Title: Let There Be Light
Year: 2010
Issue: 102
Cover image: “Kin(by)Night” © 2008 Cédrick Nzolo
Issue 102 explores the urban night and the urban underground, from Kinshasa to Dakar to Manhattan. Students walk miles to the nearest streetlamp; b-boys and taggers roam the subways. Another world of desire is illuminated in the darkness. Those with electricity are free to write all night—to philosophize about human rights, recent economic history in Africa, and machine politics. It is only in its absence that we realize we owe ourselves to circumstance, that our limits are our landscape.
Featured Article: Don’t Cry for Me Africa #OpenAccess
by John F. E. Ohiorenuan
The recent economic history of Africa has been less than postcolonial thanks to the powerful external institutions that continue to shape policy and to which African leaders continue to cater. John F. E. Ohiorenuan offers some sage advice to the African Princes and Princesses to come.
Contributors: E. Dovi Abbey, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Dicoco Boketshu, Lowell Brower, Aimé Césaire, Peter Erickson, Njeri Githire, Abdoulaye Gueye, Éléonore Hellio, Kakudji, Norman Mailer, Dominique Malaquais, Matthew Quinn Martin, David S. Mills, Méga Mingiedi, Cédrick Nzolo, John F. E. Ohiorhenuan, Daku Rani, Yves Sambu, Ronnie Scharfman, Ajume Wingo.