About AfricanBoots.com
African Boots was, initially, African Boots of Beijing, a documentary about Afrika United Football Club. And Afrika United, a team of students, scientists, refugees and hopeful soccer professionals from every corner of the continent, is still a part of African Boots. The team post occasional updates here, about their results and the club’s events. But the documentary was about more than football. It was about the effect of China’s close links with Africa on ordinary lives. A good starting point, you might agree, for a site about a relationship that is alternately described as irredeemably corrupt and the Great Hope of the Dark Continent, sometimes by the same person.
African Boots is new, so it’s hard to be sure what it is or will be, but it is intended as a platform for the opinions of Chinese and Africans, to add nuance to a story normally told by Western journalists and academics. If you’re African in China or Chinese in Africa, we’d like to hear from you. And if you’d like to write for us, even better. Just send an email to manleyiain@gmail.com.
Iain Manley
Iain studied journalism at the University of Cape Town, where communists were skinny professors who wore tweed. He arrived in China in 2007, at the end of an overland journey from London, documented at his overland travelogue. His first book, about the pirates, prostitutes and opium peddlers of old Singapore, was published last year, just before he left China, to travel back to South Africa, overland.
To get in touch, follow him on Twitter at @iainmanley
or send an email to manleyiain@gmail.com.
Recent Comments