Hand on the tiller - one month in!

A personal monthly blog by Olu Alake, The Africa Centre's recently appointed CEO. Featuring insights, inspiration, thought leadership, and personal opinions and experiences of the CEO. Read more

The Making of Home

The Africa Centre’s enduring byline has been ‘A Home Away From Home’ for Africans in the UK. Throughout our history, this framing of the physical space of home as a place of refuge from the outside world, where people gather together as a family in safety to connect, celebrate, and find a sense of belonging and friendship has been of great importance. Read more

A community at the sharp end

A sobering reflection on the recent spate of knife crime deaths of several young Black people across the City. What's the way forward? Read more

Moving Forward

Looking back to look forward. Taking inspiration from Sankofa - the Bono Adinkra symbol of the Akan people (modern-day Ghana), which depicts a bird flying forward with its head turned backward and a pebble in its beak. Read more

Making The Case For Support

Do you remember George Floyd? Some may remember it as the birth of Black Lives Matter and all the different things this meant to us. Other readers may point to it as the moment of their political awakening. For those of us slightly longer in the tooth, we may recall it as another ‘moment’ in global racial politics, where the optimists amongst us hoped that this time would be different while the skeptics rolled their eyes with a resigned ‘Here we go again’ sigh. Read more

Amandla!

2024 is going to be a seminal year as it not only marks the 60th anniversary of The Africa Centre's founding, but three African countries will also be celebrating their sixth decade of existence as independent nations – Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of African Remembrance Day. Read more

Remembering Who You are

It is easy to be so engrossed in the day-to-day realities of overseeing the operational and governance challenges of an organisation such as The Africa Centre to the extent that we hold detail too close to our face and we don’t step back often enough to appreciate the true magnificence of the heritage and potential of the institution. Read more

Educating The African Child

Education is embedded in the mission of The Africa Centre and is at the heart of all our programming. This means everything we do has a basic output of enriching and uplifting all who engage with us. Here's the latest monthly CEO’s blog. Read more

Cry Freedom

For those old enough to remember watching the moment live, there would have been fewer geopolitical moments as poignant as South Africa’s first free elections in 1994. That this seminal event is now three decades old, - an entire generation – is a sobering reminder of the inevitable passage of time. Read more