About Us

Artistic Director
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, born in Goma, DR Congo, is a filmmaker, educator, and ecological activist. His multi-genre artistic works are acclaimed for their decolonial Africanfuturistic style, which engages historical content to address contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues. In 2000 he co-founded Yole!Africa and in 2005 he founded the ecological conference Ishango Encounter (formerly known as Salaam Kivu International Film Festival). Ndaliko Katondolo teaches and consults regularly for international organizations, addressing social and political inequity among marginalized groups through culture and education
Executive Director    

Screen Shot 2014-08-18 at 1.58.05 PMDepartment of Geography

Chérie Rivers Ndaliko’s work—as writer, teacher, mother, and radical Black ecologist—is rooted in her commitment to interrupting modern colonialism with the transformative power of imagination. Animated by this priority, she pursues multiple interconnected lines of inquiry, one of which is the liberatory potential of critical creativity in conflict zones. She has published two books on this topic, which draw on more than a decade of socially engaged research with youth in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—a monograph, Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo (Oxford University Press, 2016; recipient of the 2017 Merriam Prize and the 2018 Nketia Prize) and an edited volume The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Decolonial pedagogy is another central facet of Ndaliko’s work. In this domain, she focuses on cultivating the capacity to see systems of normalized violence that are rendered invisible by modern colonialism. To this end, she has collaboratively developed a curriculum, Decomposing the Colonial Gaze, which she co-teaches to educators, civil society leaders, community organizers, artists, and activists around the world. She has also curated numerous international multi-media exhibitions on this curriculum, delivered distinguished lectures, and, with a fellowship from the National Humanities Center, written a monograph, To Be Nsala’s Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze (Duke University Press 2023).

Ndaliko also explores the relationship between imagination and liberation through the Black Atlantic tradition of agroecology. She founded and runs Uzuri Sanctuary, an educational biodynamic freedom farm, where she teaches and cultivates and forages food. In addition to providing healthy food to Black and Indigenous communities in the North Carolina Piedmont, Uzuri Sanctuary aims to revive, valorize, and share indigenous ecological practices that have been demonized by modern colonialism. Ndaliko has written numerous articles on this topic (including “Of Clay and Wonder” forthcoming in Southern Cultures and “A Rebellion of Beans” under review) and plans to write a monograph, Mahereko: A Womanist Lexicon of Radical Black Ecology, with a 2023 fellowship from the Institute of the Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill.

Ndaliko holds a Ph.D. in African Studies from Harvard University, where she was a pioneering member of the Social Engagement Initiative. She is currently an associate professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and serves as Director of Research and Education at Yole!Africa, an indigenous-led educational and cultural center in Goma, DRC.

General Coordinator

Photo Profil
Ganza Buroko is a native of North Kivu, DRC. He received a degree in industrial engineering. He subsequently attended several training courses and workshops in the cultural and artistic field. He is currently the cultural coordinator at Yole! He challenges the oppressive status quo with creativity, disposition, and high ethical standards. To him, working with Yole! Allows him to promote shared ideologies of peace and justice through the arts. Ganza feels passionate about promoting young Africans through the arts and culture. Ganza works relentlessly to create activities that aim to enhance and maintain civil society. He wants to foster critical thinking for the young population even in the mist of constants wars around the region. Ganza contributes to promote the creative sector through the creation of cultural exchanges at Yole! Africa! To him, Yole! Is an artistic and cultural gateway to the world. Ganza is aware that in an environment where the youth often feel abandoned and pressured by negative influences coming from all fronts, Yole! Creates possibilities and inspire them to have hope and work towards a better future for and with them.

Assistant to the Directors

  165452_10200580474370033_1935427995_nAllason has been the Assistant to the Directors at Yole!Africa since 2011. She recently graduated from Seattle University with a B.A. focused largely on the work of Yole!Africa and the DR Congo. Allason founded the first branch of Yole!Africa US at Seattle University through which she ran numerous events for the community. She currently lives in Berlin and is still involved in many different aspects of Yole!Africa. She is member of the board at the national chapter of Yole!Africa US based out of UNC-Chapel Hill. She is the manager for the Congolese women’s collective Tulizeni (www.Tulizeni.org). Her passion is to be involved in managing and producing the arts especially as a medium for cross-cultural communication, something she is pursuing as a career in her post-graduate adventures. Among many reasons, Allason believes in Yole because she has experienced and seen through her work their the incredible sense of empowerment that the youth participating develop organically through understanding their own history and then finding creative ways to express their story.