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Ghanaians voted in an election seen as a close fight between President Nana Akufo-Addo and his longtime rival John Mahama, in a country long viewed a beacon of stability in a troubled region.
Announcement of the death of former President Rawlings pic.twitter.com/7ext0fp4sd
— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) November 12, 2020
Watch our report:
Sierra Leone Telegraph: 12 November 2020: United Nations Deputy Secretary-General (DSG), Ms. Amina J. Mohammed will arrive in Freetown, Sierra Leone on Saturday, 14 November 2020, for a two-day official visit as part of her solidarity mission to West Africa and the Sahel region. The DSG is visiting Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Mali and Sierra Leone…
May 19: govt to explain boom recoveries and address hot spot case management
\tTotal confirmed cases = 5,918 (new cases = 183)
Total recoveries = 1,754 (new = 0)
Total deaths = 31 (new = 2)
Active cases = 4,137
\tFigures valid as of May 19, 2020
\t
\tNo new figures were released on Monday but the government through the Information Ministry will release new tallies at a press conference scheduled for later today.
May 17: 5,735 cases, prez fact-checked on testing ‘record’
\tTotal confirmed cases = 5735 (new cases = 97)
Total recoveries = 1,754 (new = 294)
Total deaths = 29 (new = 5)
Active cases = 3,952
\tFigures valid as of close of day May 16, 2020
\tGhana maintained her spot as West Africa’s most impacted after the Health Ministry released latest figures yesterday.
AFP Fact-check – Ghana’s leader falsely claims his country fronts COVID-19 testing
May 16: 5,530 cases, jumbo recoveries
\tTotal confirmed cases = 5,638 (new cases = 108)
Total recoveries = 1,460 (new recoveries = 1086)
Total deaths = 24 (new deaths = 0)
Active cases = 4,150
\tGhana recorded a boost in recoveries with a record 1,086 discharges authorities reported early Saturday.
READ MORE – Uniting behind a people’s vaccine against COVID-19
May 14: 5,530 cases, 13 of 16 regions infected
\tTotal confirmed cases = 5,530 (new cases = 122)
Total recoveries = 674 (new recoveries = 160)
Active cases = 4,832
\tThirteen of the 16 regions in the country have recorded cases of the disease.
Statistics as at close of day May 13, 2020
\tTotal confirmed cases = 5,408 (new cases = 281)
Total recoveries = 514
Total deaths = 24
Active cases = 4,872
May 12: Cases hit 5,127; gold-rich Obuasi new hotspot
\tGhana’s case statistics passed the 5,000 mark after 427 new cases were recorded according to head of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Aboagye.
“The family of George Floyd will like to acknowledge the message of solidarity resolution and virtual tribute from His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana.
For them, the victory in the praise was the fact that through his gestures and tribute in the wake of Floyd’s death, Akufo-Addo had won some goodwill for Ghana.
However, in spite of Akufo-Addo’s attempt to add to his feats, this time, the portrait was tainted by how police in Ghana on Saturday evening dispersed Black Lives Matter protesters in the center of Accra with brute force.
But since Saturday night, some of the protesters have said they believe the aggressive response of the police was motivated by other issues they highlighted in their protest, including the unsolved case of recent kidnapping and murder of three girls in Western Ghana.
As the issue of Ghana’s own police brutality against mostly the country’s poor was debated on social media, Accra-based social justice activist and artist, Nii Kotei, took the opportunity to remind his followers on Twitter about episodes of brutality he has been noting since 2019.
The sole child of immigrants from the Barbados, Ulric St. Clair Haynes Jr. was born June 8, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York. Haynes attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduating cum laude in 1952, and then earned a law degree at Yale University four years later. Haynes worked briefly as an executive assistant with the New York State Department of Commerce, and from 1956 to 1959 he was an administrative officer with the United Nations’ European Office in Geneva, Switzerland, assigned to recruit military and police officers for the UN’s Palestine peacekeeping missions and attend to UN concerns in the newly independent Republic of Guinea.
A hallmark of Haynes’ professional life was his alternating private sector and public service employment. From 1960 to 1963 he was the Ford Foundation’s Assistant Regional Director for West Africa. In 1964 he was the U.S. State Department’s desk officer for Southwest Africa, and from 1964 to 1966 he monitored politics in Africa for the National Security Council under McGeorge Bundy. While working as a management consultant from 1966 to 1972, Haynes also taught as an adjunct business professor at Harvard University. Hired in 1972 as Vice President of Management Development for Cummins Engine Company, located in Columbus, Indiana, two years later he became the company’s Vice President for the Middle East and African Affairs and was relocated in Tehran, Iran from 1975 to 1977.
