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The 47-year old $ 2.3 billion Forbes certified billionaire, Zhu Zhaojiang broke ties with the Chinese mobile maker, Ningbo Bird in 2006. This was after Zhu, whose English moniker is George Zho, abortively globetrotted Europe in search for markets for his Transsion Mobile company’s phones erstwhile aNingbo Bird’s subsidiary. From his Shenzhen base, George fixated …
The post Techno nameless in Shenzhen, adored in Logos appeared first on The Times Group Malawi.
Announcement of the death of former President Rawlings pic.twitter.com/7ext0fp4sd
— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) November 12, 2020
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Theodore Sedgwick Wright, prominent clergyman, antislavery leader, and reformer was thought to have been born in New Jersey in 1797. He attended the New York African Free School. With the help of New York Governor Dewitt Clinton, Arthur Tappan and others from Princeton Theological Seminary, he became the first African American graduate from an American Theological seminary. After graduation Wright became pastor of the First Colored Presbyterian Church in New York City where he worked for the rest of his life.
Wright despised slavery and racism and spoke openly about it, even though at this time it was very dangerous. He is best known for his works as an abolitionist and devotee of black civil rights. Throughout the 1830s he was an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society which sponsored his travels and lectures condemning racial prejudice. Wright’s two most influential speeches were “The Progress of the Antislavery Cause” and “Prejudice Against the Colored Man.” He wrote several entries and speeches for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, the leading anti-slavery newspaper in the United States in the antebellum period.
In 1833 Wright became one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He served as the Society’s executive committee until May 1840 when he joined other abolitionists in forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. This new moderate abolitionist organization opposed Garrison’s radical proposals regarding slavery. Wright was also the chairman of the New York Vigilance Committee which tried to prevent the kidnapping of free blacks who would then be sold into slavery. Wright also assisted fugitive slaves; his New York home was a station on the Underground Railroad.
In 1833 Wright was elected vice-president of the Phoenix Society, an organization which worked toward the improvement of the African American training “in morals, literature, and the mechanical arts.” Throughout the 1830s Wright circulated petitions to the New York legislature for the termination of
Côte dIvoire (also known as the Ivory Coast), in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, is a little larger than New Mexico. Its neighbors are Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. The country consists of a coastal strip in the south, dense forests in the interior, and savannas in the north.
Republic.
Côte dIvoire was originally made up of numerous isolated settlements; today it represents more than sixty distinct tribes, including the Baoule, Bete, Senoufou, Agni, Malinke, Dan, and Lobi. Côte dIvoire attracted both French and Portuguese merchants in the 15th century who were in search of ivory and slaves. French traders set up establishments early in the 19th century, and in 1842, the French obtained territorial concessions from local tribes, gradually extending their influence along the coast and inland. The area was organized as a territory in 1893, became an autonomous republic in the French Union after World War II, and achieved independence on Aug. 7, 1960. Côte dIvoire formed a customs union in 1959 with Dahomey (Benin), Niger, and Burkina Faso. The nations economy is one of the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa. It is the worlds largest exporter of cocoa and one of the largest exporters of coffee.
From independence until his death in 1993, Felix Houphouët-Boigny served as president. Massive protests by students, farmers, and professionals forced the president to legalize opposition parties and hold the first contested presidential election in Oct. 1990, which Houphouët-Boigny won with 81% of the vote.
Beginning in Sept. 1998, thousands of demonstrators protested a constitutional revision that granted President Henri Konan Bédié greatly enhanced powers. Bédié also promoted the concept of ivoirité, which, roughly translated, means “pure Ivoirian pride.” Although its defenders describe ivoirité as a term of positive national pride, it has led to dangerous xenophobia, with numerous ethnic Malians and Burkinans driven out of the country in 1999.
President Bédié was overthrown in the
On August 5, 1999 President William Clinton appointed Gregory Lee Johnson U.S. Ambassador to Swaziland. He served in that post from November 16, 1999 to October 18, 2001. Johnson began his career in the Foreign Service in 1968 and has served in Vietnam (1968-1971). His next posts were in Japan (1972-1976), Brazil (1976-1980), and the Soviet Union (1981-1983). He has also served in Somalia, Canada, and as Interim Charge d’ Affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. Ambassador Johnson speaks Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Vietnamese.
