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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:
Namibia is bordered on the north by Angola and Zambia, on the east by Botswana, and on the east and south by South Africa. It is for the most part a portion of the high plateau of southern Africa, with a general elevation of from 3,000 to 4,000 ft.
Republic.
The San peoples may have inhabited what is now Namibia more than 2,000 years ago. The Bantu-speaking Herero settled there in the 1600s. The Ovambo, the largest ethnic group today, migrated in the 1800s.
In the late 15th century, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to visit Namibia. Formerly called South-West Africa, the territory became a German colony in 1884. Between 1904 and 1908, German troops massacred tens of thousands of Herero, who had revolted against colonial rule. In 1915, during World War I, Namibian territory was taken over by South African forces. In 1921, it became a mandated territory of the League of Nations, under the administration of South Africa.
Upon the dissolution of the League of Nations in 1946, South Africa refused to accept United Nations authority to replace its mandate with a UN trusteeship. A black Marxist separatist group, the South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO), formed in 1960 and began small-scale guerrilla attacks aimed at achieving independence. In 1966, the UN called for South Africas withdrawal from the territory, and officially renamed it Namibia in 1968. South Africa refused to obey. Under a 1974 Security Council resolution, South Africa was required to begin the transfer of power or face UN action. Prime Minister Balthazar J. Vorster rejected UN supervision, claiming that his government was prepared to negotiate Namibian independence, but not with SWAPO, which the UN had recognized as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Namibian people.
South Africa handed over limited powers to a new multiracial administration in 1985 (the previous government had enforced South Africas apartheid laws). Installation of this government ended South Africas direct rule, but it
Guinea, in West Africa on the Atlantic, is also bordered by Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côte dIvoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Slightly smaller than Oregon, the country consists of a coastal plain, a mountainous region, a savanna interior, and a forest area in the Guinea Highlands. The highest peak is Mount Nimba at 5,748 ft (1,752 m).
Beginning in 900, the Susu migrated from the north and began settling in the area that is now Guinea. The Susu civilization reached its height in the 13th century. Today the Susu make up about 20% of Guineas population. From the 16th to the 19th century, the Fulani empire dominated the region. In 1849, the French claimed it as a protectorate. First called Rivières du Sud, the protectorate was rechristened French Guinea; finally, in 1895, it became part of French West Africa.
Guinea achieved independence on Oct. 2, 1958, and became an independent state with Sékou Touré as president. Under Touré, the country was the first avowedly Marxist state in Africa. Diplomatic relations with France were suspended in 1965, with the Soviet Union replacing France as the countrys chief source of economic and technical assistance.
Prosperity came in 1960 after the start of exploitation of bauxite deposits. Touré was reelected to a seven-year term in 1974 and again in 1981. He died after 26 years as president in March 1984. A week later, a military regime headed by Col. Lansana Conté took power.
In 1989, President Conté announced that Guinea would move to a multiparty democracy, and in 1991, voters approved a new constitution. In Dec. 1993 elections, the presidents Unity and Progress Party took almost 51% of the vote. In 2001, a government referendum was passed that eliminated presidential term limits, thus allowing Conté to run for a third term in 2003. Despite the trappings of multiparty rule, Conté has ruled the country with an iron fist.
Guinea has had ongoing difficulties with its neighbor Liberia, which was embroiled in a long civil war during the 1990s and again in
John F. Hicks is a diplomat and global educator who served as a United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN). A native of Goldsboro, North Carolina, Hicks was born in 1949. Hicks holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Morehouse College, a diploma and master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy and Washington, D.C.
His career in international relations and diplomacy began in 1973 when he joined the United Internship Program with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This service propelled him through the ranks where he served in senior leadership positions in Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Zambia, and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. In 1989, Hicks was awarded the Agency’s Senior Foreign Service Presidential Meritorious Service Award.