Made aware of his varied experiences in Africa and the Middle East, in 1977 President Jimmy Carter nominated Haynes as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria. Starting November 4, 1979, Americans were riveted by reports out of Iran concerning 66 persons taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Because of his experience in the Iranian capital and familiarity with the Middle East and North Africa, Haynes helped negotiate the release of the hostages. On January 20, 1981 Haynes stood beside Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to greet the liberated hostages upon their arrival in Algiers, Algeria. Fluent
A Dallas police oversight board reported that it has had over 100 calls from residents complaining about police brutalizing protesters and reporting injuries as a result of police firing non-lethal but obviously harmful projectiles.
Louisville man defending himself from police attack shot and killed
Louisville police shot and killed restaurant owner David McAtee last week during a protest on behalf of George Floyd.
Minneapolis police claim they don’t fire rubber bullets, but protesters have reported being hit by projectiles and have shown news media large rocket- and bullet-shaped objects that police have fired at them.
The protest was one of many across the nation following the police killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day.
First, the Christian Monitor reported that Trump’s approval rating has dropped 20 points among voters over age 65, the biggest drop any other age group aside from 18-29-year-olds.
Ghana’s former president Jerry Rawlings, who staged two coups and later led the West African country’s transition to a stable... View Article
The post Ghana’s former president Jerry Rawlings dies at 73 appeared first on TheGrio.
Mali's beleaguered president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, made overtures on Sunday to the opposition coalition which is demanding his resignation, saying he is ready for talks.
Keita is struggling to maintain support in the poor and volatile country over a jihadist revolt and ethnic violence that have claimed thousands of lives, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and devastated the economy
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people rallied in Mali's capital Bamako demanding Keita's departure, in a show of force from his recently energised opponents.
That protest followed several demonstrations last month in the West African state over the outcome of recent parliamentary elections, which the president won, as well as over coronavirus restrictions.
A religious hardliner, Dicko was considered an ally of President Keita before he entered politics several months ago.
Last week officials from the UN, West Africa and the African Union (AU) held talks with Keita and Dicko separately.
Carnegie Mellon University historian Edda L. Fields Blacks 2008 book, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora, opened a vast new area of diasporic study by linking the cultivation of rice in Africa to the rise of this crucially important food crop in Colonial South Carolina. What follows is a description of her work and the personal journey that led to that scholarly project.
I grew up in Miami, Florida immersed in Caribbean and Latin American culture with two Gullah-speaking paternal grandparents. My father’s nuclear family had moved to Miami from Green Pond, South Carolina when he was in elementary school. As a child, I remember being aware of the difference between my grandparents’ accents and the West Indian accents that were so familiar to me in southern Florida. Their speech was akin to West Indian immigrants, of which my mother’s family in particular and Miami in general had many.
When I was in grade school, our family began taking my grandmother to Green Pond every summer to visit our relations who still lived in Green Pond, Whitehall, and Over Swamp. My mother’s historical and genealogical research about my father’s family in preparation for and during our family summer vacations was my first inkling of Gullah as both a rich language and culture with its own peculiar history. It also ignited a thirst in me which could not be quenched in a summer vacation. More than anything, I wanted to speak Gullah, a language which my father understood but did not speak (at least not to my knowledge), and therefore could not pass down to me. As the first generation to be born and raised outside of the Low country, I did not want to be the link which broke the chain of transmission.
In hindsight, I chose to study rice farmers and to travel to West Africa’s Rice Coast region, so that I could live and work as my paternal great-grandparents had lived on plantations in Beaufort and Colleton counties, South Carolina. By the time that I began traveling to Sierra Leone and Guinea,
In 2007, Ambassador John L. Withers II, a second generation diplomat, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to serve as ambassador to Albania. Withers was born in 1948 in Guilford, North Carolina, to John L. Withers, Sr. and Daisy P. Withers. His father had briefly worked as a political science professor but is best known for his service as a diplomat for the United States Agency for International Development. His mother was a homemaker, raising John II and his brother Gregory. Withers, whose grandfather, Robert Baxter Withers, and father fought in World War I and World War II, respectively, spent his childhood where his father was stationed, in Laos, Thailand, Burma, Korea, Ethiopia, and Kenya, witnessing, first-hand, the struggle for Southeast Asian and East African independence.
