When the decision to sell the Africa Centre’s premises on King Street in Covent Garden, London, was announced in 2011, there was significant pushback, both from British people of African heritage and the international African diaspora. Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Guardian that he was “distressed to hear that the trustees of the centre had decided to sell the lease of the centre without consulting members of the charity or the wider African diaspora”.
Despite the Save the Africa Centre campaign and a £12m restoration project for the Grade-II listed building, the centre was sold in August 2012 to property developers, and closed the following year. With the Africa Centre reopening nearly a decade on, two questions are on the minds of invested parties: what took so long, and can the new location on Great Suffolk Street in Southwark ever live up to Covent Garden’s legacy?