Hicks received his first presidential appointment in 1993 as the Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Africa Bureau. In this capacity Hicks was responsible for distributing aid in addition to strategically managing United States humanitarian and economic development programs on behalf of Sub-Saharan Africa. Towards the end of his tenure with USAID, he became a member the Senior Foreign Service and was promoted to the rank of Career Minister.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton announced Hicks’s second appointment, as Ambassador to Eritrea. By 1997, Federal investigator Jacquelyn L. Williams-Bridgers had begun investigating Hicks on accusations of sexual misconduct. In September of 1997 Hicks resigned after a report by Williams-Bridgers concluded that he had engaged in sexual misconduct. Hicks was accused of sexual harassment against two secretaries in the U.S. Embassy in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. The women claimed he engaged in inappropriate physical contact and created a hostile work environment for them.
Originally, Hicks denied these accusations and prepared to defend himself in the upcoming hearings. He decided, however, to resign to spare his family embarrassment, and instead to pursue a career in the United
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
On July 2, 2009 President Barack Obama appointed Gayleatha Beatrice Brown to be the United States ambassador to Burkina Faso, a nation in West Africa. This was her second ambassadorial appointment. Previously, Brown had been appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Benin, a post she held from 2006 to 2009.
Brown was born in Matawan, West Virginia on June 20, 1947. Her family moved to New Jersey when she was a child and she graduated from Edison High School, in Edison, New Jersey in 1964. She received bachelor’s and master’s honor degrees from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1968 and 1970, respectively. Brown also did post-graduate work in international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Before joining the United States Foreign Service in 1982, Brown was a Special Assistant at the Agency for International Development (USAID). She was later Assistant Administrator for Africa and a legislative assistant to the House of Representatives.
Brown had had extensive overseas experience before her ambassadorial appointment. Her first posts were, successively, as Development Officer at the U.S. Embassies in Paris, France and Abidjan, Côte dIvoire. She also served as Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, and U.S. Consul General and U.S. Deputy Permanent Observer (concurrently) to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. She was Chief of the Economic and Commercial Sections at the U.S. Embassies in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She was also desk officer at the U.S. State Department for Canada, Senegal, Guinea, and Mauritania.
Brown has represented the Department of State at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at Credit Arrangement negotiations, and she was a Desk Officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM).
Brown’s honors and recognitions include the Lady of the Golden Horseshoe (West Virginia state
But now the contraction in the Chinese economy has paused the illegal logging in the Outamba-Kilimi national park – more than 1,100 square km of park protected by 27 unarmed rangers.
“No Chinese men are coming here anymore, and they’re the only people to come here and help us by buying what we cut,” said Ishmael Sessay, who has been harvesting timber from Sierra Leone’s oldest park since last year.
Logging for domestic use is allowed, but the government says logging in the park goes far beyond what is needed to satisfy home demand, and it does not have the resources to stop it.
“I feel pain in my heart when I see this forest cut,” said Musa Kamara, who worked as a ranger in the park from 1981 to 2018.
In a related development, Nigeria is facing life without oil revenue as oil prices, now around $20 a barrel, have already skidded to the zero point.
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Sister Marie Stella's association has joined with others to call for help from donors abroad through a new organization \"Enfants de l'Espoir\" (Children of Hope).
Last September, Noura joined the Fraternité Hospitalière des Serviteurs de la Miséricorde (Hospital Fraternity of the Servants of Mercy) created in 2015, where Sister Marie Stella, the only nun engaged in the association, lives with five other women who work for Vivre dans l'Espérance.
After meeting several young women who were sisters or were hoping to become nuns but were rejected by religious congregations when they told them they were HIV-positive, Sister Marie Stella felt she had to welcome them to a place where they could live their commitment to religious life.
Every morning, with other people working for Vivre dans l'Espérance and sometimes young volunteers from Europe spending a few weeks or a few months to help the association, members of the fraternité attend Mass and pray together.
At Sister Marie Stella's organization, Muslim children study the Quran when Christians go to catechism class.
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.
