Region
Art of East Africa
East Africa — Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and their neighbours — joins the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes and the Indian Ocean coast. Its art includes the stelae of Aksum and Ethiopia's Christian icons and rock-hewn churches, the carved doors and architecture of the Swahili coast, Maasai and Samburu beadwork, Makonde sculpture and Tingatinga painting from Tanzania, Uganda's barkcloth and Makerere art school, and contemporary artists from Nairobi to Addis Ababa.
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Ethiopia
Ethiopia has one of the longest continuous art traditions in Africa: the stelae of Aksum, the eleven rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, illuminated manuscripts, icons and processional crosses, and a modern school of painting founded in Addis Ababa in 1958. See Ethiopian art.
The Swahili coast
From Somalia to Mozambique, the Swahili towns of the Indian Ocean coast traded for centuries with Arabia, Persia and India. They built in coral stone and lime, and their carpenters carved massive wooden doors with elaborate frames and brass studs. The old towns of Lamu in Kenya and Zanzibar in Tanzania, and the ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani, are World Heritage Sites. The printed kanga, with its Swahili proverb, is the coast's signature cloth (see African textiles).
Rock art
Painted shelters at Kondoa in Tanzania and the remarkably preserved paintings of cattle at Laas Geel in Somaliland belong to the great rock art of the continent. See African rock art.
Beadwork, barkcloth and imigongo
Maasai and Samburu women in Kenya and Tanzania are famous for their beaded collars and ornaments (see African beadwork). In Uganda, the Baganda beat the bark of the mutuba fig into barkcloth, recognised by UNESCO. In Rwanda, women make imigongo: geometric relief panels modelled from cow dung, painted in black, white and red.
Tanzania: Makonde and Tingatinga
Tanzania is the home of two of East Africa's best-known modern art forms: the blackwood sculpture of the Makonde, with its ujamaa "family trees" and shetani spirits, and Tingatinga, the glossy enamel painting style created in Dar es Salaam around 1968. The Makonde artist George Lilanga turned shetani spirits into crowded, joyful paintings, and the Zanzibar-born Lubaina Himid won the Turner Prize in 2017.
Makerere and modern art
In 1937 the British artist Margaret Trowell began teaching art at Makerere College in Kampala; the school that grew from her classes, now part of Makerere University, trained artists from across East Africa. In Kenya, artists' workshops and studios in Nairobi, such as the Kuona Trust, became hubs for a new generation.
Contemporary artists
East African artists are prominent today: the Kenyan Wangechi Mutu, whose bronzes stood on the facade of the Metropolitan Museum; the Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu; the Ethiopian artist Elias Sime, who builds works from recycled electronics; and the Kenyan painter Michael Armitage, who paints on Ugandan barkcloth. The Kenyan-born potter Magdalene Odundo and the Zanzibar-born painter Lubaina Himid, winner of the 2017 Turner Prize, are among the most honoured artists in Britain, and Ethiopia's modern masters Afewerk Tekle and Skunder Boghossian opened the way. See contemporary African art and our lists of Kenyan, Ethiopian and Ugandan artists.
Kenya has also produced some of Africa's most important photojournalists. Mohamed Amin covered East Africa for three decades from his Camerapix agency in Nairobi; his 1984 footage of the famine in Ethiopia led to Band Aid and Live Aid. Dan Eldon, who grew up in Nairobi, photographed the Somali famine for Reuters and was killed in Mogadishu in 1993, aged 22. A generation later, Boniface Mwangi photographed the violence after Kenya's 2007 election. See our list of African photographers.
Music
Kenya's benga, Tanzania's taarab and bongo flava, and the Ethiopian jazz made famous by Mulatu Astatke are among East Africa's great musical exports.