Chimurenga
An innovative, multimedia platform that challenges cultural dominance and xenophobia with free ideas, new aesthetics, and political reflection by Africans about Africa.
What is it?
Chimurenga was launched in 2002 by writer and DJ Ntone Edjabe. He attended the University of Lagos but was “educated” by Nigerian musician and radical thinker Fela Kuti. In 1993, Edjabe relocated to Cape Town and set up the Pan African Market as a space for the free flow of ideas and projects in a context marred by xenophobia.
In 2002 he launched Chimurenga magazine to collect and distribute original perspectives on the contemporary African experience. It offers fresh interpretations, analyses, poetry, and photography by leading thinkers, writers, journalists, and practitioners in various disciplines from Africa and elsewhere.
Chimurenga’s network of cutting-edge contributors has gained an audience that includes public intellectuals, social leaders, and activists, both in Africa and internationally.
The magazine’s 2,500 print-run is distributed to enthusiastic followers, and selected articles are posted on the website and available as “pocket literature”. Its titles include “Music is The Weapon”, “Black Gays and Mugabes”, and ‘The Curriculum is Everything”.
Over the years, Chimurenga has developed into a series of publications, cultural projects, and public events called the Chimurenga Sessions. It is now a mutable object, taking shape as a print magazine, a website, a workspace, and a platform for editorial and curatorial activities.
The Chronic
“The Chronic is one small, deeply subjective attempt to do things differently. We recognised the newspaper—a popular medium that raises the perennial question of news and newness, of how we define both the now and history, as the means to best engage the present.”
“We selected the medium both for its disposability and its longevity, its ability to fashion routine in a way that allows us to traverse, challenge and negotiate liminality in everyday life.”
In 2013, The Chimurenga Chronic was founded as a quarterly gazette, in an effort to challenge the newspapers’ historical role as a tool of nationalism. Ntone Edjabe:”In many ways the Chronic is a self-administered antidote to the easy certainties of mainstream journalism.”
The pan-African production of The Chronic unites journalists, editors, writers, theorists, photographers, illustrators, and artists from around Africa and the world to critical debate and the exchange of ideas about Africa. Each issue of The Chronic is published online, but can be read in print too.
How does it work?
The research platform of The Chimurenga Chronic is called The Chimurenga Newsroom blog. An aggregator of ideas, sources and discussion, it taps into the extraordinary potential of online and offline media and selects, organizes and shares the information.
On the public forum, visitors can read article briefs, interact in editorial discussions and access reading lists. The blog also functions as an open-source archive, documenting the projects’ research process and progress. In the Chronic, Africans write about Africa as they see it, both taking from and contributing to the 21st century emergence of truly global sources of news reflecting multiple points of view and cultural diversity. As the blog Africa is a country states in their masthead: ”It’s not about famine, Bono or Barack Obama.”
Making strategic use of media and collaborations, Chimurenga’s activities also include The Chimurenga Library, an unique online archive of independent African cultural periodicals, and two editions of the Pan African Space Station, a 30-day series of live performances and radio broadcasts expanding notions of African music from ancient techno to future roots.
Chimurenga also co-produces the African Cities Reader, an online journal and biennial print publication about African urban life, featuring stories by Africans drawing their own maps and representing their spatial topographies; and Pilgrimages, an attempt to counter media distortions through literary journalism by inviting fourteen African writers to visit an explore the complex urban landscapes of fourteen African cities.
What’s unique about it?
Chimurenga has been selected for the quality, originality, and impact of their productions, for creatively using networks to challenge established definitions of journalism, and for their commitment to independent journalism and intellectual autonomy.
Chimurenga is an effective and innovative pan-African, multimedia publication, which is networked across the continent and beyond, presenting multiple voices on various media platforms, including online, print, public sessions, and art exhibitions. It has a unique focus on new African aesthetics and visual storytelling, drawing in outstanding artists and storytellers from various disciplines.
Through Chimurenga, photographers, cartoonists, artists, and journalists work closely together to tell multi-layered stories and to show multiple points of views on social, cultural, and political issues concerning Africa, contributing to a deeper understanding of cultural diversity in African countries. The editors add analyses and reflection to news stories.
Chimurenga’s capacity to influence ideas, its literary writing, and its role as an innovative educational model have been recognized internationally. According to Simon Kuper of The Financial Times “Chimurenga changes your view of Africa, and of journalism.”