Afro-Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans refers to Latin American people of significant African ancestry. The term may also refer to historical or cultural elements in Latin America thought to have emanated from this community.[20]
The term Afro-Latin American refers specifically to people of African ancestry and not to European ancestry, such as Sub-Alpine European white.[21] [22] The term is not widely used in Latin America outside academic circles. Normally Afro-Latin Americans are called black (Spanish: negro; Portuguese: negro or preto; French: nègre or noir). More commonly, when referring to cultural aspects of African origin within specific countries of Latin America, terms carry an Afro- prefix followed by the relevant nationality. Notable examples include Afro-Cuban,[23] Afro-Brazilian,[24] and Afro-Haitian.[25]
The accuracy of statistics reporting on Afro-Latin Americans has been questioned, especially where they are derived from census reports in which the subjects choose their own designation, because in various countries the concept of African ancestry is viewed with differing attitudes.[24] [26]
In the 15th and 16 centuries, many people of African origin arrived in the Americas with the Spanish and Portuguesese. Pedro Alonso Niño, traditionally considered the first of many New World explorers of African descent[27] was a navigator in the 1492 Columbus expedition. Those who were directly from West Africa mostly arrived in Latin America as part of the Atlantic slave trade, as agricultural, domestic, and menial laborers and as mineworkers. They were also employed in mapping and exploration (for example, Estevanico) and were even involved in conquest (for example, Juan Valiente.) The Caribbean and Latin America received 95 percent of the Africans arriving in the Americas with only 5 percent going to Northern America.[28] [29] [30] [31]
Countries with significant African, Mulatto, or Zambo populations today include Brazil (57 million, if including the pardo Brazilian population with Mulatto
April 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.
Ghana has undertaken 160,501 tests since the outbreak, a figure the president touted as highest per million people than any other country in Africa.
May 10: 4,263 cases, Accra prison ‘infected’
\tGhana’s case statistics as of close of day May 9 stood at 3,263 according tallies released by the health service.
May 9: 900+ new cases, tally hits 4,012
\tGhana returned to most impacted West African country after authorities disclosed a record one-day increase of over 900 cases late Friday.
May 7: 3,091 cases, police rolls out mass tests
\tGhana’s case statistics stood at 3,091 in the latest tallies released early Thursday by the Ghana Health Service.
A plucky young girl in West Africa tells the story of her growing up in the novel Of Women and Frogs by Bisi Adjapon.
Esi lives a happy life in Lagos with her Ghanaian father, Nigerian mother and younger brother.
Over the years we follow Esi as she blossoms into a young woman.
Of Women and Frogs traverses the coming of age experiences of young African women and Esi’s feelings and frustrations are relatable.
In tracing Esi’s journey into adulthood Adjapon boldly explores the hard choices confronting African girls and covert topics such as unwanted pregnancies, back-alley abortions, masturbation and same sex relationships in boarding schools.
The Ghana Football Association (GFA) on behalf of the entire football fraternity, has congratulated the newly-appointed Justice of the Supreme Court (JSC) Issifu Omoro Amadu Tanko.
Amadu Tanko JSC was a former Appeals Committee Chairman of the GFA.
\"We are profoundly proud, but unsurprised by the achievements and the well-deserved elevation of Justice Issifu Omoro Amadu Tanko,\" a GFA statement said.
The statement added that as a former Chairman of the GFA Appeals Committee and other judicial bodies of the Football Association, Justice Tanko's contribution to the judicial jurisprudence of the GFA could not be overemphasised.
The GFA wished the Supreme Court Judge Amadu Tanko the very best \"as he begins his important journey for the nation.\"
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
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.
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.
The country with the continent’s most developed economy also has its highest number of confirmed infections — more than 21,000, representing 20% of Africa’s total.
The lockdown that began March 27 in South Africa is increasing tensions in Soweto, said Dlamini, who closed her tourism business.
Five weeks into the lockdown, South Africa began a gradual easing on May 1, allowing selected mines, factories and businesses to reopen with up to 30% of employees.
South Africa is still a long way from full economic activity, and further easing will be determined by the spread of the disease and hospitalizations.