Gregory Lee Johnson was born in Ellensburg, Washington on July 18, 1945. His parents are Orville and Edith Johnson. He graduated from Franklin High School in Seattle, Washington in 1963 and four years later received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Washington State University. He later attended The American University, Washington, D.C. and received a master’s degree in international relations in 1968.
Besides his service abroad, Ambassador Johnson held assignments in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and attended the U.S. Army War College between 1983 and 1988. From 1989 to 1992, Johnson returned to Japan where he served as Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Osaka-Kobe, Japan.
Johnson’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Swaziland provided him the opportunity to help deepen relationships with the United States. Swaziland was the last nation in Africa to be governed by a monarchy and was seen as the most stable nation in Southern Africa. Johnson‘s greatest challenge was in helping Swaziland confront its HIV/AIDS epidemic where one-fifth of its one million people were HIV-positive.
Ambassador Johnson helped negotiate the lifting of sanctions on cane sugar exports from Swaziland to the U.S. and played a key role in gaining commitment from the Government of Swaziland to contribute resources to the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) peacekeeping efforts in in Northeast and West
On July 11, 2000, journalist and clergywoman Vashti Murphy McKenzie became the first female bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. In 2005 she became the denomination’s first woman to serve as Titular Head. Her commitment to community development is evident in her work with urban American cities as well as in AIDS-stricken Africa.
Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie was born on May 28, 1947 into a prominent Baltimore, Maryland family. Her great-grandfather John Henry Murphy, Sr. founded the Afro-American Newspaper in 1892, and her grandmother Vashti Turly Murphy was a founding member of Delta Sigma Theta, an African American college sorority. Bishop McKenzie graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland in 1978. She later earned a master’s of divinity from Howard University and a doctor of ministry from United Theological Seminary.
Bishop McKenzie began her career in journalism, working as a radio and television broadcaster and newspaper reporter before pursuing studies in divinity. After being ordained in 1984, she served as pastor for small congregations before being assigned in 1990 to the Payne Memorial AME Church in Baltimore’s inner city. Under her direction, the congregation grew from 300 to 1,700 members. She initiated community development projects including job service programs and a senior care center. Ten years later, at its annual convention in Cincinnati, the AME Church elected her to be its first female bishop, presiding over the 18th Episcopal District in southeast Africa. In that capacity she was responsible for several congregations in Africa comprised of nearly 10,000 people. Her project initiatives again centered on community development, encouraging entrepreneurial business programs and building mission housing. She also expanded services to homeless children and those infected with HIV/AIDS.
In 2005 she became the first woman to serve as Titular Head of the AME Church, overseeing the Council of Bishops as its president. She currently presides over the
Leopoldine Emma Doualla-Bell Smith is the world’s first black flight attendant. Smith was born in Cameroon which, at the time, France controlled. Smith was a princess of the royal Douala family of Cameroon. She was offered a rare after-school employment opportunity in her hometown of Douala, then the capital of the colony, to serve as a ground hostess for Union Aeromaritime de Transport (UAT), the airline that served France’s African routes.
After her graduation from high school in 1956 at the age of seventeen, Smith was sent to Paris for additional ground hostess training by Air France and then moved to UAT for flight training. In 1957 Smith began flying as a stewardess with UAT which would later merge to become part of Union de Transports Aeriens (UTA). Smith, at the time, didn’t know that she was making history as the first black person to serve as a flight attendant for any airline. She took to the air the year prior to Ruth Carol Taylor who is credited with being the first black flight attendant in the United States. Taylor’s initial flight took place on February 11, 1958, on a Mohawk Airlines flight from Ithaca, New York, to New York City.
