Sweet Medicine

Rose Nneoma Abba

How have Nigerians been taught to think about how to be in the world? The Sweet Medicine podcast is a public humanities project produced for three reasons: to explore the corrosive consequences of defunding education (especially the humanities and social sciences) and cultural production in Nigeria during the 1980s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs),to engage with Nigerian researchers and research projects tackling Africa’s unique 21st-century challenges, andto identify and challenge obstacles to funding solutions and ideological shifts needed to foster a thriving Humanities culture in Nigeria. The project was researched, produced and hosted by historian and public humanities practitioner, Rose Nneoma Abba, and it was funded through an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop Fellowship. The podcast ran between October and December 2024, and is currently in development into a space for communal gathering, learning, dialogue, and reflection. Produced by studiostyles.org Email: rosenneomaabba@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 4d ago

    Presenting Sweet Medicine at the annual Humanities Podcast Network Symposium

    Hi, I'll be presenting some thoughts and reflections on this podcast at the 6th annual Humanities Podcast Network Symposium taking place next Saturday on 24th October, 2026. (not Friday as I say in the audio) This year's theme for the symposium is “What to do now?”: Humanities Podcasting Agency and Avowal. From the organisers: We are living through a moment that tests the nerve of anyone who makes things, says things, or puts ideas into the world. Public institutions are under pressure. Trust in expertise is fractured. The space for independent, thoughtful voices feels both more necessary and more precarious than at any point in recent memory.For humanities podcasters — whether you work inside the academy, alongside it, or entirely beyond it — these pressures are personal as well as political. Who gets to speak? Who gets heard? What does it cost to say something true out loud, and what does it cost to stay quiet?This year’s symposium takes those questions seriously. Agency is about finding and using our power — as creators, as scholars, as communicators — inside systems that were not always built with us in mind. Avowal is about the harder, quieter work of believing that what we do matters: owning our values, claiming our expertise, and trusting that our audiences are worth showing up for.Together, these ideas form a practice. The 2026 HPN symposium is an invitation to explore that practice in community at our online gathering 23 and 24 October 2026. It's virtual and free to attend. Register here: HPN Symposium 2026 on Eventbrite More information about the symposium and its schedule: https://humanitiespodnetwork.org/humanities-podcasting-symposium-2026-2/ Email me if you have any questions you'd like to hear me discuss: rosenneomaabba [at] gmail [dot] com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Presenting Sweet Medicine at the annual Humanities Podcast Network Symposium

  2. 12/15/2024

    “We can give the world beauty, band for band" - Oluwakemi Agbato

    For my final guest episode, I’m with the researcher and designer Oluwakemi Agbato who lives by the question: “How can we make good things to live with?” And explores that question through her research and design studio, Studio GB and her jewellery brand RENIKEJI. This conversation was full of passion on both sides for how history continues to live with us in the objects around us. 🍲 04:41 James Baldwin on Suffering and Achieving One’s Own Authority 15:06 The Rich History of Nigerian Silk 19:34 The 1960 Nigeria Exhibition 22:16 “It becomes real, you’re the one pursuing knowledge, knowledge is not pursuing you.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    “We can give the world beauty, band for band" - Oluwakemi Agbato

  3. 12/14/2024

    "It's not if I can, it's how I can." - Mobolaji Otuyelu

    Today’s conversation is with Mobolaji Otuyelu, the founder of two startups—a kitchenware company AGBO ILÉ and Ọjà Wellness Foods, a beverage company. As an entrepreneur focused on black innovation and social change, Mobolaji is also deeply involved with the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON), where she collaborates on member-led initiatives to provide tangible support like health insurance, mortgage opportunities, and pension schemes for informal workers. In this conversation we discuss the ties between economic development and healing—the two need each other—, the gift of now and the power of the contemporary. 🍲 04:02 FIWON: A Model for Informal Workers 08:48 Resourcefulness in Nigerian Entrepreneurship 16:15 Healing Through Money and Economic Capital 25:34 The Gift of Now/Culture is Dynamic 🍲 Mentioned in the episode: https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/ 🍲 Consider joining or supporting Kwanda From the founder of Kwanda, Jermaine Craig: "I'm focused on making the world a more generous place. I'm interested in the potential of the collective, not the individual. I want to get future philanthropists started earlier by gathering as 'Micro Philanthropists'. A blocker to generosity is a lack of transparency and trust, so I'm building Kwanda. This platform brings diasporans together to pool capital and fund local-led projects in Africa. The platform is financially transparent and allows members to decide how funds are spent." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    "It's not if I can, it's how I can." - Mobolaji Otuyelu

  4. 12/13/2024

    Chapter 6: Why Take Ownership? What Are Our Bodies Good For?

    I've spent the past seven weeks discussing why social healing, why the humanities when people are starving, what do we do with History, what are Nigerian nervous conditions, what kind of society is Nigeria and why was Nigeria made in the first place. I set up these questions to give a sense of what the problem is, and how the centuries before now led us here. With all this information, how can we work towards these resilient, compassionate and responsible futures? My suggestions: take ownership and pay attention to our bodies. This episode includes an excerpt from this talk, What Kids Can't Do: Youth, Historical Agency, and Authority, by Abosede George (Associate Professor of History, Barnard College and Columbia University) at Wolf Humanities Center's 2020-21 Forum on Choice, March 17, 2021. 🍲 03:21 Is agency all that matters? Abosede George on foregrounding other dimensions of being human 10:04 Connection comes with risk of loss and failure, connect anyway 12:47 My body’s my buddy / Body go tell you 18:24 Denying our self-sovereignty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Chapter 6: Why Take Ownership? What Are Our Bodies Good For?

