It’s hard to understand a lot about a place in 600 words – the length of the average news article. It’s hard for a journalist to explain them, and it’s hard for a reader to comprehend them. While longer form journalism about Africa is much more infrequent than, say, longer forms of journalism about Washington DC politics, there are a few stellar journalists working on books, magazine articles, documentaries, and photo essays scattered across this diverse continent.

I’m starting a new series on this blog: Context Africa. The idea is to highlight projects that go above and beyond daily news to tell a story of a place in its context ,as well as to create an ongoing dialogue about what it means to tell contextual stories in Africa.

Coming tomorrow will be a Q and A with friend, sometimes collaborator, and stellar writer Jina Moore. She just finished a piece for the Walrus Magazine, “No Small Mercy.”

Stay tuned.