Our new documentary podcast series will take you on a culinary journey across Africa where we’ll meet communities and local chefs on a mission to revive the continent’s indigenous crops - all while sharing delicious new recipes and flavours. Subscribe to The Star Ingredient on your favourite podcast app or find it on euronews.com or africanews.com from October 28. Ce podcast en français: La surprise du chef. This project was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions...

The job of Edward Wageni, the director of HeForShe*, is to find the tools to help men change their behaviours towards women and push for structural shifts on all levels. In this episode of Cry Like a Boy, we discuss the challenges that Wageni faces working with men and why gender equality is good for everyone, not just women. *HeForShe is a UN initiative that focuses on engaging men and boys to achieve gender equality. The movement has numerous famous ambassadors, among them is actor  Emma...

“Masculinity isn’t really a thing,” argues journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist Georges M Johnson. In this episode of Cry Like a Boy the author of  the critically-acclaimed memoir ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ addresses the questions around race, identity and gender. They also speak about how opening up about their experiences as a queer Black person living in the US changed their life.  This is a special spin-off episode of Cry Like a Boy hosted by  Mame Peya Diaw and produced by Naira Davlashyan and...

In Cry Like Boy, we have spoken about the trauma caused by Liberia’s civil war. But conflict is a global issue. In this new episode, we ask Adama Dieng about the impact such a violent act as genocide can have on men, women, or victims of rape. And what can be done to prevent genocide.  Adama Dieng is a former UN Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Tutsi genocide of Rwanda. In 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of...

Cecelia Danuweli realised she had the power to change the course of Liberia’s war in 2003. She joined a group of brave women who organised peaceful protests in front of the warlords. Their actions had a better range than bullets. Years later, this story was received with a standing ovation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Award-winning director Gini Reticker made this extraordinary rebellion of women into a film with the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2009). In this second...

Liberia witnessed a spiral of violence, hunger and death for more than a decade. But women said enough was enough and united to try and end the war. They came together regardless of their origin, class or religion. Cecelia Danuweli was one of these women who began by denying their husbands sex and started holding peaceful protests. She, like many other women, ended up redefining the front line of a brutal civil war. Award-winning director Gini Reticker travelled to Monrovia to tell the story...

After witnessing the murder of his parents and siblings, Morris Matadi was recruited as a child soldier. They put a rifle in his hands and forced him to fight in the Liberian civil war. One day he managed to put down his weapon and fled. But, like many other ex-combatants, the horror of war did not end there. He kept returning to the battlefield with vivid nightmares and experienced other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as anger attacks. All this in a context where...

Jonathan is a Liberian man in his late forties. When we first met him in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, Jonathan gave us the impression of being a laid-back guy. But his persona changed as soon as he started to talk about the war. In this episode, we join Liberian journalist Carielle Doe to explore the memories of the country‘s civil war by following the life trajectory of this former soldier. A bloody battle in which masculinity was pushed to the extreme. And in which men like Jonathan...

When young guys like Mamadou don’t succeed in their dangerous adventure from West Africa to Europe, they’re often not welcome back home. Why is there such pressure on men to succeed and how does this affect women?  In this episode, Khopotso Bodibe continues his conversation with a South African lawyer and rights activist Sharon Ekambaram and Julie Kleinman, a US anthropologist and author of the book “Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris”. This show has...

Many African migrants who take the dangerous journey into Europe will not make it. But the few who succeed in reaching their destinations still face hurdles. Fana left Guinea and arrived in France but was faced with the dilemmas of filling out the right documentation, meeting new friends, and trying to find a job. The tasks become even more difficult as she is Black.    In this episode, Khopotso Bodibe talks to South African lawyer and rights activist Sharon Ekambaram and Julie Kleinman, an...

Fana is 18 but he feels he became a man at the age of 12 when he decided to go on an adventure and leave his home in Guinea, seeking a better life in Europe. Unlike our previous hero Mamadou, he made it to France. In this episode, we explore what happens to the “tounkan namo”, or “the adventurers”, who succeed. And the price of their success.   With original reporting and editing by Makeme Bamba in Conakry, Guinea and Naira Davlashyan in Loches, France. Marta Rodriguez Martinez, Lillo...

After the death of his father all Mamadou Alpha wanted was to get his mother out of poverty and become her hero: The perfect son, the man of the family. At 18, he embarked on a dangerous migration route to Europe they call “the adventure”, or “tounkan” in the local Malinke language. Thousands of adventurers die trying to cross the Mediterranean in search of a better life. But Mamadou survived. Yet, he considers his fate worse than death. After months of exhaustion, hunger, and forced labour...

