Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
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:
President Akufo-Addo in his tenth address announced that whiles borders remained closed, some categories of academic institutions are allowed to resume, religious places can also reopen with strict conditions and the observance of health protocols.
Total confirmed cases = 8,297
Total recoveries = 2,986
Total deaths = 38
Active cases = 5,273
June 2: Minister issues guidelines for churches, mosques
\tThe Minister of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Samuel Kofi Dzamesi, has expanded on a government plan for reopening of places of worship across the country.
Govt to close down religious institutions who flout anti-Covid-19 directives – GNA report
June 1: 8,070 cases, conditional lifting of most restrictions
\tGhana’s case load passed the 8,000 mark on last day of May 2020 as president Akufo-Addo addressed the nation lifting conditionally a raft of restrictions.
With effect from Friday 5th June, Ghana will begin the implementation of gradual easing of restrictions
\t\tFinal year university students to report to school on 15th June, 2020
\t\tFaith-based organisations to start communal worship, effective Friday, June 5, amid social distancing and hygiene protocols
\t\tAll schools, both private and public remain closed.
Each student, teacher and non teaching staff will be provided with reusable face mask by the Ministry of Education prior to reopening for final year students
\t\tWeddings with not more than 100 guests can be organized
\t\tPublic political activities, except for rallies, to resume with less than 100 people, amid observation of social distancing and hygiene protocols
\t\t218, 425 Covid-19 tests conducted so far
\t
\tTotal confirmed cases = 8,070 (new cases = 189)
Total recoveries = 2,947
Total deaths = 36
Active cases = 5,087
“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.
Confirmed cases = 11,964
\t\tNumber of deaths = 54
\t\tRecoveries = 4,258
\t\tActive cases = 7,652
\tJohn Hopkins Uni stats valid as of June 14, 2020
June 13: 11,118 cases, NDC advocates mass testing
\tGhana’s case load as of this morning stood at 11,118 cases with the disclosure of 262 new cases.
June 10: Cases pass 10,000 mark as rapid test kit makers advance
\tGhana reached 10,000 mark in terms of confirmed cases on Tuesday (June 9); the case load reached 10,201 with deaths still at 48, 3,755 recoveries and 6,398 active cases.
Total confirmed cases = 9,910
Total recoveries = 3,645
Total deaths = 48
Active cases = 6,217
June 8: 9,638 cases, govt evacuation plans
\tGovernment has confirmed that it was preparing to evacuate some Ghanaians stranded overseas due to the COVID-19 disruption.
Total confirmed cases = 9,638
Total recoveries = 3,636
Total deaths = 44
Active cases = 5,958
\tFigures valid as of close of day June 7, 2020
June 7: 9,462 cases, deaths hit 44
\tThe Managing Director of a major private health care facility in the capital Accra reported testing positive for the virus.
Total confirmed cases = 9,462
Total recoveries = 3,547
Active cases = 5,871
\tFigures valid as of close of day June 6, 2020
June 3: 8,297 cases; govt defends ban on football
\tSports Minister, Isaac Asiamah has defended government’s decision
In 1934, with the assistance of Speranzeva, Dunham established the Chicago Negro School of Ballet and a company, a Negro Dance Group, which advanced into the Katherine Dunham Dance Company.
She did her anthropological field work in the Caribbean as a graduate student in 1935, receiving a Rosenwald Fellowship to study traditional dances in Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad and Haiti, where she became close to Haitians and took up the Vaudun religion.
Dunham took her Negro Dance Group to New York in 1937 but did not attract wide attention there until 1939, when she choreographed “Pins and Needles,” a satirical revue produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Beyond her theatrical career, Dunham did pioneering work in the field of dance anthropology and founded a school that embodied multi-cultural principles decades before the term was used in the field of education.
Her books include “Journey to Accompong” (1946), “A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood” (1959), “Island Possessed” (1969) and “Dances of Haiti” (1984)
Dunham received some of the most prestigious awards in the arts, including the Presidential Medal of the Arts, the Albert Schweitzer Prize (presented at Carnegie Hall), Kennedy Center Honors and decorations from the French and Haitian governments.
Mae Jemison , in full Mae Carol Jemison (born Oct. 17, 1956, Decatur, Ala., U.S.), American physician and the first African American woman to become an astronaut. In 1992 she spent more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour.