South Africa is rated as one of the world’s most unequal countries, and the president has said in his evening addresses to the nation that his response to the pandemic aims to build a more equitable country.
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
Shirley Elizabeth Barnes is a former United States Ambassador to the African country of Madagascar, 1998-2001. Barnes was nominated by President Bill Clinton on June 29, 1998 and after confirmation by the U.S. Senate, arrived in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and presented her credentials on August 30, 1998.
Ambassador Barnes was born in St. Augustine, Florida on April 5, 1938. Her father worked as a waiter out of Miami for the Seaboard Airlines Railroad before he moved his family to Saratoga, New York, when Shirley was just five years old. There, her father continued to work as a waiter most of his life, while her mother worked as a teacher, a pianist, and a dressmaker. Eventually, the family prospered and settled in the Sugar Hill neighborhood of New York City.
Barnes attended the Baruch School of Business at the City College of New York and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in 1956. While in college, she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and pledged Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She also became fluent in the French language while at City College.
Through her church, Barnes was introduced to Crossroads Africa, a recently created student exchange program that connected student service projects in rural villages of various African countries. Through this experience, Barnes travelled to Togo, West Africa, and helped to build schools in 1958.
Upon her return, she decided to return to school to study international affairs and international relations at Boston University in Massachusetts. While at Boston University, a Crossroads Africa colleague connected her to an opportunity in the Congo. She worked there for the Ford Foundation from 1961 to 1965 as a program assistant. During her time in the Congo she worked on education, environmental issues, gender issues, and civil unrest. Returning to the United States in 1965, Barnes worked for the African American Institute, an organization of African Americans who
This greater need for peacekeeping efforts offers an opportunity for the UN to explore a real spectrum of peace operations beyond the large multidimensional model.
Unlike recent closures in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire - where missions ended following successful peace processes - those in Darfur and Congo will be leaving with far greater risks of relapse into large-scale violence.
The UN should treat the current COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to transform its approach to peace operations.
Models without a military component exist, including the peacebuilding mission in Guinea-Bissau, the new political mission in Haiti, the regional prevention work of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel, and a range of successful conflict prevention initiatives by the UN in non-mission settings.
As the UN reflects on 72 years of peacekeeping, it should not be consumed with how to draw down its big operations or how to survive with its current models.
Ghanian Minister Invites African Americans To Re-Settle In The Country Amid via of the Return was a successful tourism initiative designed by Ghana to encourage African Americans and others within the African diaspora to visit the country marking the 400th anniversary of the first documented arrival of slaves from West Africa to America as a hub of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Amid the recent protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others in the news, a Ghanian politician recently extended a hand of welcome to those who want to leave U.S. behind.
Barbara Oteng Gyasi, a local politician and member of Parliament, spoke out after the racism in the United States to offer solidarity with African Americans abroad, offering them refuge in Ghana.
Since the success of the tourism initiative, the government had planned to continue to build on it with a new program “Beyond the Return” which aims to encourage investment in Ghana, specifically targeting African Americans.
“We feel that given the wealth that African Americans and black Americans have, given that spending power, travel budgets of blacks in America,” Akwasi Agyeman, CEO of Ghana Tourism Authority.
Following the introduction of cattle into the Caribbean in 1493, during Christopher Columbus’s second voyage, cattle ranching proliferated along a series of frontiers across the grasslands of North and South America. While historians have recognized that Africans and their descendants were involved in the establishment of those ranching frontiers, the emphasis has been on their labor rather than their creative participation. In his recent book, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900, historian Andrew Sluyter explores their creative contributions. In the article below he describes one such contribution, the balde sin fondo (bottomless bucket) and its role in cattle ranching on the Pampas of Argentina.