Withers graduated from Harvard University in 1971 with a Bachelor’s Degree in History. In 1975, he earned his Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A year after graduating from Yale University (1983), with a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Modern Chinese History, Withers began pursuing his Foreign Service career.
From 1984 to 1993, Withers’s path to the ambassadorship was unusual. He served in typical junior officer posts that ranged from Political Officer (PO) to Desk Officer (DO) but he was also posted in key countries to U.S. diplomacy in Northern/Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, a rare combination of geographic areas for any diplomat. In this period he served at U.S. Embassies at The Hague, Netherlands (PO, 1985-1986), Lagos, Nigeria (PO, 1987-1990), and Moscow, Russia (PO, 1991-1993). At the State Department he was Desk Offer in the Office of Chinese Affairs (1986-1988), and in the Office of Northern European Affairs specifically assigned to Ireland and Iceland (1993).
As senior diplomat, Withers assisted mission chiefs in the Office of the Deputy Secretary, as Special Assistant (1993-1996), and in the U.S. Embassy in Riga, Latvia, as Deputy Chief of Mission
The total cumulative number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Sierra Leone has now reached 1,001, as 32 new cases were reported yesterday.
Sierra Leone, as reported yesterday – Monday, the total cumulative number of confirmed cases was 1,001, 49 deaths and 611 recoveries; with Liberia announcing a cumulative total of 370 cases and 30 deaths, with 195 recoveries.
The Gambia has the lowest total number of recorded cases in the group with 28 confirmed cases, only one dead, and 21 recoveries.
Although the number of new cases continue to rise by an average of just over a hundred a week in Sierra Leone, the rate of transmission remains low, sparking calls for the government to now rethink its national response strategy.
With the Sierra Leone economy shrinking much faster than during the Ebola pandemic, at over 60% so far, the government is being urged to suspend nationwide curfew and travel restrictions across districts which many say are crippling the country’s economy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday warned that the potential impact of COVID -19 on food security in Africa is likely to exacerbate the already existing burden of malnutrition.
The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, in a press statement said the impact of the disease is expected to be greater among those grappling with food scarcity and malnutrition.
\"COVID-19 is unfolding in Africa against a backdrop of worrying levels of hunger and undernourishment, which could worsen as the virus threatens livelihoods and household economies,\" the statement said.
The WHO said COVID-19 is exacerbating food shortages, as food imports, transportation and agricultural production have all been hampered by a combination of lockdowns, travel restrictions and physical distancing measures.
\"Some countries have already announced measures to mitigate some of the risks of lockdowns on food supply, from in-kind distributions to this week's announcement by Heads of State of the East African Community of their intention to develop a mechanism for tracking and certification of cross-border truck drivers to ensure the safe delivery of essential goods,\" the statement highlighted.
The letter by Dominic Gaskin follows:
I refer to a letter by Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye, published in your letter columns today (June, 21st 2020), entitled `Can Mr Gaskin explain what constitutes a seriously rigged election’?
Having shared a few platforms with Mr. Ogunseye during the recent elections campaign, I wish to respond as respectfully as possible to several of the points made in his letter.
If I could dwell on this for a moment, I’d like to make it clear that nowhere in any of my three Facebook posts have I suggested that Mr. Mingo’s fraudulent declarations were done on behalf of the Coalition.
However, the context in which Mr. Ogunseye was seeking my interpretation of what constitutes a “seriously rigged election” has to do with the following extract from my most recent Facebook post which he quoted: The claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated and, unfortunately, designed to fool party supporters, who had placed their faith in the Coalition, into believing that there was actual evidence of serious election rigging by the PPP-C.
This statement pertains to the recount period, and I stand by its two main assertions: 1) that the claims of fraud were grossly exaggerated; and 2) that these claims were designed to fool supporters into believing that there was actual evidence of serious election rigging by the PPP-C.
With this historic maiden voyage at the weekend from its Export Terminal located in Apapa Port, Lagos, Dangote has gradually made Nigeria, which until recently was one of the world's largest bulk importers of cement, first self-sufficient in cement production, and now an exporter of cement clinker to other countries.
The exportation of the clinker from the Dangote Cement Export Terminal would also place Nigeria as one of the leading clinker exporters in the world.
