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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.
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).
Republic.
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
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
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
Ghana is close to announcing a roadmap toward easing of Covid-19 restrictions, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said on Sunday.
Akufo-Addo said consultations are ongoing with relevant stakeholders on the form and timing of easing the restrictions.
Ghana banned social gatherings on March 15, following the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country.
The president said the proposed easing of restrictions intends to restore \"social and economic lives.\"
\"I expect these consultations to conclude this week so that I can announce to Ghanaians a clear roadmap for easing the restrictions.
The sole child of immigrants from the Barbados, Ulric St. Clair Haynes Jr. was born June 8, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York. Haynes attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduating cum laude in 1952, and then earned a law degree at Yale University four years later. Haynes worked briefly as an executive assistant with the New York State Department of Commerce, and from 1956 to 1959 he was an administrative officer with the United Nations’ European Office in Geneva, Switzerland, assigned to recruit military and police officers for the UN’s Palestine peacekeeping missions and attend to UN concerns in the newly independent Republic of Guinea.
A hallmark of Haynes’ professional life was his alternating private sector and public service employment. From 1960 to 1963 he was the Ford Foundation’s Assistant Regional Director for West Africa. In 1964 he was the U.S. State Department’s desk officer for Southwest Africa, and from 1964 to 1966 he monitored politics in Africa for the National Security Council under McGeorge Bundy. While working as a management consultant from 1966 to 1972, Haynes also taught as an adjunct business professor at Harvard University. Hired in 1972 as Vice President of Management Development for Cummins Engine Company, located in Columbus, Indiana, two years later he became the company’s Vice President for the Middle East and African Affairs and was relocated in Tehran, Iran from 1975 to 1977.
Made aware of his varied experiences in Africa and the Middle East, in 1977 President Jimmy Carter nominated Haynes as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria. Starting November 4, 1979, Americans were riveted by reports out of Iran concerning 66 persons taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Because of his experience in the Iranian capital and familiarity with the Middle East and North Africa, Haynes helped negotiate the release of the hostages. On January 20, 1981 Haynes stood beside Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to greet the liberated hostages upon their arrival in Algiers, Algeria. Fluent
President Nana Akufo-Addo said the country’s health minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu is in a stable condition after contracting the new coronavirus.
“Let us wish our hardworking minister for health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, a speedy recovery from the virus, which he contracted in the line of duty,” Akufo-Addo said in an broadcast, giving an update on the pandemic situation in Ghana.
Let us wish our hardworking minister for health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, a speedy recovery from the virus.
Ghana has recorded 11,964 positive coronavirus cases, one of the highest in the region, but has also carried out one of the highest number of tests in the continent at 254,331 and has one of lowest number of deaths from the virus.
With 54 deaths reported thus far in Ghana, the ratio of deaths to positive cases stands at 0.4%, compared to the global average of 5.5%, and the African average of 2.6%, Akufo-Addo said.
A journalist, radical activist, and theoretician, George Padmore did more than perhaps any other single individual to shape the theory and discourse of Pan-African anti-imperialism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Born Malcolm Nurse in Trinidad in 1901, Padmore moved to the United States in 1925 to study at Fisk and Howard Universities. In 1928 he dropped out of Howards law school and joined the American Communist Party. Quickly rising in Party ranks as an expert on race and imperialism, Padmore moved to Moscow, USSR in 1929 to head the Cominterns International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers and to edit the Negro Worker. In 1931 he published the influential pamphlet, The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers. In 1933 the Comintern suspended publication of the Negro Worker and disbanded the Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, prompting Padmore to split acrimoniously with the Party. In subsequent years Padmore would become a fervent anti-Communist, denouncing the Cominterns alleged manipulation of black freedom struggles in his 1956 book Pan-Africanism or Communism? However, throughout his life he continued to unite with activists and trade unionists on the radical left around the issue of anti-colonialism.
Padmore settled in London, UK in 1936. There he helped foster a radical milieu of Pan-Africanist intellectuals that included Padmores childhood friend, the Trotskyist theorist C.L.R. James. In 1936 Padmore published How Britain Rules Africa, followed a year later by Africa and World Peace. Along with I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, Padmore and James founded the International African Service Bureau in 1937. Padmore guided the bureau through the late 1930s and early 1940s until in merged into the Pan-African Federation in 1944. He was a principal organizer of the Manchester Pan-African Congress in 1945, which helped lay the foundation for postwar African colonial liberation movements. Throughout this period Padmores articles and essays were printed regularly in the Chicago Defender, the
William Bill Pinkney is the first African American, and only the fourth person in the world to circumnavigate the globe alone by boat. Pinkney was born on September 15, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois to Marion Henderson Pinkney and William Pinkney, Sr. He attended Tilden Tech High School in Chicago, and after graduating received training as an x-ray technician.