Jemison moved with her family to Chicago at the age of three. There she was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, evolution, and astronomy. While still a high school student, she became interested in biomedical engineering, and after graduating in 1973, at the age of 16, she entered Stanford University. There she received degrees in chemical engineering and African American studies (1977).
In 1977 Jemison entered medical school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she pursued an interest in international medicine. After volunteering for a summer in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, she studied in Kenya in 1979. She graduated from medical school in 1981, and, after a short time as a general practitioner with a Los Angeles medical group, she became a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa. There she managed health care for Peace Corps and U.S. embassy personnel and worked in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control on several research projects, including development of a hepatitis B vaccine.
After returning to the United States, Jemison applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to be an astronaut. In October 1986, she was 1 of 15 accepted out of 2,000 applicants. Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist with NASA in 1988. She became an astronaut office representative with the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, working to process space shuttles for launching and to verify shuttle software. Next, she was assigned to support a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan designed to conduct experiments in materials processing and the life sciences. In September
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday launched a GH¢1 billion COVID-19 Alleviation Business Support Programme to support Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
According to President Akufo-Addo, the business support programme, which is expected to reach 180 beneficiaries across the country will help minimise job losses in the wake of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aside the GH¢1billion facility for MSMEs, the President indicated that the government will make available a GH¢3 billion credit and stimulus package to help boost businesses.
This is why it is imperative that we support all efforts to ensure the success of the COVID-19 Alleviation Programme (CAP) Business Support Scheme to protect jobs and bring back the country's economy to life when the dust settles.
We urge all businesses to take advantage of the government's support programme and use the funds for the intended purposes to resuscitate their businesses and further enhance Ghana's economic growth.
Ivory has been desired since antiquity because its relative softness made it easy to carve into intricate decorative items for the very wealthy. For the past one hundred years, the ivory trade in Africa has been closely regulated, yet the trade continues to thrive.
During the days of the Roman Empire, the ivory exported from Africa largely came from North African elephants.
These elephants were also used in the Roman coliseum fights and occasionally as transport in war and were hunted to extinction around the 4th century C.E. After that point, the ivory trade in Africa declined for several centuries.
By the 800s, the trade in African ivory had picked-up again. In these years, traders transported ivory from West Africa along the trans-Saharan trade routes to the North African coast or brought East African ivory up in boats along the coast line to the market-cities of north-east Africa and the Middle East. From these depots, ivory was taken across the Mediterranean to Europe or to Central and East Asia, though the latter regions could easily acquire ivory from southeast Asian elephants.
As Portuguese navigators began exploring the West African coast line in the 1400s, they soon entered into the lucrative ivory trade, and other European sailors were not far behind.
During these years, ivory was still acquired almost exclusively by African hunters, and as the demand continued, the elephant population near the coast lines declined. In response, African hunters traveled further and further inland in search of elephant herds.
As the trade in ivory moved inland, the hunters and traders needed a way to tranport the ivory to the coast.
In West Africa, trade focused on numerous rivers that emptied into the Atlantic, but in Central and East Africa, there were fewer rivers to use. Sleeping Sickness and other tropical diseases also made it almost impossible to use animals (like horses, oxen, or camels) to transport goods in West, Central, or central-East Africa, and this meant that people were the primary movers of
Europeans have been interested in African geography since the time of the Greek and Roman Empires. Around 150 C.E., Ptolemy created a map of the world that included the Nile and the great lakes of East Africa. In the Middle Ages, the large Ottoman Empire blocked European access to Africa and its trade goods, but Europeans still learned about Africa from Islamic maps and travelers, like Ibn Battuta.
The Catalan Atlas created in 1375, which includes many African coastal cities, the Nile River, and other political and geographical features, shows how much Europe knew about North and West Africa.
By the 1400s, Portuguese sailors, backed by Prince Henry the Navigator, began exploring the West coast of Africa looking for a mythical Christian king named Prestor John and a way to the wealth of Asia that avoided the Ottomans and the powerful empires of South West Asia. By 1488, the Portuguese had charted a way around the south African Cape and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa, in what is today Kenya, where he encountered Chinese and Indian merchants. Europeans made few inroads into Africa, though, until the 1800s, due to the strong African states they encountered, tropical diseases, and a relative lack of interest. Europeans instead grew rich trading gold, gum, ivory, and slaves with coastal merchants.