  5. 12/11/2024

    "How do we practice landscape democracy?"- Tobiloba Akibo

    In this episode, Tobiloba and I talked about transformative environmental justice in Nigeria, Lekki as prime example of land dispossession in Lagos in the name of capitalist modernism, the challenges that come up in translating and applying current popular Western frameworks of social justice in Nigeria, and why we need more Nigerians, individuals and institutions alike, to fund social research. 🍲 01:19 Lekki, Lekki, Lekki 07:29 Wetin concern me concern government property? 11:56 ‘We were only four in my Landscape Architecture class.’ 20:54 Landscape for the people by the people 29:49 Elsewheres: Transformative environmental justice practices in Nigeria 🍲 Mentioned: Dispossess: Evictions for ‘Development' (Immaculata for Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2021) Lagos Urban Development Initiative (LUDI) hFactor Fabulous Urban Folu Oyefeso Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    "How do we practice landscape democracy?"- Tobiloba Akibo

  6. 12/09/2024

    "Conflict always leaves people transformed." - Gbope Onigbanjo

    In this episode, I speak with Gbope Onigbanjo, a researcher and consultant working in the fields of international affairs, peace studies, and political economy with a geographical focus on Africa. Our conversation centred around Nigeria’s role as Big Brother in West Africa and how that has bred skepticism among other states in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This is a unique episode in this project in that it zooms out a bit from the individual and communities of individuals to look at Nigeria’s relationship with its mates: other countries in West Africa. 🍲 01:32 Exploring Liberal Peace-Keeping 03:50 ‘Healing’ as Peace and Security 05:59 Understanding Peace in African Contexts 12:25 ECOWAS and Nigeria 23:18 Elite-based/State Peace vs Local Peace 27:30 Russian flag in Kano? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    "Conflict always leaves people transformed." - Gbope Onigbanjo

  7. 12/05/2024

    Chapter 5: Why Nigeria in the first place? (Guns and Spirits)

    This episode is six years in the making. Many of us know the Berlin Conference of 1884, otherwise known as the scramble for Africa which was where European leaders decided how to share Africa like moi moi among themselves. But a lesser-known but equally important conference was the 1890 Brussels conference that King Leopold II organised as an anti-slavery conference. The agreements made at the conference were enshrined into an act titled: The Convention Relative to the Slave Trade and Importation into Africa of Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors. This episode is about firearms, ammunition and spirits–what these objects that were so central to the slave trade can tell us about why Nigeria was made. It follows the line from the Transatlantic slave trade to the Scramble for Africa, down to the Prohibition in the US, to the Iva Valley massacre in Enugu and general police brutality in colonial Nigeria. And it takes the ‘social life of things’ route to get from point A to point Z. 🍲 01:28 The lesser-known 1880s B* conference 03:39 ‘Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors‘ 08:50 Negotiating power and identity/Local Agency vs. Colonial Control 15:11 The Iva Valley Massacre Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Chapter 5: Why Nigeria in the first place? (Guns and Spirits)

  8. 12/03/2024

    "I think that art should live and die." - Obayomi Anthony

    In this episode, I speak with Obayomi Anthony, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Our conversation began with a discussion about his background and journey to becoming an artist, with a focus on the project that put him in the limelight: Bonafide Squatters. Then we went on to talk about his recent research project on Nigeria’s colonial origins where he went into the archives at the Lagos Museum to ask what motivated the Nigeria-creation project. I believe with him that art is a space for conversations, and that art should live and die. Art should live and art should die. 🍲 01:07 Living with Graphic Designers, Becoming an Artist 09:39 Becoming a Documentary Photographer 13:17 Bonafide Squatters: Addressing Student Housing Issues 20:15 Art is a Space, not a Thing, a Space where Souls Connect 30:06 Cognitive Dissonance in Nigeria 35:12 Technology for what? 43:20 The birds that left home; seeing Nigeria from top to bottom Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    "I think that art should live and die." - Obayomi Anthony
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About

How have Nigerians been taught to think about how to be in the world? The Sweet Medicine podcast is a public humanities project produced for three reasons: to explore the corrosive consequences of defunding education (especially the humanities and social sciences) and cultural production in Nigeria during the 1980s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs),to engage with Nigerian researchers and research projects tackling Africa’s unique 21st-century challenges, andto identify and challenge obstacles to funding solutions and ideological shifts needed to foster a thriving Humanities culture in Nigeria. The project was researched, produced and hosted by historian and public humanities practitioner, Rose Nneoma Abba, and it was funded through an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop Fellowship. The podcast ran between October and December 2024, and is currently in development into a space for communal gathering, learning, dialogue, and reflection. Produced by studiostyles.org Email: rosenneomaabba@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Rose Nneoma Abba
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Rose Nneoma Abba
  • Show Website
    Sweet Medicine