There is something beautiful when Africans tell their own story.  When the story tellers are children, it has a charm all of its own.  This is the ambitious and heartwarming Our Africa project put together by Soschildren.

They gave filming classes to children in different African countries, gave them cameras and editing equipment and told them to tell their stories.  From Ghana, to Congo, to Ethiopia, to Sudan, these children take you on a personal trip that as foreign tourists you would miss even if you spend months in those African countries.

From the map of Africa on the home page, chose a country, delve in, watch videos arranged in themes (people, food, culture, nature), learn more, come back another day.  There is enough to keep you coming… click here to read whole article and make comments

Zimbabwe’s president Mugabe has alerted African security forces of an imminent threat by foreigners and former colonizers to invade Africa to plunder its natural resources and wealth, especially in the light of current world-wide recession.  He sounded the alarm early this week at the opening of a conference of Africa’s secret service agencies taking place in his country under the aegis of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services.   The theme of the conference is “The Role of Security Services in Protecting Africa’s Natural Resources and Future Economic Development”.   

Robert Mugabe is a hero in the eyes of many, and a criminal in the eyes of an almost equal number, especially outside Africa.   Love him, hate him, you cannot ignore him, and you may endlessly crack your skull open in frustration wondering how he manages to still cling on to… click here to read whole article and make comments

A few weeks ago I was searching online for new humanitarian projects and initiatives dedicated to authentic development in Africa, and it dawned on me that in this difficult and dry global economic climate , many humanitarian aid projects have been inevitably defunded and donor-nations that had once pledged and promised to support sustainable development in Africa have quietly withdrawn because of their own difficulties. 

So imagine my shock and horror to discover that in this economic drought, the one well that has not run dry is SAAF -the safe abortion action fund - a multi-donor funding mechanism which was formed for the sole purpose of spreading abortion to every part of the world . So, as good development projects are allowed to dry up and die, SAAF enjoys renewed commitments from donors that keep it going and growing every… click here to read whole article and make comments

The Economist hosted a debate on the topic: How real is the rise of Africa? This short video summarises the ensuing discussion. Fascinating stuff. What do you think? Leave a comment. 

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Everyone loves a good story. Stories fascinate, edify and humanize us; they give us role-models and prisms through which we can interpret the world. Well, the storytelling tradition is still alive and well in Africa. Proof is that even in our digitized and culturally fragmenting age, there are millions if not billions of stories making their rounds on social media, blogs, vlogs and other file sharing sites. A case in point is the 2011, African continent-wide digital storytelling contest on YouTube, entitled “I am Africa, this is My Story…” was launched by Chrysalis Campaign and sponsored by UNESCO. Then there is the Storymoja, a venture formed by a handful of writers who are committed to fostering and celebrating East African writing in the form of short stories, poetry etc. and let us to forget the numerous and memorable TED talks on Africa.

… click here to read whole article and make comments

In the past weeks we have witnessed the verbal war between Malawi and Madonna – who has adopted two Malawian-born children. Three themes have dominated the media overload – the altercations between Madonna and Malawi; Celebrity Charity and Corruption. We intend to peer into these three layers.

Madonna Vs Malawi?

Madonna had visited Malawi to inspect 10 classroom blocks her charity was building there. At the departure hall of the airport, Madonna realized that the VIP statues had been withdrawn from her and her entourage. But that’s only the beginning of the drama.

Not wanting to be outdone in the war of spit: the office of the Malawian president, Joyce Banda, accused Madonna of wanting Malawi “to be forever chained to the obligation of gratitude”. Part of the harshly-worded statement reads thus:

Madonna feels that the Malawi Government and… click here to read whole article and make comments

I was captivated by a recent piece in the New York Times  about an African woman who is pitching in to transform America’s literary culture. Uzoamaka Maduka; a 25 year old woman, born to Nigerian parents and raised in Maryland is starting a literary magazine called the “American Reader”. Asked why she is starting such a magazine, she said, “So many of the voices in fiction that are out there are deeply neurotic white male stories of how, ‘Oh, I had weird sex’; I kind of felt like, I really don’t want to sit still for this.”

My sentiments exactly! I have planned many quiet weekends, indoors; cuddled up with books I thought will be great reads only to be discomfited by their lurid and sleazy contents. Every now and then, I find myself immersed in the deeply disturbed ramblings of… click here to read whole article and make comments

In spite of the promise early this year by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that their intervention in Mali would be short, France has just announced a change of mind – despite the desert pull out, it would retain about 1,000 soldiers in Mali, to help keep the peace, prevent the Islamic extremists from returning to the cities and establish democracy.  Those are the official reasons but many people doubt it, asserting that France (and the US) instead want to keep Mali under colonial rule.

Islamic militants with link to Al Qaeda have held Mali to ransom and France, longtime ally of the country could not sit back and let them have another foothold from where to launch attacks on the rest of the world.  Every right thinking person should support the routing of Al Qaeda and any form of terrorism,… click here to read whole article and make comments

The joke is told of a Kenyan runner who was asked how he almost always managed to win his races by effortlessly cruising past the finish line, to which he replied that racing had always been his passion. He should have kept quiet after that remark but in the euphoria of the moment he added; in embarrassingly poor English, that he’s not the only “race-ist” in his family. His father was a racist, his mother was a racist and to as if to hammer the point home he concluded that ALL his grandparents were racists. The interviewer chuckled under his breath but I’m sure that deep down he found he was laughing out loud.

I’m hoping this humorous anecdote will serve as a buffer for the contentious statements I’m about to make on the topic… click here to read whole article and make comments

We’ve all read about “American exceptionalism” – the idea that America is great because it is different. Because of a unique combination of historical, sociological, religious and political factors, it offers something special to the world.

But what about “African exceptionalism”? Two experts, John Bongaarts and John Casterline, examine this intriguing notion in the latest issue of the world’s leading demography journal, the Population and Development Review.

For demographers, sub-Saharan Africa is a conundrum. In the 1950s fertility levels in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia were high and stable. Women made little effort to limit their fertility through abortion and contraception. But in the mid-1960s fertility began to decline in South America and Asia from about 5.8 children per woman. By 2010, in both regions, it had fallen to about 2.3. This is applauded by… click here to read whole article and make comments