Tyra Banks is expanding her America’s Next Top Model franchise to the motherland. The popular series is launching in South Africa with “Africa’s Next Top Model.” The reality competition will begin filming in Cape Town in August and will expand to Johannesburg as the season progresses. “Africa’s Next Top Model” will feature 12 models from…
From The Grio – Fake drugs for tuberculosis and malaria kill around 700,000 people each year in less-developed countries, according to a report by the International Policy Network. In one shocking case, over the course of three months, 84 Nigerian children died from kidney failure brought on by the industrial solvent diethylene glycol in teething syrup….
Two men have gotten married in Africa in what is being touted as Africa’s first traditional gay wedding. Tshepo Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithol, both 27, were reportedly married in the town of KwaDukuza in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa before some 200 guests, in a ceremony that united Zulu and Tswana traditions. The two men first met…
The granddaughters of Nelson and Winnie Mandela are now starring in their own reality series called Being Mandela, reports The Hollywood Reporter. Sisters Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway and Swati Dlamini are the daughters of Zenani Mandela Dlamini and Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini of Swaziland, where they are full-fledged African princesses. They were born in South Africa but spent…
Back in 2011, I wrote about Nomasonto “Mshoza” Mnisi, a South African musician who’d undergone skin bleaching because she had a “passion for whiteness.” Back then it seemed like the media had finally caught on to bleaching as stories about baseball legend Sammy Sosa, popular dancehall artist Vybz Kartel, and practice of skin bleaching and…
Verone Mankou hopes to become the Steve Jobs of Africa. The 27-year-old Congolese entrepreneur recently released the continent’s first ever homegrown smart phone and tablet, a move Mankou hopes will result in his company, VMK, cornering the booming mobile phone market in Africa. “Only Africans know what Africa needs,” Mankou explained during a speech at…
On the heels of CNN’s latest installment of Black in America, many are engaging in conversations about what it really means to be black in the U.S. While the show focused on colorism and how biracial individuals choose to identify themselves, Wayétu Moore, a Liberian-American writer, recently explored how immigrants from Africa became black Americans….
ARISE Magazine, Africa’s “first and foremost” fashion glossy, has released its first ever list of 100 dynamic women across the diaspora. Honoring women from business, government, entertainment, philanthropy, and fashion, ARISE’s list of 100 Dynamic women reads like a who’s who of prominent women from around the globe. The inaugural honorees include Nkosazana DlaminiZuma, the…
American artists have seemed to be making pilgrimages to the Motherland in record numbers. From 50 Cent and Beyoncé, to Solange, and now Rick Ross, Americans are traveling to Africa to both soak up the local culture and pass on a little of their own. But as Africa’s own music scene gains more traction stateside,…
It looks like some women in Togo are taking the power of the V seriously. Apparently, the female wing of Let’s Save Togo, a civil rights group, asked women in Togo to abstain from sex with their husbands and partners in an effort to compel them to demand that president Faure Gnassingbe step down. President…
