Africa Week 2019

The African Studies Center will host the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s first annual Africa Week, through a series of events from November 1- 14, 2019. The purpose of this campus-wide celebration of Africa event is to create a community, inform and educate the Carolina community about the region.

The African Studies Center will showcase the African continent through music performances, two film screenings, a panel session and a social media campaign titled #whatmakesmeAfrican. This campaign is open to Africans, Africanists and persons of African origin within the UNC-Chapel Hill community.

Ken Wilson, a retired physician and North Carolina local, who has studied Congolese drumming rhythms for 40 years, will offer three free Congolese drum lessons. Pline Mounzeo, who performs with Dr. Wilson, will hold two drum performances at the Pit and the FedEx Global Education Center. Pline lives in Raleigh and is a world class drummer originally from Brazzaville.

The highlight of Africa week is a panel discussion on Africa’s Evolving Forms of Political Critique and Social Movements. The panelists will represent perspectives from the Equatorial Guinea by Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer and executive director of EG Justice, the world’s first NGO focusing on human rights, rule of law, transparency and civil society in Equatorial Guinea, and Sudan by Isma’il Kushkush, a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, CNN, Aljazeera English, Guernica Magazine and others. Cherie Ndaliko is an assistant professor in the music department at Carolina and has extensively researched how film and music act as catalysts of movements and socio-political transformation. Dr. Ndaliko will offer an academic as well as practical perspective to the discussion. More information is on the African Studies Center website.

There will be a film screening of the movie The Boy who Harnessed the Wind with a student led discussion after the film. There will also be a virtual reality film viewing of 267, an ode-and a challenge-to the past, present, and future of Congo, where colonial illusions collide with Afrofuturistic demands, a six-minute film produced and directed by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. The film director will be available to take questions and engage with participants. Sign up is required for the VR experience. Sign up online.

Participate in Africa week by following the African Studies Center’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and using #whatmakesmeAfrican.