Speaking during the departure of the ship conveying the clinker from the Export Terminal at the weekend, Group Executive Director, Dangote Group, Alhaji Sada Ladan-Baki, said the increased exportation of clinker and cement to other African countries would not only place Dangote Cement among top clinker exporters in the world, but also boost Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings and reduce unemployment in the country.
Ladan-Baki recalled that only a few years ago, Nigeria was one of the world's largest bulk importers of cement, saying \"Dangote has gradually made Nigeria self-sufficient in cement production as well as an exporter of clinker to other countries.\"
\"But, apart from job creation opportunities, the exportation of clinker by Dangote will position the country to participate fully in the Africa Free Trade Liberalisation Agreement when it comes into being, so that Nigeria will be protected against foreign products.
Skywatchers along a narrow band from west Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, India and southern China will witness the most dramatic \"ring of fire\" solar eclipse to shadow the Earth in years on Sunday.
Annular eclipses occur when the Moon - passing between Earth and the Sun - is not quite close enough to our planet to completely obscure sunlight, leaving a thin ring of the solar disc visible.
Remarkably, the eclipse on Sunday arrives on the northern hemisphere's longest day of the year - the summer solstice - when Earth's north pole is tilted most directly towards the Sun.
The full eclipse will be visible somewhere on Earth for just under four hours, and one of the last places to see a partially hidden Sun is Taiwan before its path heads out into the Pacific.
A solar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse, when the Moon moves into Earth's shadow.
Queen Nzingha, amazon queen of matamba west africa, joins the ancestors on this day. Nzingha was a warrior queen who waged war again Europeans. Her formation of strategic alliances and fighting prowess urged other great african leaders totake a stand against the colonialism/imperialistic regimes of Europeans.
As trucks stacked up for days, Rwanda and neighboring Tanzania worked out a deal that scrapped plans for relay drivers but mandated transferring cargo at the border, “except for trucks carrying perishable goods and petroleum products destined to Rwanda,” the Kigali government said in a news release Friday.
Kenya last week began mandatory COVID-19 testing for truckers, ordering that they undergo tests 48 hours before leaving the Port of Mombasa — a shipping hub in the country’s second-largest city — or before entering Kenya from elsewhere in East Africa.
But Wednesday, a day after Kenya announced the return of more than 180 foreigners to Tanzania because of positive COVID test results, a Tanzanian regional official accused the Nairobi government of faulty testing.
Zambia also had closed its border with Tanzania for several days last week after several truck drivers, immigration officers and sex workers tested positive for COVID, Reuters reported.
Several heads of state in the EAC bloc — including Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Salva Kiir of South Sudan — last week agreed to double testing of truckers.
Roseau is the capital, principal town, and major port of Dominica, an island nation of 72,000 people in the Caribbean Sea. The town had a population of 16,582 people in 2007, making it one of the least populous capitals in the world. Roseau is located on the southwestern coast of the nation at the mouth of the Roseau River. Its main exports are skin oils, limes and their juice, tropical vegetables, and spices. Throughout the nation’s history the town has been the commercial center of the island.
The history of Roseau had begun well before Europeans began to settle the island nation. The island of Dominica was discovered and named by Christopher Columbus on November 3, 1493. It was occupied, however, only by the Carib people for the next century. When the Spanish finally attempted a settlement, the Carib drove them from the island.
In 1642 Father Raymond Breton, a French missionary, visited the island and encountered a Carib village where Roseau now sits. The Carib called the area Sari. French woodcutters, who were the first Europeans on the island, befriended the natives and lived together with them until increasing French settlement caused the Caribs to retreat to interior forests.
The new French settlers renamed the Carib village Roseau after the river reeds, Roseaux, that grew on the river banks. The town’s location meant settlers had access to fresh water from the river and flat lands in the area to cultivate. The French also brought the first enslaved people from West Africa to the island colony. By 1800 people of African ancestry were the majority of the island’s residents where they toiled on coffee plantations, and the majority of the inhabitants of Roseau. Slavery was abolished on the island and throughout the British Empire in 1833.
Dominica by that point had become the object of nearly half-century struggle between the French and the English. The 1763 Treaty of Paris which ended a global conflict between the British and the French called the Seven Years’ War (on North America it was
Brother Liam and Brother Gedalya destroying the Lie that all Blacks come from Africa. We are the Israelites that was made slaves in West Africa by the Africans and Arabs according to King James 1611 Bible.
