The Distribution Forum is our unique event to bring together African and UK-based filmmakers from the diaspora with leading UK-based film distributors. It is an open workshop, free to the public where practical advice on …

Film aficionados, please be sure to check out Film Africa 2011, taking place 3rd – 13th November at various London cinemas and co-organised by SOAS Senior Lecturer Lindiwe Dovey.
Film Africa boasts:
10 days of more than …

President Yoweri Museveni rap with Lyrics – Do you want another rap Official video
Ugandan President Museveni’s rap song on You Tube is doing the rounds in Uganda, bringing him much needed positive publicity. But what …

Trucking the dream.
Hello all, i thought I’d bore you with some tails of the road and why trucks are cool.
The theoretical blurb, come waffle;
Recently I’ve been doing some work in Ghana, a tricky situation after …

This map of Africa, with lots of other countries superimposed on it, has made the rounds on Twitter over the last week or so. Really does make you think.

Recently I’ve been having quite a few conversations about social media where people are expressing quite a high level of scepticism. A common view is that we should be careful when promoting social media because not everyone has access to the necessary technology to use it.

There is a presumption held by many that a pluralist media system enables an open and free debate on political and social issues and a flow of  accurate news reporting. In countries that have recently …

Somewhere deep in the northern savannah there is an ideological clash that will affect the lives of the 5,000 inhabitants of Binaba for decades to come. Leninist collectivization meets autocracy in a system perhaps harking …

(UPDATE!  The continuing discussion in NYT has made me edit my post a bit.  Please note that I have specially erased references to the comment that I referred to as I know now a bit …

On Monday 12 October a very strange article appeared on the front page of the Guardian. Apparently the paper had been prevented by a legal injunction from reporting a question that was going to be …

Aurora Tellenbach, PhD in Arab Cinema here at SOAS, was kind and diligent enough to put a very long list of the films from the region of Africa and the Middle East.

At the Africa Gathering conference for the past couple of days. Interesting and inspirational talks as is usually the modus operandi of this community of technologists, entrepreneurs and more general world savers. I have always thought of these events a bit like church sermons – so I approach them as such. Less critical discussion but a lot of agreeing and being on the same side of solving problems. So what is often more interesting than the “meaning” of these events is to look at the machinic assemblages that are formed between the organizations spaces, people, technologies, desires, networks so on an so on.

During the past month I have been working on a pilot project in Ethiopia that combines two unusual bedfellows: mobiles phones and climate change. The idea has been to develop a system that would channel carbon sequestration funds to hundreds of thousands of rural farmers in Ethiopia in support of their reforestation efforts. A simple concept: more carbon tied to biomass through growing trees; more money produced. All of this would be then mediated by the mobile phone from data gathering to calculating biomass patterns to remuneration. This talk will present some of the problems and challenges the use of mobile phones raises in a country such as Ethiopia. It will look explain the current stage of the pilot project, describe some of the technical and political challenges we have encountered as well as extrapolate some broader theoretical implications of trying to leapfrog the digital divide through the use of mobile technology.

This is an ad campaign created for The History Channel by their advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, in particular for the South African market. The interesting things about this campaign is that it has garnered much reaction from people around the world deeming it as “anti-American” and “offensive”.

We have been tossing around a lot of theory this term, both in the Thursday group and in the many classes I have had the pleasure of having a role in. One question that is often asked: what use is all this complex theory and philosophy? That is, once you get into the messy world where you have to actually get things done, how do you then instrumentalize some of the ideas that we enjoy reading and debating? Why the extra headache?

We have had two very good seminars recently. Both, naturally, link to some of the interests we want to develop here at PC (Project Carousel). The first was by our very own post-doctorate exchange researcher from the University of Tampere, Kaarina Nikunen. Her presentation, titled “Internet, Diaspora and Identity” looked at her ongoing research among the young immigrants in Finland and their use of contemporary technology and media to express themselves in a homogeneous society such as Finland. The second presentation was by our research associate at SOAS, Lindiwe Dovey. She gave also an excellent talk “”African Screen Media”: African film, video, and their audiences” that focused on the development of African film in the past 50 years and especially the recent boom in local home-grown video industries. Nigeria alone made 1,500 film last years making it – at least in terms of output – the largest film industry in the world. Definitely a theme also to follow here.

Last September we hosted Ken Banks from Kiwanja.net as a part of our weekly seminar series at the Centre for Media and Film studies at SOAS. He is one of the key figures working on the emerging field of mobile activism that is becoming increasingly popular especially in Africa. Ken has since done quite a lot of interesting work and is constantly writing about his work in mobile activism on his blog. Recommended reading. As I recall, the discussion at the seminar was rather lively: the critical questions focusing on the potential problems of such a developmental and technology-based approach to solve some of the problems Africa faces. The discussion continued and trickled down on his blog even after the event was over. I briefly quote Ken: