Humax TV Tonight: Africa Rising with Afua Hirsch
Africa Rising with Afua Hirsch is on BBC Two tonight at 9pm.
Watch, record or stream it with a Humax set-top box.
In episode two, Afua explores the energy and ambition of Nigeria’s young cultural creators, asking what drives their success in everything from Afrobeats to Nollywood.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and home to a fifth of the continent’s inhabitants - as well as the epicentre of African music, fashion and film.
Brash, fast-changing and with big characters, the drama of life in Nigeria is a rich subject for writers, and the Nigerian book scene is booming. Many authors write in English, which means there is a world market open to their books. Afua meets Ayobami Adebayo, award-winning author and rising star of the Lagos literary scene.
With his Lagos Space Programme, a non-binary luxury clothes label exploring African futures, designer Adeju Thompson is blazing a trail. His designs hark back to more traditional, gender-fluid forms of clothing, and his reputation is growing around the world. Afua models one of his contemporary silk skirts and tries her hand at Adire - a traditional Yoruba dyeing technique.
The country has also been enriched by the global exchange of ideas, and Afua cooks giant snails with Nigerian chef Obehi Ekhomu-El Herfi, who has returned from America to set up a restaurant, where she specialises in Nigerian cuisine.
At the New Afrika Shrine, a vast club dedicated to the legacy of Fela Kuti, Afua meets another afrobeat legend - his grandson Mádé Kuti, a 27 year-old singer, songwriter and instrumentalist. Afua asks him why Nigeria is the musical superpower of the continent.
Continuing Fela’s example of challenging authority and convention is award-winning rapper and lawyer Falz the Bahd Guy, whose 2018 video This Is Nigeria went viral. Falz talks to Afua about how competitive spirit is bred very early in his country.
Lastly Afua goes on set with an all-female Nollywood production team, before meeting celebrated artist and sculptor Yinka Shonibare, who has set up a residency in Lagos - The Gas Foundation - that he hopes will play a role in shifting western attitudes towards African art.