The Sapeurs are a group of gentlemen...from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. Guinness’ marketing director for Western Europe set out to tell a different story of the Congo...
Congolese master Aime Mpane...uses a small pick or awl to gouge into different colored layers of an ordinary piece of plywood. He captures with remarkable elegance the movement and character of each face through (or despite?) the primitive edges of the splintered wood.
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Fifteen years ago, Africa...particularly its...centre, was seen almost exclusively as an exotic high-risk investment destination for the brave and adventurous, for those with privileged connections to Africa’s dictatorships and large pools of capital to risk. Most investors had all but forsaken central Africa after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide...The Rwandan conflict spilled over into neighbouring Zaire (now called Democratic Republic of Congo), sparking a war that toppled one of its presidents, killed another, and drew in armies from nine different countries. But the economic interest in Africa has lately become intense. It is now routinely described as the continent of the future: by some measures it is soon to be the world’s fastest growing region, with a large and rapidly expanding consumer base—its middle class is now estimated to be larger than India’s...
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