Across Southern Africa, thousands of men are abandoning stable education and employment and are instead seeking a fantasy fortune in South Africa's abandoned mines. The illegal miners, known as the zama zamas, not only put their lives at risk but also leave their families behind in countries like Lesotho and Zimbabwe for weeks if not months at a time. In this podcast episode, we explore how men's desire for status can be destructive for families and how future generations are impacted by...

In this episode, we explore the unknown world of the zama zama, clandestine miners who are scavenging for gold in the world's deepest abandoned mines of South Africa. We sit down to talk with two guests: Mpiwa Mangwiro, who has explored the social consequences of the extractive industry in South Africa, and Rosalind Morris, an award-winning anthropologist who has launched a project devoted to the zama zama, featuring a documentary and several short films. Our guests touch upon the condition...

There's an impoverished mountainous district of Lesotho where many illegal mineworkers live with their families. But women often wait there for their husbands for months and sometimes years. Many of the illegal mineworkers work in clandestine and abandoned mines in South Africa, run by criminal gangs. Some left to provide for their families, some die trying. In this second episode of our podcast series set in Lesotho, we talk about the fate of the people left behind by those men tasked by...

How far are you willing to go to provide for your family? Would you put your life at risk to put bread on the table? What if you had no choice? There is a country in Africa where thousands of men have felt so much pressure to provide for their families that they are employed by criminal gangs as illegal miners, digging for gold in clandestine mines. In some cases, they will never see the light again.  In this new episode of Cry Like a Boy, we visit Lesotho, where people who once were...

Sexual Colonisation What are the origins of homophobia in Africa? Where do the laws that punish same-sex relationships come from? South-African activist Khopotso Bodibe speaks to Youssef Belghmaidi, a Moroccan trans woman activist based in France, and Sheba Akpokli, an LGBTQI+ rights activist from Togo, about colonialism and its impact on sexual diversity and education. Like this episode? Share your thoughts on how you have challenged your view on what it means to be a man using the...

In this episode of Cry Like a Boy, South-African activist Khopotso Bodibe speaks to Youssef Belghmaidi, the organizer of the first pride march in the multicultural neighbourhood of Saint-Denis in Paris. She is a Moroccan trans woman activist based in Aubervilliers near the French capital.  Our second guest, Sheba Akpokli, is an LGTBIQ+ rights activist from Togo . She represents the African region on the World Board of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex...

A few decades ago, some Senegalese men openly identified themselves as not male or female, but as an alternative gender - the “Góor-jigéen” or “men-women”. Senegalese society accepted them, and they moved about freely in the streets of Dakar and other towns, dressed as women. Today, in those very same streets, men seen as behaving effeminately in any way are often harassed or attacked. Do any Senegalese still remember the time when this didn’t happen? Why did things change? In this...

Junior is a young Senegalese man who lives with a secret about who he is. He’s kept it from his family and even his childhood friends, because he’s afraid of not only rejection, but persecution, and even imprisonment. The secret is that Junior is gay. In this episode, Dakar-based journalist Marta Moreiras explores what it means to be gay in Senegal, where homosexual men here are targeted with the slur “Góor-jigéen” - a pejorative term which literally means “men-women” in the Wolof language,...

In this episode we continue our conversation about the Abatangamuco, a group of Burundian men who used to be violent to their wives but then changed, and how their experience can be useful for the rest of the world. This roundtable features South African gender equality activist Khopotso Bodibe, Burundian humanitarian worker Grace-Francoise Nibizi and European researcher, Hilde Ousland Vandeskog.   Grace-Francoise Nibizi founded an association to empower underprivileged women in Burundi....

Masculinity in conversation : Burundi    After exploring the stories of the Abatangamuco in the first two episodes of Cry Like a Boy, we continue the conversation in this roundtable featuring South African gender equality activist Khopotso Bodibe, Burundian humanitarian worker Grace-Francoise Nibizi and European researcher, Hilde Ousland Vandeskog. Grace-Francoise Nibizi founded an association to empower underprivileged women in Burundi. Norwegian gender researcher, Hilde Ousland Vandeskog,...

More than 10 years ago, Innocent was a violent husband who splurged all his family's wealth on his 27 lovers. That was before he met a group that has led thousands of men in Burundi to rethink their behaviour. In this episode, Burundi-based journalist Clarisse Shaka delves into the world of the Abatangamuco, which means “those who shine light” in Kirundi. Part 2 of 2. In this second episode exploring Burundi's Abatangamuco community theatre troupe, we hear from the troupe's founder and...

More than 10 years ago, Innocent was a violent husband who splurged all his family's wealth on his 27 lovers. That was before he met a group that has led thousands of men in Burundi to rethink their behaviour. In this episode, Burundi-based journalist Clarisse Shaka delves into the world of the Abatangamuco, which means “those who shine light” in Kirundi. Part 1 of 2. Hosted by Danielle Olivario; with original reporting and editing by Clarisse Shaka and Fabrice Nzohabonayo in Gitega,...