For more videos visit us at http://www.israelunite.org/videos
and for Israelite merchandise go to http://originalroyalty.com and buy bibles,posters, fringes etc...
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Nok Culture spanned the end of the Neolithic (Stone Age) and start of the Iron Age in sub-Saharan Africa, and may be the oldest organized society in sub-Saharan Africa; current research suggests it predated the founding of Rome by some 500 years. Nok was a complex society with permanent settlements and centres for farming and manufacturing, but we are still left guessing who the Nok were, how their culture developed, or what happened to it.
In 1943, clay shards and a terracotta head were discovered during tin mining operations on the southern and western slopes of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria. The pieces were taken to archaeologist Bernard Fagg, who immediately suspected their importance. He began collecting pieces and excavating, and when he dated the pieces using new techniques, discovered what colonial ideologies said wasnt possible: an ancient West African society dating back to at least 500 B.C.E. Fagg named this culture Nok, the name of the village near to which the first discovery was made.
Fagg continued his studies, and subsequent research at two important sites, Taruga and Samun Dukiya, provided more accurate information on Nok culture. More of Noks terracotta sculptures, domestic pottery, stone axes and other tools, and iron implements were discovered, but due to the colonial dismissal of ancient African societies, and, later, the problems facing the newly independent Nigeria, the region remained understudied.
Looting carried out on behalf of Western collectors, compounded the difficulties entailed in learning about Nok culture.
It was not until the 21st century that sustained, systematic research was carried out on Nok culture, and the results have been stunning. The most recent finds, dated by thermo-luminescence testing and radio-carbon dating, indicate that Nok culture lasted from around 1200 B.C.E.
to 400 C.E., yet we still do not know how it arose or what happened to it.
The sheer volume as well as artistic and technical skills seen in the terracotta sculptures suggests that Nok culture
Defeaning vuvuzelas and party songs took over Ghana's capital Accra on Saturday, the final day of campaigning ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections.
Twelve candidates, including three women, are vying for the west African nation's top job, but Monday's vote is essentially a fight between President Nana Akufo-Addo, 76, and former head of state John Mahama.
The city centre was plastered with billboards and posters and flags at every corner.
Akufo-Addo, running for a second term, drove through the shanty town of Nima, making whistle stops to acknowledge mammoth crowds clad in T-shirts of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
\"It’s a done deal. It’s clear. The crowd says it all. Four more (years) for Nana,\" a party supporter, Dauda Faisal said.
Defying all COVID-19 protocols -– with just a handful wearing face masks -- the ecstatic crowd waved miniature flags as the president headed towards the rally grounds where he was due to address supporters.
Opposition leader John Mahama meanwhile kicked off his final day of campaigning by meeting local chiefs and labour union leaders, assuring them of more jobs if he won the December 7 election.
Mahama, 62, who has been campaigning hard for months, was expected later in the evening at a rally organised by his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
More than 17 million people are registered to vote in the nation's eighth poll since it returned to democracy nearly 30 years ago.
This is the third time that Akufo-Addo and Mahama are running against each other, and the race is expected to be very close.
Results could be announced within 24 hours after the polls close.
Davidson Nicol , in full Davidson Sylvester Hector Willoughby Nicol, also called Abioseh Nicol (born Sept. 14, 1924, Freetown, Sierra Leone—died Sept. 20, 1994, Cambridge, Eng.), Sierra Leonean diplomat, physician, medical researcher, and writer whose short stories and poems are among the best to have come out of West Africa.
Nicol was educated in medicine and natural sciences in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and England, and he subsequently served in various medical posts in those countries. He became known for his research into the structure of insulin, and he lectured and wrote widely on medical topics. He was principal of Fourah Bay College, Freetown (1960–68), vice chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone (1966–68), and his country’s ambassador to the United Nations (1969–71). Nicol was president of the UN Security Council in 1970, and from 1972 to 1982 he served as executive director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). He was president of the World Federation of UN Associations from 1983 to 1987.
Nicol’s short stories were published in Two African Tales (1965) and The Truly Married Woman, and Other Stories (1965), under the name Abioseh Nicol. They centre upon life in the government service and upon the interaction of Africans with colonial administrators in preindependent Sierra Leone. His short stories and poems appeared in anthologies and journals. He also wrote Africa, A Subjective View (1964) and edited several other nonfiction works.
