Arts and Africa: Where we are now and where we’re going

By Ope Adedeji

Arts And Africa
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

“A new journal needs a reason to exist: a gap that earlier journals failed to fill, a new form of pleasure, a new kind of writing, an alliance with a new or under-chronicled social movement, a constellation of authors for whom the future demand for work exceeds present supply, a program that will actually change some small part of some literary readers’ tastes” — Professor Stephen Burt.

The unbirthing of our new logo.

This aptly described the goals of Arts and Africa at its inception. When a couple of young undergraduate students came together to start this Arts and Literary Magazine, their only reason was that they had found a home for their work: a place that “existing institutions” and their standards of taste did not accept. At the time there was no remote way of knowing that Arts and Africa would be more than a home or a baby, as they so often called it. We watched like protective mothers with squinted eyes, worry lines strewn across our foreheads and often small proud smiles that lit up our eyes as our baby began to crawl and then walk. It was an unforeseen but swift process. Two years down the line, we were confronted with decisions every literary magazine has to take: the decision of direction and expansion. This came in an improbable way, sneaking up our faces until it became all too apparent that the baby we had put in a small box to walk wanted flight.

Unlike the age-old saying, “if the shoes don’t fit, don’t wear it,” the creators of Arts and Africa decided to get themselves a new shoe.


Arts and Africa started planning its expansion subtly in 2016. In 2017, we decided to put off submissions in order to focus more on building our content, website and structure of the organization, in line with our new vision. In doing this, what was formerly confined to Africa, had to ease off on this concentration and expand to the nooks and crannies of the world. Though Arts and Africa currently boasts of a Pan-African young contemporary artistic and literary content, one of our current aims is to inculcate into our work, content from all over the world, while our priority still remains with Africans.

We are rebranding, expanding our narratives and influence of literature in popular culture. We are more interested in celebrating young and authentic voices. Especially, we are interested in experiences. We want to showcase ephemeral, eccentric and artistic expressions through various media. In our bid to be universally appealing, while still catering to several individual groups/demographics. We are interested now, more than ever to push more genres of fiction to readers of genre fiction. We want to read your horror, mystery, science fiction as much as we want to read your romance, satire, political and cultural fiction.

We especially encourage submissions by new writers. Our goal is to shine the spotlight on great writing, regardless of the author’s experience level.

In consistence with changing the feel and taste of our content, we have decided to change the look of our website. We are creating a website that is more aesthetically pleasing and accommodating of our new plans and reflecting of the path we are walking in. Our very own Afopefoluwa Ojo has been up on this task. While we wait for the main site, she has decided to put up a temporary medium website to keep things moving, so we do not keep you waiting.

We also have more plans to get content of all your favourite authors including exclusive interviews on the website.

On the 30th of June we announced our partnership with Monochrome Lagos on the submissions of literature for a photobook, the second edition of the Photobook (submissions are still on-going) We are very excited about this project. There are plans to be involved in many more of these partnerships and digital and print publications. We intend to run several projects so feel free to send in your pitch, our project manager, Oluwatosin Adeshokan would be happy to talk to you about actualizing them. We are very interested in working with artists and Photographers as well.

We are also working towards compensation of our contributors. Flash fiction contests will continue to hold to encourage more reading and writing.

While Afopefoluwa Ojo has been working mindlessly on the website these past months, our editors, currently headed by Ohioleh Osadebey have been working really hard on their skills to improve the readability of your work.

An event to relaunch us back to the literary and artistic community as undeniably and irresistibly, one of your faves, is in the works. Stay tuned.

In the end it’s about you, and you. Be sure to tell a friend, to tell a friend, that something big is coming.

Thank you for staying with us through this time.

Ope Adedeji,
For the Arts and Africa team.

About the writer: Ope Adedeji dreams about a lot of things but most especially about bridging the gender equality gap and working with the United Nations. If you do not find her writing, you would find her reading a novel.

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Arts And Africa

Written by

Africa’s electronic journal.

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