobs?

Maria Meziem made the decision to get rhinoplasty ten months after she moved from Nigeria to the UK. A decision, she tells Black Ballad, spurred from a place of insecurity.

Meziem grew up in Anambra, Nigeria where big noses were the norm. She’d never really noticed hers until she got to a predominantly white country where it seemed her nose was the first thing people noticed about her.

“I had never really noticed my nose before I moved. My old nose was familiar, I saw it everyday in my parents

Jollof rice: how 6 African countries make it their own

Six unique dishes, six African countries to explore.

For West Africans and those of African descent like myself—regardless of country or timezone—there is one dish we can all agree is mouthwateringly good: jollof rice. Served as both the base of a meal or on the side, the beloved dish is made of rice dotted with tomatoes, spices, and peppers. But that's where the similarities end.

Depending on where you are or where you’re from, the recipe’s twists—rice served with fish, say, or infused with t

20 iconic slang words from Black Twitter that shaped pop culture

Since launching in 2006, Twitter (since renamed X) has changed how people communicate and socialize on the internet.

Perhaps its most enduring contribution lies with a community popularly known as "Black Twitter," a space that has had an indelible influence on today's society—from cancel culture to supposedly new languages actually derived from Black English. Since it coalesced online, Black Twitter has produced countless pop culture references and protested real-world injustices online.

The t

A History Of African Blood Rituals • The Blood Project

Blood rituals are a prehistoric practice that involves an exchange in the form of the death of a victim for the maintenance of a relationship taking place between man and a sacred deity. When blood rituals are carried out, the life of the victim (animal) is taken and their blood serves as a gift.

The main purpose of these rituals ranges not just as gifts, but for having communion with deities and performing self-cleansing rituals to avert evils and failures. The offeror is meant to show a sign

Obsessed with the ‘baddie’ beauty aesthetic? You have Black British women to thank

Kimberly McIntosh joins GLAMOUR as a Guest Editor for Black History Month. Over the course of the month, Kimberly will be spotlighting and celebrating Black women's stories across the digital, cultural, and physical landscape. For the third instalment in her series, she commissioned Victoria Goldiee to explore how Black British women are redefining beauty through the ‘Baddie' aesthetic…

The UK beauty industry is in its global gold rush era, exploding into a multi-billion-dollar business through

I’ve Renounced Streaming in Favor of This Dell DVD Drive

For many Africans like me growing up in the 2000s with limited access to legitimate software, buying pirated DVDs and CDs was our introduction to consuming media. I spent a lot of my formative years repeatedly listening to burned versions of albums like Dangerously in Love and watching One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl, all on a Dell DVD player.

But since then, given the availability of streaming services (and me knowing better), I’ve stopped using a video player altogether. (My laptop doesn’t even

How to Love Your Favorite Musician Without Going Broke

I know it might sound ridiculous, but if there’s one thing being a K-pop fan has taught me, it’s how to properly manage my finances. This is something that I learned the hard way.

Shortly after joining the fandom in 2016, I nearly drained my bank account, having splurged on artist merchandise I wanted but didn’t need. You see, I was new to the whole scene and everything just looked so tempting to buy.

Being a fan of someone can be costly. Think about all of the new vinyl releases, merchandise

How Media Mogul Mo Abudu Gets It Done

Mo Abudu has been called many things: “Africa’s most successful woman,” “one of the most powerful women in global television,” “the African Oprah.” That last one is particularly fitting and not just because she’s a media giant. Like the American mogul, Abudu was something of a late bloomer. She was around 30 years old when she moved back to Nigeria (where her roots are) from England (where she was born and mostly raised) for a new job at ExxonMobil. But it would be another decade before she star

How Queer African Artists Are Using Afrobeats and Online Networks to Break Free

When Cape Town rapper Angel Ho entered the music scene in 2014, intent on upstaging the status quo as an openly trans woman, she was admittedly at a predisposed disadvantage.

“It felt like I was on my own, for the most part,” she tells TheBody. “But a few years later, when the ‘Afrobeats Wave’ started gathering momentum, I used it to promote my solo music.” Angel Ho says that following the release of her single “Divine Feminine," she began to reach new audiences and gain the essential financial

The most LGBTQ+-friendly cities in the world

I’ll never forget the morning of November 15, 2017, when the results of Australia’s same-sex marriage equality came in. We’d won. Nerve-wracking doesn’t come close to describing the painful few months that preceded our victory – but the one thing that held us together? Community. In many ways, the struggle for our rights made Melbourne’s queer community even stronger. The LGBTQ+ scene reflects the city’s creative, slightly rebellious personality, especially in the arty inner northern neighbourho
Load More