Speak Up Afric’Art serves as a beacon for collaboration and engagement for artists, experts, policymakers, and the public to unleash the potential of a healthy and thriving Africa where change happens by Africans for Africans. This artistic endeavor aims to use art as a catalyst for showcasing Africa’s most innovative ideas and giving a stage to Africans by inviting a diverse collective of creatives including painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, performance artists, and digital creators to interpret these themes creatively.

Speak Up Afric’Art aims to raise awareness, inspire, enable and mobilize people to address the root causes of social problems and to consider and create alternative solutions. Art can challenge stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, and celebrate diversity, identity and culture. Art can amplify the voices and stories of marginalized, oppressed or silenced groups, and create spaces for dialogue and collaboration across differences.

By naming this first showcase of Speak Up Afric’Art “LINGEER” we pay a tribute to women who are playing a central role in societies.

The LINGEER exhibition was launched in May 2024 at the Speak Up Africa offices in Dakar. The theme, “Celebrating African LeadHERs from Senegal”, reflects our goal to champion the inclusion of women and girls on public platforms and in leadership and to encourage women’s and girls, in all their diversity, to significantly participate in decision-making spaces for improved public health. 8 Senegalese women are portrayed championing their important role in achieving our common sustainable development goals.

In the second rendition of the LINGEER exhibition, “Women in Basketball”, displayed in New York at the NBA offices in September 2024, we teamed up with the Basketball Africa League (BAL) to showcase the multiple facets of women in their professional lives featuring 5 basketball professionals to advocate for better inclusion of women across the basketball industry at all levels.