Cover Story
Air Afrique: the Pan-African Dream That Connected the Continent to the World
Sankofa
Looking back to move forward.
History, memory, iconic figures, forgotten stories and heritage. Sankofa is the vault of ORONEL — a return to the gestures, voices and visions that built the continent and travelled with it.
Editor’s Note
By Aïssa Diallo
We do not write Sankofa as nostalgia. We write it as an instruction. The Akan bird turns its head backward not to mourn, but to recover what the present has mislaid — a name, a melody, a way of cutting cloth, a way of holding a grandmother's hand while she names the trees.
In this issue we follow eleven nations who once shared an airline, a revolutionary who refused a presidential watch, the long quiet return of bronze figures from European storerooms, and the women whose headwraps carry geography. Read slowly. These stories were already waiting for you.
The Dossier
Featured Stories
Heritage in Motion
A Century, Briefly Remembered
Five inflection points that ORONEL keeps returning to — the moments where memory becomes architecture.
1957
Ghana raises its flag
Kwame Nkrumah declares independence — the first sub-Saharan domino of a continental awakening.
1966
First World Festival of Negro Arts
Dakar gathers the diaspora — Duke Ellington, Aimé Césaire, Wole Soyinka, Joséphine Baker.
1983
The Sankara revolution
Burkina Faso renames itself the land of upright people and rewrites a country in four years.
2021
The bronzes begin to return
France signs the first formal restitution of 26 royal artworks to the Republic of Benin.
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
Marcus Garvey · 1937
From the Archive
Sankofa Selections
Cities
Cotonou, 1972 — Portrait of a Continent in Movement
May 12, 2024
Heritage
Crowned: The Politics and Poetry of the African Headwrap
April 28, 2024
Symbols
Sankofa: The Bird That Looks Backward to Walk Forward
April 03, 2024
Pan-African Dream
Air Afrique: When Eleven Nations Owned the Sky
March 19, 2024
A Podcast by ORONEL
The Listening Room
Now Playing
Conversations on memory, recorded slowly.
Long-form audio essays with the historians, designers and elders who carry the continent’s living archive. Stream the first three episodes free.
01 The Empire Has Library Cards
with Dr. Felwine Sarr · 42:18
02 What Cloth Remembers
with Aïssa Dione · 38:04
03 The Architecture of Return
with Sir David Adjaye · 51:27
The ORONEL Letter
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