This talk will share the experience of a leading African extended reality lab - Imisi 3D. It will highlight this African journey to adopt augmented and virtual reality, the challenges and lessons learned and will then focus on some of the arts and culture use cases that have emerged so far. In particular we will explore the collaboration with the IAF Basel festival (organisers of the Contemporary Africa Photography prize) that resulted in Reality Check, a simultaneous virtual reality tour of Lagos and Basel.