Cynthia Hind's UFO Afrinews

Cynthia Hind began investigating UFO sightings in Zimbabwe in the early 1970s, when the country was still Rhodesia. By 1988 she had enough material and enough contacts across the continent to launch UFO Afrinews, a newsletter that would run for twelve years. She was MUFON's continental coordinator for Africa, but in practice she was often the only trained investigator on the entire continent.

Her fieldwork was remarkable in scope. She investigated sightings across Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, and beyond. She drove hundreds of kilometres on dirt roads to interview witnesses in remote villages, often working through translators. The sightings she documented range from simple nocturnal lights to close encounters with entities, including the famous 1994 Ariel School incident that brought international attention to African UFO cases.

The geographic spread of UFO Afrinews is what makes it irreplaceable. No other publication has systematically documented UFO sightings across sub-Saharan Africa. The 264 sightings in the archive span 10 countries, with Zimbabwe and South Africa providing the densest clusters.

On 16 September 1994, 62 children at Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, reported seeing a craft land near their playground and small beings emerge. Cynthia Hind was the first investigator on the scene, arriving the following day to interview the children and staff. Her detailed notes and drawings collected from the witnesses form the primary source record for this case, which later became the subject of Randall Nickerson's 2022 documentary "Ariel Phenomenon".