Nigeria

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad, the actress’ debut collection of stories, sold over 2,200 copies, assuring it the No. 1 spot on The Rovingheights Bestseller List: Presented with Open Country Mag. So why do these stories of failing romance connect so widely?

Alhaji Waziri Oshomah fused Highlife, local folk styles, and Western pop into songs of positivity in Auchi, Nigeria. When New York label Luaka Bop released The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah in its World Spirituality Classics series last year, we spoke to musician and label about his artistry.

In addition to literary and film stories on Open Country Mag, you can now also read stories in business, culture, and society from Folio Nigeria.

In the private space of family and the public space of Biafra, a significant new memoir asks questions of loss and longing. But will the answers be enough?

Despite characters that are not fully realized, and a convenient central dilemma, Dakore Egbuson-Akande and Nse Ikpe-Etim serve the strength of connection between women.

Since she erupted in The Meeting, playing against type as a hilariously antagonistic receptionist, the superstar has embodied complex women, including a soldier’s wife in ’76 and a bewitching singer in La Femme Anjola. Now, 25 years into her career, she is Nollywood’s most critically acclaimed actor, and Open Country Mag‘s first film cover star. Where does she draw from to inhabit these women?

In the 2000s, she was only another superstar in Nollywood. Now she is the most nominated actress in the histories of both the AMAAs and the AMVCAs, the industry’s two biggest awards. For Open Country Mag’s first film cover, we look into her reinvention from stage to screen, 25 years after she emerged on the scene.

Announcing the first formal bestseller list in Nigerian literature, covering fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s books, and self-published titles, with an overall Top 100.

With Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees, she helped herald LGBTQ visibility in Nigerian literature. With Harry Sylvester Bird, she still isn’t looking to satisfy society. “I think, sometimes, it takes time for people to digest what literature is really doing,” the literary icon says.

Seminal storyteller of queer love, satirist of race, literary icon.

Toyin Abraham is a vulnerable seer in Niyi Akinmolayan’s detailed depiction of spirituality and sports betting.

The brief feature, by director John Adekoje, works memory, spirituality, and pain. “That’s indicative of the growth women have access to now,” said AMAAs Best Actress winner Egbuson, “to process our pain and become stronger, and transform, ascend.”

The Enugu-based hub, whose exhibitions, screenings, and lecture series have drawn 7,000 visitors, is, executive director Iheanyi Igboko says, “grooming a generation of young people who are not only grounded in their history and culture but proud of their Igbo identity.”

Awaiting Trial finds the emotional core of police brutality and the End SARS protests in Nigeria. It is “a deliberate telling of the consequences of the death and damage dealt on all of us,” said narrator and executive producer Chude Jideonwo.

“Love is a good point for telling stories because it brings out all the other emotions of pain, happiness, joy, euphoria, and sadness,” she said of the warmly received Ndani TV web series. “And it’s what our audience—a lot of them—want in their lives.”