One man makes a difference

‘I am very lucky as a person,’ said Vinay Mahtani, sipping a beer on the hip terrace of the Radisson Hotel in Lagos. ‘I think throughout my life I have had good opportunities, travelled the world, have been educated well. I felt a bit guilty that I get so much and there are so many people out there with nothing.’ Vinay is Nigerian of Indian decent. Vinay and I have a common interest – the Ebunoluwa Foundation....

Supporting Nigeria’s most vulnerable

It took me about a year to decide on a charity to support in Nigeria. There is so much need, so much poverty, so many people that deserve help. I wanted to do more than bake cookies or donate money – we do that anyway through fundraising events for all sorts of organisations. It’s finally through word of mouth and circumstance that I discovered the Ebunoluwa Foundation. Aino Ternstedt Oni-Okpaku owns a shop here on...

Art as a barometer for development

Human beings like labels – we create order out of complexity through neat categories that act as storage boxes for concepts that are otherwise too intricate to handle. Take the term ‘developing country’ as an example.  The term commonly identifies a country which is economically weak and in which its people suffer disproportionately from natural and man-made calamities; they have less access to education, sanitation,...

Reclaiming Nigeria’s heritage

True or false: every authentic antique or traditional sculpture of African origin that has any value is in the hands of western museums and private collectors: everything else out there is either a fake, an imitation or a modern art form of lesser value. True say the ‘art’ experts in the West who have been documenting and trading in traditional African art since the colonial period. False, says Femi Akinsanya, himself a...