Ventures Africa | 42 Africa Innovators To Watch
• This global trend is blamed on the sociology of the shrinking collective attention span, but has fueled the shift of video content to the smaller screens of smartphones, augmented by ubiquitous Wi-Fi service, allowing people to consume these skits on the go, while in the car, at the gym, on a walk or, crucially, at work.
• Titled, Their Point of View, Power Play, and Klakitiklak of Ineffective Policies, respectively, these pieces occupy most of the balcony as Ehikhamenor welcomes guests into his home as well as his artistic vision, which over the past decade has made an indelible imprint on contemporary African art.
• This is how Emmanuel Iduma, writer and art critic described it, “The walls of the room were covered in black drawings on a yellow background … the shapes and forms seemed to join without end, painstakingly linked, with the adeptness of a calligrapher.” Both installations addressed political issues of corruption and violence surrounding oil exploitation in Nigeria.
• Educated in the United States, Loza directed the artistic aspect of her Fine Arts in Animation degree into establishing a fashion career that has seen her work with ZARA, Diesel, Jill Stuart, Yigal Azrouël, and Cynthia Rowley in her early days in New York.
• It was developed in order to tackle the leading causes of maternal and newborn deaths in rural and low-income areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by identifying high risk pregnancies with the use of mobile clinics offering ultrasonography and health screenings to expectant mothers.
• If Hollywood is a well structured machine with actors systematically tiered by A, B, C list categories according to their earning power, popularity and ultimate cultural significance, then its African cousin Nollywood, is an altogether more chaotic but egalitarian affair where everyone is welcome, but you must hustle or shout for attention in an improvised industry that is remaking and redefining itself as quickly as the country that birthed it.
• Addressing complicated issues like love, infidelity and gendered double standards when it comes to male and female attitudes towards sex, The Road to Yesterday is in many ways Genevieve’s first foray into feminist commentary and the struggle for women’s equality in a society firmly invested in patriarchal dominance.
• Chi-Chi has long kinky braids, a disarming smile, and a soft-edged Nigerian American accent that fits perfectly with the modern parenting that she practices (her children call her and her husband by their first names) but that contrasts completely with the reputation of workaholic task master able to optimize a drifting production.