'It's a diamond mine!'

The Royal African Society, which celebrated its 120th birthday recently, continues to be a catalyst for positive change promoting African voices in the United Kingdom and globally.

- By Renuka Methil

You feel a deeply inspiring and immersive connection with Africa every time you speak with Arunma Oteh. And when the reason for this conversation is the 120th anniversary of the Royal African Society, which this Nigerian trailblazer now chairs, it’s a delightful confluence and celebration of all things African.

“I’m just fascinated by our origin and who we are,” begins Oteh about the Society on a Zoom call from London a day after the biennial Film Africa festival – 48 films across seven venues in the city from 28 October to 6 November – held alongside the celebrations. Endless weeks of work and late nights have gone into putting it all together, including a gala evening at Aqua Shard on November 2, but Oteh, a former Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank, a scholar at the University of Oxford and who took over as the Society’s chairperson last year, is thrilled and thoroughly energized.

“What I found about the Royal African Society is that it’s a diamond mine; I don’t think that ‘gold mine’ is sufficient to describe it…Everyday, you discover more.” She refers to Mary Kingsley, the English travel writer and ethnographer whose two trips to West Africa significantly shaped British perceptions of the continent, and in whose memory the Society was founded in 1901.