Lately, I’ve been reading a lot on the need for diversity. Colour, religion (or its absence), gender, orientation, class. If one is on the outside looking in, it feels like all it requires is for someone to hire a number of people who are different, to give them a seat at the table.
I come to this writing as a person who is sometimes an Outsider but also, sometimes in uncomfortable ways, an Insider. It’s the latter that is so hard to question, but also so vital to acknowledge.
Selling my love of podcasts to a friend today, I was assailed by this fact: a lot of the podcasts I listen to are lily white and what diversity they have is in the form of white female presenters.
This is the power of a nudge from a friend: one of those podcasts recently had an episode in which they spoke about actively seeking a diversity of voices among the people you follow on Twitter. The response I had was more “Cool story, bro” than “What does this mean for me?”.
My friend’s challenge was this: do you have African podcasts on your list? As they rejected Africanist podcasts, I felt the gauntlet fall. I had to pause for a moment and confess that no, I don’t. So much for telling our stories. Now the search begins. [ Here’s one for you if you haven’t already subscribed: Beverly Ochieng & I host 2 Girls and a Pod, a literary podcast]
What African podcasts do you recommend?
Note: This post is part of #CuminWrites366, my year-long attempt to write a post a day. Find the rest over at readability.com/cuminwrites/
Questions, comments, suggestions or podcast recommendations? Send them to cuminwrites@gmail.com 🙂
Nyambura Mutanyi 