Rather than offering a simple chronology of events, this Report seeks to map patterns—to trace connections between seemingly disparate developments and to situate them within broader historical and social contexts.
By Samson Jikeme
As Editor-in-Chief, I have often asked a simple question while curating this project: after all the noise settles, what are the thinkers thinking?
Beneath the rush of releases, debates, breakthroughs, and disruptions lies a quieter question: what did this moment mean, and how will we remember it?
Culture rarely moves in straight lines. It advances through experimentation, contradiction, and dialogue—through the interplay of artists, industries, audiences, and institutions. In 2025, we witnessed this dynamism across multiple fronts: shifting creative economies, evolving aesthetic sensibilities, new technological pressures, and renewed debates about identity, power, and representation.
The Afrocritik Report 2025 is conceived as an annual cultural record that brings together critics, scholars, and practitioners to examine the forces that shaped the creative and intellectual life of Africa and its diaspora over the past year.
Rather than offering a simple chronology of events, this Report seeks to map patterns—to trace connections between seemingly disparate developments and to situate them within broader historical and social contexts. Our contributors do not merely recount the year; they interpret it, asking what these moments reveal about where we are and where we might be headed.
This approach reflects a core belief at the heart of Afrocritik: that cultural criticism is itself a form of infrastructure. When we document thoughtfully and analyse seriously, we create a body of knowledge that artists, policymakers, scholars, and audiences can return to, not just today, but years from now.
The essays in this edition represent a range of perspectives, disciplines, and geographies, but they share a common commitment to depth. Together, they form a mosaic of insights into a year that was at once turbulent, generative, and instructive.
As Editor-in-Chief, I see this Report not as a definitive account, but as an invitation—to think more critically about the cultural currents that shape our societies and to recognise the importance of preserving intellectual memory in a fast-moving world.
To our contributors, thank you for the seriousness of thought and generosity of spirit you brought to this project. To our readers, we hope these pages offer not only reflection, but perspective—a chance to step back from the immediacy of the present and engage with the deeper narratives unfolding around us.
If culture is the archive of how we live, then criticism is how we understand that archive.
This Report is one step in that ongoing work.
Samson Jikeme
Co-founder/Editor-in-Chief,
Afrocritik