Who founded the Black Star Line? Which country did Kamuzu Banda rule? Which nationalist movement was targeted by Le Main Rouge? And what does uhuru truly mean?

Together, these questions make up part of the first edition of Afra-Crosstic—an acrostic puzzle designed for the September 1965 edition of The African Review. To solve the puzzle, readers are instructed to answer 21 trivia questions about the history, politics, and culture of the continent. Correct answers then provide hints to fill in a black-and-white grid, which, when completed, reveal a hidden message from a “well-known African leader.”

This focus on African politics and agency reflected the revolutionary ideals of The African Review. Published by the government of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana but circulated throughout the continent, the magazine was intended as an antidote to colonial propaganda and an African alternative to publications like The Economist and Time. In passionate commentaries, its writers attacked European interventionism and praised “the drive toward continental cohesion” in Africa on behalf of their hosts in the Nkrumah regime.

Cultural and entertainment features, meanwhile, helped to promote these ideas in innovative new forms. Under the direction of Maya Angelou, who spent the early 1960s working as a radical journalist in Africa, The African Review produced articles like “Point-Counterpoint,” which allowed readers to examine conflicting opinions on subjects like the role of violence in anticolonial activism. 

The African Review also published fiction that gave voice to the degradations of colonial and apartheid rule, including original contributions by Bessie Head and Ayi Kwei Armah. Angelou, too, wrote puzzles and short features for the magazine—including the Afra-Crosstic of September 1965, which she published under her own name.

Interactive and entertaining features often serve an important purpose. Fankie Monama has characterized international propaganda in Africa as a form of “blind warfare” where participants had very limited information about their target audience. Throughout the era of decolonization, radical and anticolonial writers often relied on written correspondence to assess the physical reach and cultural reception of their work. 

Puzzles, competitions, and quizzes facilitated these connections, putting writers in touch with audience members across the world. In 1962, for example, Radio Moscow’s African Service held a competition for essays on the subject of nuclear disarmament. The first prize, awarded to a contestant from Ghana, was a tour of the USSR to see the progress of communism in person.

Rival propagandists used similar tactics. In 1960, for example, Israel’s ambitious new radio service to Africa held a competition that encouraged participants to provide Israeli broadcasters with their name and address before forwarding the news of the competition to five friends to “forge a chain of friendship” across the continent. The first prize was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an expenses-paid trip to several holy sites in Israel.

At The African Review, meanwhile, culture and entertainment features encouraged new interactions between writers and readers. Over time, the magazine’s letters page became a space for debates about African politics and the meaning of political independence, with writers jumping in to defend their articles from dissenting readers. 

Bessie Head’s writing about colonialism and identity proved particularly controversial, and The African Review printed letters about her work in almost every volume of the magazine. However, they also gave Head a regular chance to interact with her critics directly, turning the letters page into an ongoing discussion of the nature of colonial rule.

Interactive features could also play a more direct role in political persuasion by reinforcing the themes of radical propaganda and testing the knowledge of their participants. Quiz broadcasts on Radio Cairo’s African Services, for example, tended to focus on questions that portrayed Egypt’s Nasser regime in a positive light. Requests for “the date that the Suez Canal was nationalized” and “the names of the protagonists of the policy of neutrality” reinforced the themes of Egyptian propaganda and rewarded listeners who regularly engaged with it. 

The Afra-Crosstic puzzles in The African Review follow this model closely. A large number of questions focus on the struggle against empire, from the locations of colonial atrocities like the Main Rouge attacks to the names of prominent African nationalist organizations. 

Other clues make specific references to the language of radical propaganda. Readers are expected to agree, for example, that “African unity is the answer to balkanization”—an important concept within Nkrumah’s Pan-African philosophy. An opaque reference to “the present disturbances in Africa,” meanwhile, alludes to the Congo Crisis of 1960–1965. 

The political theme continues in the hidden messages, which typically reflect African nationalist themes. The message from Angelou’s September puzzle, for example, declares that African unity “may seem visionary to some” but that “great political forces have been unleashed in Africa.” Another Afra-Crosstic, published the following month, reveals a quote from the inauguration of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba declaring that an independent Congo would “show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom.”

In the end, The African Review failed to live up to the high expectations of the Nkrumah regime. Behind the scenes, editors complained of poor working conditions and low pay, coupled with increasing political pressures from the Nkrumah regime. Angelou waited at least six months to be paid for her Afra-Crosstic, and the finished puzzle was published with several mistakes. After the coup against Nkrumah in February 1966, the offices of The African Review were seized by the new National Liberation Council and the magazine ceased publication after just five issues.

Despite these limits, however, The African Review provides valuable insight into how the radical activists of the 1960s tried to engage their African audiences. By encouraging lively discussions between writers and readers, it turned its letters page from a form of feedback to a forum for political debate. Puzzles like the Afra-Crosstic, meanwhile, followed the precedent of older campaigns by testing participants’ knowledge of anticolonial campaigns and rewarding their familiarity with radical texts. Ultimately, The African Review never took its expected place alongside magazines like The Economist and Time. For a brief moment in the 1960s, however, it engaged readers with radical nationalist activism in compelling and playful ways.