Africans did not play a creative role in establishing cattle ranching on the Pampas during colonial times. Yet by the early 1800s the presence of enslaved and free people from Senegambia (present-day Senegal and Gambia) on ranches resulted in the introduction of an African water-lifting device: the bottomless bucket, or balde sin fondo. With victory over Spain in 1818, Argentinean independence, and the opening of new export markets for livestock products, ranching expanded across the vast Pampas grasslands, and new practices dramatically changed the colonial herding ecology. Africans played a particularly creative role in a key aspect of that transformation, the supplying of drinking water to the herds as they expanded into pastures distant from major perennial streams. That challenge was familiar to Senegambian herders who had to supply water during the long drive southward from the fringes of the Sahara to the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers as the rains ended and the vegetation of the Sahel turned from green to brown.
The bottomless bucket provided the solution before windmills rendered it obsolete in the early twentieth century. The bottomless bucket lifted water from wells with the labor of a single person, even a child, on a horse. Observers at the time
Hubert Ogunde , (born 1916, Ososa, near Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria—died April 4, 1990, London, Eng.), Nigerian playwright, actor, theatre manager, and musician, who was a pioneer in the field of Nigerian folk opera (drama in which music and dancing play a significant role). He was the founder of the Ogunde Concert Party (1945), the first professional theatrical company in Nigeria. Often regarded as the father of Nigerian theatre, Ogunde sought to reawaken interest in his country’s indigenous culture.
Ogunde’s first folk opera, The Garden of Eden and the Throne of God, was performed with success in 1944 while he was still a member of the Nigerian Police Force. It was produced under the patronage of an African Protestant sect, and it mixed biblical themes with the traditions of Yoruba dance-drama. His popularity was established throughout Nigeria by his timely play Strike and Hunger (performed 1946), which dramatized the general strike of 1945. In 1946 the name of Ogunde’s group was changed to the African Music Research Party, and in 1947 it became the Ogunde Theatre Company. Many of Ogunde’s early plays were attacks on colonialism, while those of his later works with political themes deplored interparty strife and government corruption within Nigeria. Yoruba theatre became secularized through his careful blending of astute political or social satire with elements of music hall routines and slapstick.
Ogunde’s most famous play, Yoruba Ronu (performed 1964; “Yorubas, Think!”), was such a biting attack on the premier of Nigeria’s Western region that his company was banned from the region—the first instance in post-independence Nigeria of literary censorship. The ban was lifted in 1966 by Nigeria’s new military government, and in that same year the Ogunde Dance Company was formed. Otito Koro (performed 1965; “Truth is Bitter”) also satirizes political events in western Nigeria in 1963. An earlier play produced in 1946, The Tiger’s Empire, also marked the first instance in Yoruban theatre that women were billed to appear in
Subsequently, government reserved 425 hospital beds and five ventilators for COVID-19 at one of the tertiary care hospitals in the capital, Harare, and is upgrading and refurbishing infectious diseases hospitals around the country.
Apart from increasing hospital capacity for COVID-19 cases, the response in Zimbabwe has included public awareness campaigns, promotion of social distancing including banning public gatherings, closing schools and colleges, and culminated in a 21-day general lockdown, which was later extended by 14 days.
The nascent SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has not followed the usual script of infectious diseases, of being predominantly found in impoverished areas.
Older age has been consistently associated with heightened mortality from differences in the population age structure can lead to dramatic differences in mortality for COVID-19 disease[18] Thus, it is reasonable to anticipate a much lower mortality from COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to Europe and North America, where there is a much larger proportion of older people.
A potential source of higher than anticipated mortality from COVID-19 disease in sub-Saharan Africa is the high burden of HIV infection [5].
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.
Art historian Shawn Michelle Smith—in her new book Photographic Returns: Racial Justice and the Time of Photography—examines the famous photograph of Emmett Till’s corpse.
Yet, while André’s recollection gave shape to the trajectory of Bajorek’s book—which is about decoloniality in the 1960s—his account also obscured an important collaborator in Diop’s practice: the photographer’s wife, Ndèye Teinde Dieng.
Given the issues exemplified by Smith and Bajorek, can there really be decolonial photography?
Smith’s description of Haynes’s portrait has a crescendo effect: the photograph is introduced with a vignette that intensifies as she folds in facts, anecdotes, and theories about antiblack racism in the United States.
