The Voulet–Chanoine Mission,also called Central African-Chad Mission,was a French military expedition sent out from Senegal in 1898 to conquer the Chad Basin and unify all French territories in West Africa. This expedition operated jointly with two other expeditions,the Foureau-Lamy and Gentil missions,which advanced from Algeria and Middle Congo respectively. The refusal of the expedition commander and his second-in-command to follow orders from France,their murder of a commanding officer and their subsequent deaths at the hands of their own soldiers cast a dark shadow over France's emerging colonial empire in Africa at the end of the 19th century. The expedition is remembered for its descent into depravity and extreme violence,actions which today would legally be considered war crimes.
Sarraounia Mangou was a chief/priestess of the animist Azna subgroup of the Hausa,who fought French colonial troops of the Voulet–Chanoine Mission at the Battle of Lougou in 1899. She is the subject of the 1986 film Sarraounia based on the novel of the same name by Nigerien writer Abdoulaye Mamani.
Abdou Moumouni University,formerly the University of Niamey from 1974 to 1994,is a public university based in Niamey,the capital of Niger. The main campus is situated on the right bank of the Niger River. Historically,its students and faculty have been involved in protest movements in the capital.
Albertha Magdalena Bouwer was a South African Afrikaans-writing journalist and author. She is best known for her series of children's stories about the experiences of a small girl called Alie growing up in the fictional location Rivierplaas in rural Free State. Late in life she published a novel for adults,Die afdraand van die dag is kil,about two women in old age.
The Cinema of Niger began in the 1940s with the ethnographical documentary of French director Jean Rouch,before growing to become one of the most active national film cultures in Francophone Africa in the 1960s-70s with the work of filmmakers such as Oumarou Ganda,Moustapha Alassane and Gatta Abdourahamne. The industry has slowed somewhat since the 1980s,though films continue to be made in the country,with notable directors of recent decades including Mahamane Bakabe,Inoussa Ousseini,Mariama Hima,Moustapha Diop and Rahmatou Keïta. Unlike neighbouring Nigeria,with its thriving Hausa and English-language film industries,most Nigerien films are made in French with Francophone countries as their major market,whilst action and light entertainment films from Nigeria or dubbed western films fill most Nigerien theatres.
Sarraounia is a 1986 historical drama film written and directed by Med Hondo. It is based on a novel of the same name by Nigerien author Abdoulaye Mamani,who co-wrote the screenplay. The novel and film concern the real-life Battle of Lougou between Azna queen Sarraounia and the advancing French Colonial Forces of the Voulet-Chanoine Mission in 1899. Sarraounia was one of the few African tribal leaders that resisted the advances of French expansionists Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine. The film won the first prize at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and was critically well received.
Marguerite Dupire was a French ethnologist who specialised on African people,and worked extensively on the Fulani of Niger,Cameroon,Guinea,Senegal,and then after a mission in Ivory Coast,on the Serer people of Sine since 1965.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan is a French and Nigerien anthropologist,and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles. He is also Emeritus Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and associate professor at Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey where he founded the master of socio-anthropology of health.
Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist,one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books of autobiography. Educated in Britain from the age of 13,she became the first African woman to be the editor of a British literary magazine when in 1961 she took on the editorship of The New Strand,a revived version of The Strand Magazine,which had closed in 1950.
Reza de Wet was a South African playwright.
Rebeka Njau was Kenya's first female playwright and a pioneer in the representation of African women in literature. Her writing has addressed topics such as female genital mutilation and homosexuality. Her first novel,Ripples in the Pool (1975),appeared as number 203 in the Heinemann African Writers Series.
Amalion is a multilingual independent academic publishing house based in Dakar,Senegal.
S. V. Petersen (1914–1987) was an Afrikaans-language South African poet and author,educator and founding principal of the Athlone High School,Silvertown [Athlone]],Cape Town. He was the first person of colour whose poetry and prose were published in South Africa.
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering African literature. The editor-in-chief is Hein Willemse.
Jan Kamp - a Dutch immigrant to South Africa,was a journalist in the Netherlands and South Africa. He was a teacher at various schools and later a university professor in literature. In his later years he became a writer and a promoter of the Afrikaans language.
Chioma Opara is a Nigerian author and academic whose work primarily focuses on West African feminism. She is known for creating the theory of femalism and is one of the six most important African feminist theorists. Her work has been influential in studies of gender in Africa.
Rahmatou Keïta is a Nigerien journalist,writer,and film director,whose film career began in 1990. She won the prestigious 7 d'or for L'assiette anglaise (2005) and the Sojourner Truth Award for Al'lèèssi…,her first feature film.
Aïcha Macky is a Nigerien filmmaker as well as a sociologist. She is most notable as the director of critically acclaimed documentary The Fruitless Tree.
Bronwyn Law-Viljoen is a South African writer,editor,publisher and professor. She is the co-founder of the publisher Fourthwall Books and owns a bookstore called Edition. She acts as the primary editor for works on law and history of South Africa and the architecture and building process of its constitutional court structures,along with artistic book publications of the work of William Kentridge. She has also published her own novel called The Printmaker.
This Mournable Body is a novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga which was published by Faber and Faber on 16 January 2020.
