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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.
\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.
Before Insecure star Jay Ellis would secure a leading role opposite Issa Rae in the hit HBO dramedy, he featured in a Ghanaian film about a traditional Ewe custom known as trokosi.
Trokosi has been the way of the Ewe people for centuries but in the face of modernization, or rather honestly, westernization, director Leila Djansi, urges abandonment of something African.
Other times, a young girl may be committed as a trokosi to a shrine as a symbol of the family’s gratitude to the deity of the shrine.
For as long as the priest of the deity would allow, women serving under trokosi would be housed at the shrine.
Governments in the three West African countries where trokosi is still practised have tried different means of rescuing the young women, from negotiations with local religious leaders to the threat of force carried by the state.
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.
More than a million African soldiers served in colonial armies in World War II.
May 8, 1945, marks the 75th anniversary of the surrender of the German armed forces and the end of the Second World War in Europe.
More than a million Africans served as combatants as well as war workers and carriers in World War II for the colonial powers - more than half enlisted by Britain with the rest serving France and Belgium.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Allied landing in Provence in southern France, President Emmanuel Macron expressed gratitude for the contribution of African soldiers in defeating the German forces occupying France.
Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, himself a former colonial soldier, put it like this in a 2015 interview with DW: \"In war, we saw the white men naked and we have not forgotten that picture.\"
Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a princess of the Egbado clan of the Yoruba people, is best known as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Bonetta was born in 1843 in what is now southwest Nigeria. Her parents names are unknown as are the names of her siblings who were all killed in the 1847 slave raid that made Bonetta a captive.
Bonetta’s village of Okeadan was attacked by King Gezo of Dahomey, the most notorious slave trading monarch in West Africa in the early 19th century. Intent on capturing slaves and killing those not taken, Gezo’s men seized the four year old girl. For reasons that are unclear, the girl was not killed and remained at Gezo’s Court until 1849 when British Commander Frederick Forbes’s landed the HMS Bonetta in Dahomey to persuade Gezo to give up slave raiding and trading. Forbes noticed the young girl and bargained for her life. He persuaded King Gezo to “give” her to Queen Victoria, saying “She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites.” The girl remained with Forbes in West Africa for the next year where she was baptized and given the name Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Forbes wrote that “She is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and [has] great talent for music… She is far in advance of any white child of her age in aptness of learning, and strength of mind and affection…”
Sarah Forbes Bonetta was taken to Great Britain and met Queen Victoria on November 9th, 1850 at Windsor Castle. The Queen was impressed by her intellect and entrusted her care to the Schoen family in Palm Cottage, Gillingham when Forbes died early in 1851. The Queen declared Sarah her goddaughter and paid her tutorial expenses. Young Sarah became a regular visitor to Windsor Castle.
Less than a year after she arrived, however, young Bonetta developed a cough believed to be caused by the climate of Great Britain. Queen Victoria arranged for her to be sent to what she believed was a better climate for Bonetta in Sierra Leone. There she was educated at the Female
The total cumulative number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Sierra Leone has now reached 1,001, as 32 new cases were reported yesterday.
Sierra Leone, as reported yesterday – Monday, the total cumulative number of confirmed cases was 1,001, 49 deaths and 611 recoveries; with Liberia announcing a cumulative total of 370 cases and 30 deaths, with 195 recoveries.
The Gambia has the lowest total number of recorded cases in the group with 28 confirmed cases, only one dead, and 21 recoveries.
Although the number of new cases continue to rise by an average of just over a hundred a week in Sierra Leone, the rate of transmission remains low, sparking calls for the government to now rethink its national response strategy.
With the Sierra Leone economy shrinking much faster than during the Ebola pandemic, at over 60% so far, the government is being urged to suspend nationwide curfew and travel restrictions across districts which many say are crippling the country’s economy.
THE ruling Zanu PF has failed to deal with Zimbabwe’s multifaceted crisis as the socio-economic situation continues to deteriorate since 2018 elections, a survey has shown.
According to a report on citizens’ perceptions and expectations titled Dancing on the Same Spot by SIVIO Institute, an independent organisation focused on ensuring that citizens are at the centre of processes of economic-political-social and policy change, the socio-economic crisis has worsened with no prospects of a turnaround in the immediate future.