Smith starts with a selection of images that are ingrained in the United States’s popular memory: Frederick Douglass’s perfectly parted hair, VanDerZee’s bourgeois Harlem, and cotton fields of the Deep South, to name a few.
The motorcade for President Donald Trump arrives at Trump National Golf Club, Saturday, May 23, 2020, in Sterling, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
STERLING, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump played golf Saturday for the first time since he declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency more than two months ago, leading to the shutdown of much of American society.
The White House had no comment on the president’s activities at the club, but said he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the pandemic’s effect on the global economy on Saturday.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, and Trump followed with the national emergency declaration two days later.
READ MORE: Former White House butler who served 11 presidents dies of coronavirus
Trump has ordered U.S. flags on federal buildings and national monuments to half-staff through Sunday in memory of Americans lost to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
American flags fly at half-staff, following orders from President Donald Trump to honor COVID-19 victims, near the Washington Monument on the National Mall, May 22, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Trump levied frequent criticism of Barack Obama’s regular golf outings when he was president.
Afro-Caribbeans are Caribbean people who trace at least some of their ancestry to West Africa in the period since Christopher Columbuss arrival in the region in 1492. Other names for this ethnicity include African-Caribbean (especially preferred among the United Kingdom branch of the diaspora), Afro-Antillean, or Afro-West Indian. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, European-led triangular trade brought enslaved West African people to work on Caribbean islands, primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Many Afro-Caribbeans also have non-African ancestry, such as European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American, as there has been extensive intermarriage and unions among the peoples over the centuries.
Although most Afro-Caribbean people today live in French, English, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations, there are also significant diaspora populations throughout the Western world – especially in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Both the home and diaspora populations have produced a number of individuals who have had a notable influence on modern Western, Caribbean, and African societies; they include political activists such as Marcus Garvey and C.L.R. James; writers and theorists such as Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon; US military leader and statesman Colin Powell, whose parents were immigrants; and Jamaican musician Bob Marley.
During the post-Columbian era, the archipelagos and islands of the Caribbean were the first sites of African diaspora dispersal in the western Atlantic. Specifically, in 1492, Pedro Alonso Niño, an African-Spanish seafarer, was recorded as piloting one of Columbuss ships. He returned in 1499, but did not settle. In the early 16th century, more Africans began to enter the population of the Spanish Caribbean colonies, sometimes arriving as free men of mixed ancestry or as indentured servants, but increasingly as enslaved workers and servants. This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the
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.
At the onset of the Industrial Revolution (circa 1750-1850), European countries began scouring the globe looking for resources to power their economies. Africa, because of its geographic location and its abundance of resources, was seen as a key source of wealth for many of these nations. This drive for control of resources led to the Scramble for Africa and eventually the Berlin Conference of 1884.
At this meeting, the world powers at the time divided up the regions of the continent that had not already been claimed.
Originally, North Africa was settled by the indigenous peoples of the region, the Amazigh or Berbers as they have come to be known. Because of its strategic location on both the Mediterranean and Atlantic, this area has been sought after as a center of trade and commerce for centuries by many conquering civilizations. The first to arrive were the Phoenicians, followed by the Greeks, then the Romans, numerous Muslim dynasties of both Berber and Arab origin, and finally Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Morocco was viewed as a strategic trade location because of its position at the Strait of Gibraltar. Although it was not included in the original plans to divide up Africa at the Berlin Conference, France and Spain continued to vie for influence in the region.
Algeria, Moroccos neighbor to the east, had been a part of France since 1830.
In 1906, the Algeciras Conference recognized France and Spains claims for power in the region. Spain was granted lands in the southwest region of the country as well as along the Mediterranean Coast in the North. France was granted the rest and in 1912, the Treaty of Fez officially made Morocco a protectorate of France.
In the aftermath of World War II, many African countries began seeking independence from the rule of Colonial powers. Morocco was among the first nations to be granted independence when France relinquished control in the spring of 1956. This independence also included the lands claimed by Spain in the southwest and in the north