After high school Pinkney had a variety of different jobs. He was on active duty in the Navy from 1956 to 1960 as a hospital corpsman. He decided to move to Puerto Rico after leaving the Navy and while there held a series of jobs including one as a professional limbo dancer. Eventually he hired on to work as a crewman on sailboats. Pinkney then moved to New York, trained to become a make-up artist and eventually landed a job at Revlon, the cosmetics company. From there he moved back to his hometown of Chicago to work for the Johnson and Johnson Company. By 1980, however, Pinkney was an employee of the city of Chicago.
Despite the variety of jobs, Pinkney continued his interest in sailing that he had developed in Puerto Rico and became particularly adept at sailing alone. At the age of 50, after thinking about the legacy he would leave behind for his two grandchildren, April and Brian Walton, Pinkney decided he would attempt to sail around the world alone to encourage them to think and do the impossible. After receiving funding from the industrialist Armand Hammer and a Boston law firm, Aldrich, Eastman, and Waltch, he began to plan his solo voyage.
At the age of 55 Pinkney began his odyssey on August 5, 1990, setting sail from Boston Harbor. He sailed on a 47-foot boat called The Commitment, which had been specially rigged so one man could operate it. Out of all the possible routes, Pinkney chose the most difficult one, which would take him around the five capes. He made stops in Bermuda, Brazil, South Africa, Tasmania, and finally around Cape Horn (the most difficult part of the voyage). His voyage took him 22 months, including a six month
Kenya has announced ground and aerial control operations against hopper bands that were sighted in northwest Turkana and Marsabit.
Ministry of Agriculture Principal Secretary Prof Hamadi Boga, in the State Department for Crop Development and Agriculture Research announced the spraying of the hoppers that were seen in Turkana last Sunday, and which are likely to spread into Eastern Uganda.
\"The new swarm of locusts that was seen in Turkana this week is in the hopper state.
The PS's remarks come a few days after Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that the first generation of desert locusts in Kenya has matured and was ready to breed.
FAO's May 26 update said the situation in East Africa remains alarming as more swarms form and mature in Ethiopia and northern and central Kenya.
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
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.
Sierra Leone more than doubled its coronavirus cases in the last 10 days (April 20 – 30 from 64 cases to 124).
April 21: President Bio enters in quarantine
\tSierra Leone president Julius Maada Bio is to undergo 14-day self-isolation after one of his bodyguards tested positive for COVID-19, reports from the West African country indicated as of Monday evening.
March 31: Sierra Leone confirms index case
\tSierra Leone president Julius Maada Bio has confirmed that the country has its first case of COVID-19, multiple media outlets in the West African country have confirmed.
March 27: Sierra Leone closes borders for 30 days
\tVirus-free Sierra Leone on Friday announced closure of its borders for a 30-day period barely days after President Julius Maada Bio announced a state of public health emergency.
VIDEO
March 24: President Maada Bio declares 12-month state of Public Health emergency
\tDespite being among 11 African countries that have not recorded any cases of the coronavirus, Sierra Leone president Julius Maada Bio has imposed a twelve-month state of public health emergency effe
On Sunday, May 17, the Minister of Health, Dr. Wilhemina Jallah flunked by the Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francis Kateh, followed by the WHO Representative to Liberia Peter Clement, Dr. Desmond William head of US Center for Disease Control (CDC) in West Africa and Liberia and USAID Resident Coordinator trooped to the sample collection center at the Samuel Kayon Doe Sport Complex for voluntary COVID-19 test.
Where the Leadership first failed
In April, the head of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL) Dr. Mosoka Fallah, who began the COVID-19 fight alongside Dr. Jallah, was called on by the public to voluntarily check his COVID-19 status.
Israel's health minister, who has had frequent contact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tested positive for COVID-19, Iran's health ministry informed in April.
Australia's home affairs minister Peter Dutton said he had tested positive on March 13 and was admitted to hospital in the northeastern state of Queensland
For many, the voluntary testing today by the health minister, the chief medical officer and key international players is long overdue.
The Health Minister's statement that \"If everybody sits complacently in their different neighborhood and think they're different or they're special - COVID-19 has no respect,\" raises the question as to why the President and his cabinet did not take the lead in this voluntary testing?
[UN News] It will take a variety of different actors to confront and deal with the \"daunting challenges\" in the Sahel region, the head of UN peacekeeping told the Security Council on Monday.