In 1960 Smith was invited to join Air Afrique, the airline created to serve eleven newly independent French-speaking nations that were former colonies of France. Smith was the only qualified African in a French aviation; her employment identification card was No. 001. She was eventually promoted to an Air Afrique first cabin chief. During her time as a flight attendant, Smith flew throughout Africa and as far away as Australia. Because of the color of her skin, some white passengers treated her like an outcast, but dark-skinned passengers often welcomed her presence. Smith experienced frequent sexual harassment; on one occasion, she slapped a white man who had touched her breast.
In 1969 after twelve years as a flight attendant, Smith left Air Afrique to become manager of Reunited Transport Leaders Travel Agency in Libreville, Gabon. Six years later, she relocated
Askia Muhammad Touré (1493-1528), established the Askia dynasty of Songhay.
Muhammad Touré continued Sonni Alis imperial expansion by seizing the important
Saharan oases and conquering Mali itself. From there he conquered Hausaland. The
vastness of Askia Mohammeds kingdom covered most of West Africa, larger than all of the
European states combined. With literally several thousand cultures under its control,
Songhay ranked as one of the largest empires of the time.
In order to maintain his large empire Muhammad Touré further centralized the government
by creating a large and elaborate bureaucracy. He was also the first to standardize weights,
measures, and currency, so culture throughout the Songhay began to homogenize.
Muhammad Touré was also a fervent Muslim; he replaced traditional Songhay
administrators with Muslims in order to Islamicize Songhay society. He also appointed
Muslim judges, called qadis , to run the legal system under Islamic legal principles. These
programs of conquest, centralization, and standardization were the most ambitious and
far-reaching in Africa at the time. It is of note that while the urban centers were dominated
by Islam and Islamic culture, the non-urban areas were not Islamic. The vast majority of the
Songhay people, around 97%, followed traditional African religions. Under the leadership of Askia Mohammed, Timbuctu once again became a prosperous
commercial city, reaching a population of 100,000 people. Merchants and traders traveled
from Asia, the Middle East and Europe to exchange their exotic wares for the gold of
Songhay. Timbuctu gained fame as an intellectual center rivaling many others in the Muslim
world. Students from various parts of the world came to Timbuctus famous University of
Sankore to study Law and Medicine. Medieval Europe sent emissaries to the University of
Sankore to witness its excellent libraries with manuscripts and to cosult with the learned
mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, and jurists whose intellectual endeavors
Yaoundé is the capital and second largest city of Cameroon. Georg Zenker, a German scientist, led a group of people who settled Yaoundé in 1888. Yaoundé is located in the Ewondo region between the Nyong and Sanaga rivers in southern Cameroon. In 2012 an estimated 2.4 million people resided in Yaoundé.
Cameroon emerged as a major source of the slave trade in the sixteenth century. The Portuguese, British, French, Dutch, and Americans were heavily active in the New World trade along the coast. The Transatlantic Slave Trade was abolished in the 1800s, but European countries remained active in Africa. On the eve of the Partition of Africa Gustav Nachtigal, a German diplomat, signed a treaty with two Duala chiefs in 1884 that led to the establishment of German Kamerun. In 1909, Yaoundé became the capital of German Kamerun.
During World War I, British, French, and Belgian troops invaded German Kamerun. Belgian troops occupied Yaoundé throughout the war. Following the end of World War I, the League of Nations divided Kamerun, giving the British control of the eastern territory and the French control of the remainder of the territory. Yaoundé became the capital of French Cameroun. Infrastructure investments such as road and railway projects connected Yaoundé to Douala, the largest city in French Cameroun, and the northern region of the territory.
Following World War II, nationalism emerged in British Cameroons and French Cameroun. Nationalists formed the socialist Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) in 1948. The UPC called for independence from Great Britain and France and reunification of the two territories. On January 1, 1960 France granted independence to French Cameroun. Ahmadou Ahidjo became the first president of the Republic of Cameroon. In 1961, President Ahidjo reunified British Cameroons with the Republic and Yaoundé became the capital of independent Cameroon.
Ahidjo centralized political authority in Yaoundé. The capital’s population grew from 100,000 in 1960 to 314,000 in 1976. The University of