It noted that the opposition MDC Alliance has also failed to deliver on its promises in local authorities they run, but added that the opposition party has continuously shifted the blame on Zanu PF, accusing the governing party of interference.
We have been tracking how the promises made by Zanu PF during the elections have been converted into policy programmes,” the report read.
This government still has a lot of work to convince its own citizens and also the international community that they are actually about reforms and turning around the fortunes of the countries,” the report read.
The Ministry of Aviation has re-affirmed that the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) has no contract with LCB Worldwide Ghana Limited, a local crisis management company, for the disinfection of airports in the country.
Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, he indicated that, although LCB Worldwide presented a proposal to the GACL on disinfection of the country's airports, the cost implications was unbearable for the GACL saying that, it was erroneous for anyone to suggest that a non-existing contract had been diverted.
Under this proposal to GACL, the US$19 million cost of the disinfection was to be recovered through a US$20 levy on domestic and international air passengers,\" he added.
Even before the proposal, Mr Adda explained that the Ministry and GACL were considering disinfection of airports adding that an alternative company was given the approval to undertake the exercise using laid down government policy and due process.
In furtherance of the safety and security protocols at Ghana's airports and make Ghana an aviation hub, the Minister noted that the Ministry was ready to partner with any company with the required capacity.
Because the world has another face
Open your eyes
--Angelique Kidjo1
As an amateur medievalist, I have become keenly aware of how the history of Europe in the middle ages is often misunderstood or dismissed by otherwise intelligent, educated individuals. The medieval era of those nations outside of Europe is doubly ignored, first for its disreputable time frame (the dark ages), and then for its apparent lack of direct impact on modern western society.
Such is the case with Africa in the middle ages, a fascinating field of study that suffers from the further insult of racism. With the unavoidable exception of Egypt, the history of Africa before the incursion of Europeans has in the past been dismissed, erroneously and at times deliberately, as inconsequential to the development of modern society. Fortunately, some scholars are working to correct this grave error. The study of medieval African societies has value, not only because we can learn from all civilizations in all time frames, but because these societies reflected and influenced a myriad of cultures that, due to the Diaspora that began in the 16th century, have spread throughout the modern world.
One of these fascinating and near-forgotten societies is the medieval Kingdom of Mali, which thrived as a dominant power in west Africa from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Founded by the Mande-speaking Mandinka2 people, early Mali was governed by a council of caste-leaders who chose a mansa to rule.
In time, the position of mansa evolved into a more powerful role similar to a king or emperor.
According to tradition, Mali was suffering from a fearful drought when a visitor told the king, Mansa Barmandana, that the drought would break if he converted to Islam. This he did, and as predicted the drought did end.
Other Mandinkans followed the kings lead and converted as well, but the mansa did not force a conversion, and many retained their Mandinkan beliefs. This religious freedom would remain throughout the centuries to come as Mali emerged as a
The police chief called on Nigerians to join in efforts to tackle rape and other sexual violence by ensuring prompt report of cases and working with the police to apprehend the suspects.
\"I will call on every Nigerian that comes across any victim of sexual offences, rape or gender-based violence to quickly report to law enforcement agents because keeping quiet without reporting it will give room for the perpetrators to continue to commit the offences,\" he said.
\"It has come to the public knowledge now that because of the COVID-19 restrictions, we have a surge in cases of rape and gender-based violence.
These are cases that are now coming up but we want to let members of the public know that, rape and gender-based violence has been there.
\"The police and other security agencies and other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have been collaborating, to see to it that these cases of rape and gender-based violence are dealt with.
May 12: Nigeria accepts COVID-Organics
\tNigeria is set to fly in Madagascar’s herbal cure donation from Guinea-Bissau, a top official at the president who is leader of the presidential task force on COVID-19 disclosed on Monday.
“Mr President has given instructions for the airlifting of Nigeria’s allocation of the Madagascar Covid-19 Syrup; also given clear instructions that it must be subjected to the standard validation process for pharmaceuticals; there will be no exceptions for this.
May 6: ECOWAS ‘rejects’ COVID-Organics, Madagascar’s untested virus cure
\tThe Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has dissociated itself from reports of a donation from Madagascar regarding a coronavirus herbal cure, COVID-Organics.
In a May 6 press release, the ECOWAS Commission said it dissociates itself from claims that it had “ordered a package of COVID Organics (CVO) medicine from a third country.”
