This speculative publication critically revisits creative and collective intellectual projects gathered under the African Mobilities project (2018–20) to bring together creative design and research practices and intellectual communities across Africa and the global diaspora. The aim of the project is to assemble collective intellectual labour in the context of rampant xeno-racism and the proliferation of borders; to recognize and celebrate Black creative practice as important sites for research and to destabilize  the unitary, individualizing logics of the academy, Ultimately, it serves as an archive of contemporary and ongoing critical and creative spatial discourses in Africa and the diaspora on questions of im/mobility and the circulation of ideas, aesthetics and spatial practices that have planetary ramifications.

Chimurenga is a project-based mutable object, workspace, and pan African platform for editorial activities. Founded by Ntone Edjabe in Cape Town in 2002, it operates as a space for collective reflection and action by Africans. Chimurenga’s programs include a quarterly broadsheet of arts and politics titled The Chronic; the Chimurenga Library, a platform for research and experimentation on the writing of histories in spite of the archive, and on the reimagining of the library; the African Cities Reader, a biennial publication of urban life; and the Pan African Space Station (PASS), an online radio station and pop-up studio. Chimurenga participated in documenta 15 and the La Biennale de Venezia–57th International Art Exhibition among other international events. Their work has been acknowledged with the Principal Prince Claus Fund Award (2011) and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice (2020).

Mpho Matsipa is an educator, researcher, and independent curator.  Matsipa holds a PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, pursued as a Fulbright Scholar. She has curated several exhibitions, discursive platforms and experimental architectural research including the Venice International Architecture Biennale (2008; 2021); African Mobilities at the Architecture Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2018); and Studio-X Johannesburg, in South Africa (2014–16).Her curatorial and research interests are at the intersection of urban studies, experimental architecture and visual art. Matsipa was an associate curator for the Lubumbashi Biennale, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2024). She has served on numerous design juries and international talks, and she has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning, SCI-Arc, Columbia GSAPP, Cooper Union, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). Matsipa was a Loeb Fellow (2022) at the GSD and a Chancellors Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She divides her time between Johannesburg, Lagos, and London.

Chimurenga is a project-based mutable object, workspace, and pan African platform for editorial activities. Founded by Ntone Edjabe in Cape Town in 2002, it operates as a space for collective reflection and action by Africans.