Articles

Twelve official languages, a country that talks openly about its own history, and a set of courtesies that are easy to learn and matter more than usual.

A carnival on the second of January, an arts festival that takes over a whole town, and public holidays that are commemorations before they are days off.

A cuisine built from Cape Malay cooking, Indian indenture, Portuguese trade routes and the fire everybody in the country gathers around.

The caves northwest of Johannesburg where the fossil record of our own origins is densest, inscribed by UNESCO as the Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa.

A kingdom on the Limpopo that traded gold for Chinese porcelain, ruled for four centuries, and was then written out of the country's own history.

A quarantine station, a leper colony, a wartime garrison and finally a political prison, inscribed by UNESCO for what its last chapter came to mean.

Built in 1593 to take the Indian Ocean trade routes, and fought over for three centuries. What stands at Mombasa now, and how to visit it.

A Swahili city of the tenth to seventeenth centuries, abandoned and swallowed by forest. Inscribed only in 2024, and still barely visited.

Ghana has two wet seasons in the south, one in the north and a dust laden harmattan between them. A month by month reading of when to go.

UNESCO calls the coastal castles the starting point of the African diaspora. What a journey of return to Ghana involves, and what it asks.

Homowo hoots at hunger and Aboakyer opens with a live hunt. What Ghana’s festivals are for, when they fall, and how to attend one well.

Jollof, banku, waakye and kelewele. The staples worth knowing, how street food actually works, and what to ask for if you avoid chilli.