“We wish to dissociate ECOWAS and its health institution, West Africa Health Organization, WAHO, from this claim and inform the general public that we have not ordered the said CVO medicine,” the statement read in part.
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
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
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.
Freetown is the capital, principal port, commercial center, and largest city of Sierra Leone. The city was founded by British Naval Lieutenant John Clarkson and freed American slaves from Nova Scotia. Freetown was part of the larger colony of the Sierra Leone which was founded by the Sierra Leone Company (SLC) in 1787. The SLC, organized by British businessman and abolitionist William Wilberforce, sought to rehabilitate the black poor of London and former slaves of North America by bringing them to the settlement in Sierra Leone where they would stop the African slave trade by spreading Christianity through the continent.
The first groups of blacks, about 400 Londoners, arrived in Sierra Leone in 1787 and established Granville Town, named after British abolitionist Granville Sharp. When the settlement was destroyed by the indigenous inhabitants in 1789, British abolitionists sent a second, larger party of 1,100 former American slaves who had been resettled in Nova Scotia at the end of the American Revolution. These settlers established Freetown in 1792. In 1800, 500 Jamaican Maroons were landed by the British.
The surviving Londoners, the Nova Scotians, and Jamaican maroons, intermarried to create the Creole population of Freetown. The Creoles banded together partly because of their Christian background and western culture but also because they lacked the tradition of native law and custom which dominated the lives of the indigenous people. Creoles also had important connections with British colonial officials who administered Sierra Leone from 1808 when they assumed control over the SLC colony, to 1961 when Sierra Leone gained its independence. Those connections allowed the Creoles, always a tiny minority of the colonys populace, to become the most powerful and influential group, after the colonial administrators, in the city and colony.
From 1808 to 1874 Freetown was the headquarters for the Royal British Navys West African Squadron which captured slave ships headed for the Americas and
Thousands of children in face masks flocked back to school in Ivory Coast on Monday after the country became one of the first in West Africa to restart lessons after a two-month coronavirus shutdown.
In Abidjan’s Adjame neighbourhood, children in backpacks queued to wash their hands under a teacher’s watchful eye before entering their school, where they sat just one to a desk with bottles of sanitising gel within reach.
Nearby countries are likely to follow closely whether the Ivory Coast’s decision to reopen schools causes a spike in infection.
“We also have an imperative duty to ensure that the children entrusted to us can complete their education,” said ministry official Assoumou Kabran.
Reopening classrooms also means thousands of pupils and their teachers must be ferried back to boarding schools outside Abidjan, epicentre of the epidemic.
Nok Culture spanned the end of the Neolithic (Stone Age) and start of the Iron Age in sub-Saharan Africa, and may be the oldest organized society in sub-Saharan Africa; current research suggests it predated the founding of Rome by some 500 years. Nok was a complex society with permanent settlements and centres for farming and manufacturing, but we are still left guessing who the Nok were, how their culture developed, or what happened to it.
In 1943, clay shards and a terracotta head were discovered during tin mining operations on the southern and western slopes of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria. The pieces were taken to archaeologist Bernard Fagg, who immediately suspected their importance. He began collecting pieces and excavating, and when he dated the pieces using new techniques, discovered what colonial ideologies said wasnt possible: an ancient West African society dating back to at least 500 B.C.E. Fagg named this culture Nok, the name of the village near to which the first discovery was made.
Fagg continued his studies, and subsequent research at two important sites, Taruga and Samun Dukiya, provided more accurate information on Nok culture. More of Noks terracotta sculptures, domestic pottery, stone axes and other tools, and iron implements were discovered, but due to the colonial dismissal of ancient African societies, and, later, the problems facing the newly independent Nigeria, the region remained understudied.
Looting carried out on behalf of Western collectors, compounded the difficulties entailed in learning about Nok culture.
It was not until the 21st century that sustained, systematic research was carried out on Nok culture, and the results have been stunning. The most recent finds, dated by thermo-luminescence testing and radio-carbon dating, indicate that Nok culture lasted from around 1200 B.C.E.
to 400 C.E., yet we still do not know how it arose or what happened to it.
The sheer volume as well as artistic and technical skills seen in the terracotta sculptures suggests that Nok culture
