በቀለማት የተጻፈ ማንነት፡- የአፍሪካ ከተሞች እና የግድግዳ ስዕሎች

Today we're looking at something that many people pass every day without even stopping to think about, the wall.

A wall can divide a street, it can hide an old building, it can carry an advertisement.

But increasingly across African cities like Addis Ababa, a wall can also become a public record, a cultural landmark and a place of memory and a canvas.

And street art and public murals are also moving into a more visible place in African urban life.

They are appearing in neighborhoods, along roads, public facilities and cultural spaces and on buildings that form part of the everyday landscape.

And this matters because cities are not only made from concrete, roads and buildings, Cities are also made from memories and they are made from the stories people tell about where they live, the symbols that they recognize and the languages they hear and the traditions they carry and the futures they imagine.

So when a mural appears in a public space, it does something a gallery cannot always do.

It meets people where they already are.

A person can encounter it on the way to work while going to school, walking through neighborhood or waiting for transport.

There are no tickets required to watch those arts.

No special knowledge is required.

And that makes public art part of a wider conversation about access, like who gets to see the art, who gets to make it, who gets to tell the story of the city and what happens when Young artists are not only producing work for galleries, but helping shape the visual identity of the streets around them.

And these questions are becoming increasingly relevant across Africa, where cities are changing quickly and where governments and communities, artists and creative organizations are looking for new ways to make urban spaces more attractive.

more useful and more connected to local identity.

And also Addis Ababa offers an important example here.

Ethiopia's government and city administration have been pursuing a wider urban transformation agenda that includes clear public spaces, green corridors, recreation and other forms of urban renewable so public art fits naturally into the wider conversation because a city's appearance is not only a question of infrastructure it is also a question of identity and today we will look at four recent developments from september And that allows how the creative economy and public culture are being presented and being treated as part of Africa's wider development conversation.

And we will also look more closely at Addis Ababa, where street art has already somehow become part of the city's changing visual landscape.

Then we will hear from an artist who works directly in this space.

And she's my guest, Efrata Burhanu, a visual artist and mural artist whose work includes murals, paintings and illustrations and also street art.

She joins us to discuss why public art matters and what African artists can contribute to the way the continent is understood and how young people can use urban art as a form of participation and what policies also could help them turn the creative work into a stronger part of Africa's urban and cultural economy.

And this is also not only a conversation about paintings on walls.

It is a conversation about who we are and how our cities remember and how Africa tells its own stories.