In the late 1700s, a group of British men, inspired by the Enlightenment ideal of learning, decided that Europe should know much more about Africa. They formed the African Association in 1788 to sponsor expeditions to the continent. With the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, European interest in the interior of Africa grew quickly.
Geographical Societies were formed and sponsored expeditions. The Parisian Geographical Society offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first explorer who could reach the town of Timbuktu (in present day Mali) and return alive. The new scientific interest in Africa was never wholly philanthropic, however. Financial and political support for exploration
Born: October 17, 1956
Birthplace: Decatur, Alabama
Mae C. Jemison was born the youngest of three children of Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, a maintenance worker and
schoolteacher. Raised in Chicago, Illinois, she graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973. She earned a Bachelor of
Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1977, while also fulfilling the requirements for a Bachelor
of Arts in African-American Studies. She attended medical school and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell
University in 1981. While in medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand, providing primary medical care to
people living there.
Following medical school Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps, from January 1983 to June 1985. She was stationed in
Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa as the area Peace Corps medical officer. There she supervised the pharmacy,
laboratory, medical staff. She provided medical care, wrote self-care manuals, developed and implemented guidelines for health
and safety issues. She also had contact with and worked in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on
research for various vaccines.
In 1985, after returning from the Peace Corps, Dr. Jemison secured a position with the CIGNA Health Plans of California as a
general practitioner in Los Angeles, California. There she began attending graduate classes in engineering and applied to the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for admission to the astronaut program. Her first application was not
accepted. It was her second application in 1987 that was accepted as an astronaut candidate; Mae Jemison became one of the
fifteen candidate accepted from some 2,000 applicants.
Dr. Jemison successfully completed her astronaut training program in August 1988, becoming the fifth black astronaut and the
first black female astronaut in NASA history. In August 1992, SPACELAB J was a successful joint U.S. and Japanese science
mission, making Mae Jemison the first black woman in space.
West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost subregion of Africa. West Africa has been defined as including 18 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, the island nation of Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, the island of Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, São Tomé and Príncipe and Togo.[7] The population of West Africa is estimated at about 362 million[2] people as of 2016. Islam is the predominant religion of 70% of the population, with smaller amounts practicing Christianity and Traditional African religions.
Main article: History of West Africa
The history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods: first, its prehistory, in which the first human settlers arrived, developed agriculture, and made contact with peoples to the north; the second, the Iron Age empires that consolidated both intra-Africa, and extra-Africa trade, and developed centralized states; third, major polities flourished, which would undergo an extensive history of contact with non-Africans; fourth, the colonial period, in which Great Britain and France controlled nearly the entire region; and fifth, the post-independence era, in which the current nations were formed.
Prehistory [ edit ]
Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B.C.[dubious – discuss] Sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B.C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B.C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of agricultural productivity, and the first city-states later formed. Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400. In the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, and an inter-region trade began to appear. The desertification of the Sahara and the climatic change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen.
The domestication of the camel allowed the development of a trans-Saharan trade
Following the successful rollout of the Free Senior High School (SHS) educational policy three years ago, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says the government will build more senior high schools across the country.
In a meeting with a delegation from the Kologo traditional area in the Upper East Region at the Jubliee House in Accra yesterday, President Akufo-Addo said the decision forms part of government's efforts to improve access to education in Ghana.
The Free SHS policy has increased high school enrolment significantly, with over a million students enjoying free education in Ghana.
President Akufo-Addo's comment was in response to a request by the traditional leaders for an SHS in Kologo.
He promised to ensure that the community benefits from an SHS and pledged to grant their request for a district hospital under the government's project to construct 88 district hospitals across the country.
Henry Francis Downing was an author, playwright, consul and sailor. He was born in New York City in 1846, the son of Henry and Nancy Downing. His family maintained an oyster business that had been owned by his grandfather, Thomas Downing, a well known freeman. His uncle was famed New York businessman and civil rights leader, George Thomas Downing.
In 1864 Henry Downing enlisted in the Union Navy at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He began his service on board the U.S.S. North Carolina and was transferred to the U.S.S. Pawtuxet in December of 1864. Navy records listed him as having deserted in 1865, though it was later revealed he left the ship to attend his stepfather’s funeral, and his mother had obtained his discharge so that he could assist her.
After the Civil War, Downing began a journey around the world. He reached Liberia where his cousin, Hilary Johnson, would later become president of Liberia from 1884 to 1892. Downing lived in Liberia for three years where he was a private secretary to the secretary of state.