Nicol from 1957 was a fellow of his college at the University of Cambridge, the first African to be so named at either Cambridge or Oxford.
Even in the 18th century, much of the interior of Africa was unfamiliar to Europeans. Rather they limited themselves to trade along the coast, first in gold, ivory, spices, and later slaves. In 1788 Joseph Banks, the botanist whod sailed across the Pacific Ocean with Cook, went as far as to found the African Association to promote the exploration of the interior of the continent. What follows is a list of those explorers whose names went down in history.
Ibn Battuta (1304-1377) traveled over 100,000 kilometres from his home in Morocco. According to the book he dictated, he traveled as far as Beijing and the Volga River; scholars say its unlikely he traveled everywhere he claims to have.
James Bruce (1730-94) was a Scottish explorer who set off from Cairo in 1768 to find the source of the River Nile. He arrived at Lake Tana in 1770, confirming that this lake was the origin of the Blue Nile, one of the tributaries of the Nile.
Mungo Park (1771-1806) was hired by the African Association in 1795 to explore the River Niger. When the Scotsman returned to Britain having reached the Niger, he was disappointed by the lack of public recognition of his achievement and that he was not acknowledged as a great explorer. In 1805 he set out to follow the Niger to its source. His canoe was ambushed by tribesmen at the Bussa Falls and he drowned.
René-Auguste Caillié (1799-1838), a Frenchman, was the first European to visit Timbuktu and survive to tell the tale.
Hed disguised himself as an Arab to make the trip. Imagine his disappointment when he discovered that the city wasnt made of gold, as legend said, but of mud. His journey started in West Africa in March 1827, headed towards Timbuktu where he stayed for two weeks. He then crossed the Sahara (the first European to do so) in a caravan of 1,200 animals, then the Atlas Mountains to reach Tangier in 1828, from where he sailed home to France.
Heinrich Barth (1821-1865) was a German working for the British government. His first expedition (1844-1845)was from Rabat (Morocco)
Because the world has another face
Open your eyes
--Angelique Kidjo1
As an amateur medievalist, I have become keenly aware of how the history of Europe in the middle ages is often misunderstood or dismissed by otherwise intelligent, educated individuals. The medieval era of those nations outside of Europe is doubly ignored, first for its disreputable time frame (the dark ages), and then for its apparent lack of direct impact on modern western society.
Such is the case with Africa in the middle ages, a fascinating field of study that suffers from the further insult of racism. With the unavoidable exception of Egypt, the history of Africa before the incursion of Europeans has in the past been dismissed, erroneously and at times deliberately, as inconsequential to the development of modern society. Fortunately, some scholars are working to correct this grave error. The study of medieval African societies has value, not only because we can learn from all civilizations in all time frames, but because these societies reflected and influenced a myriad of cultures that, due to the Diaspora that began in the 16th century, have spread throughout the modern world.
One of these fascinating and near-forgotten societies is the medieval Kingdom of Mali, which thrived as a dominant power in west Africa from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Founded by the Mande-speaking Mandinka2 people, early Mali was governed by a council of caste-leaders who chose a mansa to rule.
In time, the position of mansa evolved into a more powerful role similar to a king or emperor.
According to tradition, Mali was suffering from a fearful drought when a visitor told the king, Mansa Barmandana, that the drought would break if he converted to Islam. This he did, and as predicted the drought did end.
Other Mandinkans followed the kings lead and converted as well, but the mansa did not force a conversion, and many retained their Mandinkan beliefs. This religious freedom would remain throughout the centuries to come as Mali emerged as a
By the time of her death at the age of 31, Phillis Wheatley was among the most celebrated poets of her time.
She had also been a slave, bought in West Africa and brought to Boston in 1761 as a child then resold to the Wheatley family, where she was tutored …
On Nov. 25, 2014, Malis Ministry of Health confirmed two new cases of Ebola. This was seen as a setback because it happened after the country thought it had overcome an earlier outbreak of the virus. Both cases were connected to previous ones. One case was the 23-year-old fiancée of a 25-year-old nurse who died of the virus earlier in November. The second case was a family member of previously confirmed and deceased Ebola victims.
Malis Ministry of Health planned to meet with Guinea health officials to discuss how to coordinate efforts to control the virus outbreak and reduce the chances of additional cases being imported to Mali. As of Dec. 31, 2014, the Ebola virus was still spreading in West Africa with 7,905 deaths and 20,206 known cases, according to the World Health Organization.