Downing returned to the United States and in 1872, reenlisted in the Navy and served for three years. Most of his time was served on the U.S.S. Hartford which operated off the coast of East Africa. With considerable time spent in both West and East Africa, Downing was one of the African Americans most knowledgeable about the African continent and its politics.
Returning to New York in 1875, Downing became a messenger and clerk of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1876 at the age of 33, he married a woman named Isadora. The couple had two children.
By the 1880s, Downing became involved in New York politics and was a supporter of the Democrats and New York Governor Grover Cleveland. When Cleveland was elected President in 1884, Downing was rewarded for his support by an appointment as U.S. counsel to Luanda, Angola. He served in this post from 1886 to 1887, leaving because he was unsuccessful in getting significant American trade with this African nation.
After his resignation Downing returned to New
In the following article Dr. Clarence Spigner, Professor of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes the life of the first patient to die of Ebola on U.S. soil and the larger crisis of Ebola in West Africa. He views it as a consequence of a long history of disease, poverty, and underfunded health care systems in the West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia which are at the center of the 2014 epidemic.
On September 20, 2014, a forty-two year-old Liberian native, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived in Dallas, Texas from a plane flight that originated in Monrovia, Liberia. Duncan came to the United States ostensibly to reunite with his estranged teenaged son and the boy’s mother, Louise Troh, who had at one time been his girlfriend in Liberia. Troh and her son lived in Dallas.
Unknown before that point, Duncan entered the international public consciousness because he had flown from the hot zone of the Ebola virus outbreak then occurring in West Africa. On March 30, 2014, Liberia reported two cases of people with the Ebola disease. Six months later on September 30, over 3,000 people had died from Ebola in West Africa including more than 1,000 in Liberia alone. Duncan, who would be the first reported case of Ebola in the United States and as of this writing, the only fatality, was symptom-free and not contagious when he left Liberia by way of Brussels, Belgium and Washington, D.C.
The deadly Ebola disease has symptoms similar to the mosquito-borne infectious malaria. Both malaria and Ebola are endemic to Africa, though malaria is now far more widespread and dangerous. So is West Nile Disease which like malaria is mosquito-borne and was first identified in 1937 in the East African nation of Uganda.
Unlike those diseases, Ebola is spread by physical contact with an infected person or animal. The virus is not airborne. The rapid spread of Ebola and the even more rapid spread of fear of a worldwide distribution of the Ebola virus comes from the knowledge that diseases like
The possible return of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo to the Côte d’Ivoire after his acquittal on charges of crimes against humanity might well be the catalyst for negotiations in that country, argues Thabo Mbeki.
These decisions concern the future of Mr Laurent Gbagbo, former President of Côte d’Ivoire.
Mr Gbagbo served as President of Côte d’Ivoire from 26 October, 2000 until 2011.
The Forum therefore pleaded with the ICC Prosecutor, Ms Bensouda, to withdraw the charges against Mr Gbagbo and therefore allow him to return home to contribute everything in his power to the achievement of the said national reconciliation.
Mr Bedie, himself a former President of Côte d’Ivoire, supported Mr Ouattara during the 2010 and 2015 Presidential elections and his party served in the Ouattara governments in coalition with President Ouattara’s RDR.
Most of Mali, in West Africa, lies in the Sahara. A landlocked country four-fifths the size of Alaska, it is bordered by Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and the Côte dIvoire. The only fertile area is in the south, where the Niger and Senegal rivers provide water for irrigation.
Republic.
Caravan routes have passed through Mali since A.D. 300. The Malinke empire ruled regions of Mali from the 12th to the 16th century, and the Songhai empire reigned over the Timbuktu-Gao region in the 15th century. Morocco conquered Timbuktu in 1591 and ruled over it for two centuries. Subjugated by France by the end of the 19th century, the land became a colony in 1904 (named French Sudan in 1920) and in 1946 became part of the French Union. On June 20, 1960, it became independent and, under the name of Sudanese Republic, was joined with the Republic of Senegal in the Mali federation. However, Senegal seceded from the federation on Aug. 20, 1960, and the Sudanese Republic then changed its name to the Republic of Mali on Sept. 22.
In the 1960s, Mali concentrated on economic development, continuing to accept aid from both Soviet bloc and Western nations, as well as international agencies. In the late 1960s, it began retreating from close ties with China. But a purge of conservative opponents brought greater power to President Modibo Keita, and in 1968, the influence of the Chinese and their Malian sympathizers increased. The army overthrew the government on Nov. 19, 1968 and brought Mali under military rule for the next 20 years. Mali and Burkina Faso fought a brief border war from Dec. 25 to 29, 1985. In 1991, dictator Moussa Traoré was overthrown, and Mali made a peaceful transition to democracy. In 1992, Alpha Konaré became Malis first democratically elected president.
In the early 1990s, the government fought the Tuaregs, nomads of Berber and Arab descent who inhabit the northern desert regions of Mali and have little in common with Malis black African majority. The Tuaregs accused the government
Raphael Abraham Frank Mensah (1924-1990s), a schoolmaster and theologian, played a foundational role in bringing Mormonism to Ghana. Born in 1924 in Winneba, Gold Coast, as the British colony of Ghana was then called, he was the eldest of five children, three sons and two daughters. Mensah experimented with a variety of religious faiths. He attended a Catholic secondary school, lived with a Muslim uncle, and then join the Methodist and later the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He became an “International Evangelist” for the Seventh-day Adventists and served as headmaster for the Church’s Ghana Empire Secondary School. Though he represented the Seventh-day Adventists throughout West Africa, he also joined the Brotherhood of the Star and Cross, an indigenous Christian group originating from the visionary experiences of its founder, Olumba Olumba Obu, whom Mensah visited to receive counsel.
According to most accounts Mensah came into contact with Mormonism in early 1964 through Lillian Clark, a Sufi mystic living in St. Agnes, Penhalls, United Kingdom. Clark had met two Latter-day Saints missionaries, Loretta Johnson and Karen Nelson, who introduced her to Church teachings. Clark later shared the teachings with Mensah who brought them to Ghana when he returned home. One of his first converts was Joseph William Billy Johnson.
By 1964, Mensah, Johnson, and another convert, Rebecca Mould collaborated to establish a working, but unofficial, Mormon organization based in Accra. In 1969, they had garnered several hundred converts and new leadership. Mensah retained control over the faithful in Ghana from the capital, Accra, while Johnson moved to Cape Coast and Mould moved to Sekondi-Takoradi to spread LDS teachings. Mensah imported Mormon teachings into other facets of his life, teaching members of the Brotherhood of the Star and Cross from the Book of Mormon. In 1967 Mensah and Johnson established in Accra the Brigham Young Educational Institute which enrolled approximately 50 children. They based their school
Home
Global African History Timelines: After 1801
Global African American History Timelines:
To 1800
After 1801
This timeline covers all the events not listed on the African American History or African American History in the West timelines.
Year Events SubjectCountryEra
1801 Haitian forces capture the Spanish-ruled section of Hispaniola called Santo Domingo. The area is returned to Spanish control in 1809. The Haitians will regain control in 1822 and remain in Santo Domingo until 1844. 01-01 International Conflict
Dominican Republic
1801-1900
1804 On January 1, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the successor to Toussaint LOuverture, declares Saint Dominque independent and renames it Haiti. It becomes the second independent nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States). 01-01 Haitian Revolution
Haiti
1804 Usman Dan Fodio initiates a holy war (jihad) that established an Islamic theocratic state, the Sokoto Caliphate, in present day Northern Nigeria. 01-02 West African Empires
Nigeria
1807 Great Britain abolishes the importation of enslaved Africans into its colonial possessions. 01-01 The Slave Trade
Great Britain
1807 George Bridgetower, a former child prodigy who at 11 performs his first concert before a Paris audience, is elected to the British Royal Society of Musicians. 01-02 19th Century Black Music
1811 Spain abolishes slavery at home and in all colonies except Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. 01-01 Emancipation
Spain
1813 Argentina abolishes slavery. 01-01 Emancipation
Argentina
1814 Mauritania becomes a French colony. 01-01 Colonial Conquest
Mauritania
1814 Great Britain gains control of the Seychelles from France. 01-02 Colonial Administration
The Seychelles
1816 Shaka Zulu becomes King of the Zulu nation and begins to create an empire in the southern African interior. 01-01
In the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak in West Africa, the drastic drop in advertising revenues on which legacy media organisations traditionally depend on to stay afloat has further worsened the already existing challenges in media financial sustainability.
According to Abdoul Fall Salam, General Manager of Seneweb, his online media portal has seen a sharp rise in visitors and is now getting revenue from the public sector.
Other major online media organisations across West Africa including Banouto Media in Benin, MediaForce-Afrique in Senegal, and International Centre for Investigative Reporting in Nigeria have all recorded a massive surge in numbers of visitors.
Although this is yet to translate into increased revenue streams for some outlets, Ade Simplice Robert, General Manager of MediaForce-Afrique, thinks that it presents an opportunity for online media organisations to gain more recognition.
The coronavirus pandemic is posing a serious challenge to the revenue streams of a number of media organisations.
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.
“The app will basically work well with the rapid test kit because once classified as high risk you need to test the person,” he said, stressing the need for mass testing given that Ghana had entered community transmission stage of virus spread.
\tSports Minister, Isaac Asiamah has defended government’s decision to maintain a ban on football despite the recent lifting of a raft of restrictions.
Up until now, the only black person to serve as a member of parliament since Portugal returned to democracy in 1974 was a man – Helder Amaral who represented the conservative CDS party between 2002 and 2019.
History was made last October when members of Portugal’s new parliament took office.
Among them were the country’s first black women lawmakers who all trace their origins to Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa.
For the longest time, black people in Portugal were not fully considered as Portuguese citizens because of a 1981 law that was passed before their parent’s immigration status was regularised.
The three black women who made it to parliament were all activists who, during their campaigns, promised to fight these inequalities.
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.
In the following account University of Cincinnati historian John K. Brackett describes the famous 16th Century painting of a black courtier at the court of Margaret of Austria, the Duchess of Savoy and Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The name and rank of this courtier remains a mystery. Professor Brackett, however, speculates on the possible African origins of the elegantly dressed nobleman.
The striking portrait to the right of a black African man dressed in the rich garb of a courtier, his visage composed and dignified, his elegantly gloved right had resting on the handle of his sword identifies him as a member of a court. It is a shame that at this point the contour of his figure is all that we know about this sixteenth century black man. Some context will at least bring us closer to knowing more about the particular individual who sat for Mostaert’s now famous Portrait of a Moor.
Jan Mostaert was born in the city of Haarlem in the Low Countries in about 1475, dying in 1555/1556. He was born into a noble family but we know little else about him. The Netherlands was home to a sophisticated group of artists who began experimenting with their own imaginative style of realism separate from Italian artists of the Renaissance. Part of this group, much of Jan’s work was destroyed in a fire in 1576; some other paintings once attributed to him are now assigned to a contemporary, Adriaen Isenbrant. Mostaert very much looked and acted the part of the handsome, educated, well-mannered Low Countries nobleman.
These qualities and his artistic talents and interests attracted the attention of Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy. Born in 1480, she died on December 1,1530 in the Low Countries. Margaret was a participant in and patron of the arts, selecting Mostaert as her court portraitist in 1518. She served twice as Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, the first time from 1507 to 1515, then from 1519 to 1530, the last being the bookend dates for the
Garnet moved to the West African nation but died on February 13, 1882, barely two months after his arrival .
Electoral authorities in Guinea on Saturday declared President Alpha Conde winner of Sunday's election with 59.49% of the vote, defeating his main rival Cellou Diallo.
\t Some people went to the streets to protest immediately after the announcement. Such demonstrations have occurred for months after the government changed the constitution through a national referendum, allowing Conde to extend his decade in power.
\t Opposition candidate Cellou Diallo received 33.50% of the vote, the electoral commission said. Voter turnout was almost 80%.
\t Political tensions in the West African nation turned violent in recent days after Diallo claimed victory ahead of the official results. Celebrations by his supporters were suppressed when security forces fired tear gas to disperse them.
They accuse the electoral authorities of rigging the vote for incumbent president Alpha Conde.
\t At least nine people have been killed since the election, according to the government. The violence sparked international condemnation by the U.S. and others.
\t ``Today is a sad day for African democracy,'' said Sally Bilaly Sow, a Guinean blogger and activist living abroad. The government should take into account the will of the people who have a desire for change, he said.
ICC warning
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor warned on Friday that warring factions in Guinea could be prosecuted after fighting erupted.
“I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages and contributes in any other way to crimes … is liable to prosecution either by the Guinean courts or the ICC,” she said.
#ICC Prosecutor #FatouBensouda: "I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages or contributes, in any other way, to the commission of #RomeStatute crimes, is liable to prosecution either by #Guinean courts or by the #ICC."
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) October 23, 2020
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
