More here...'Eyes from South to West' , which explores the experiences of individuals and families who have migrated from Nigeria to Europe. Through photography and audio interviews, he investigates the contradictions of the migratory experience and exposes the tensions between the dreams and realities of starting a new life.
Paradoxically, the boldest course would be for the government to stop managing these revenues and turn over a large fraction of these funds directly to the people, as is done in the US state of Alaska and the Canadian province of Alberta. At the earliest opportunity, Nigeria's government should convene a conference of all national and regional leaders and secure agreement on a constitutional provision whereby each household would be guaranteed a share of oil revenues, with the amount determined by prevailing prices and quotasMore here
I think it's the fact that the English were better integrated, along with colonization, and a culture of economic neo-liberalism... This economic culture is based entirely on concepts and Anglo-Saxon ideology (English 18th and 19th century and American 20th) of the Protestant...France, like other Latin countries as part of a Catholic Christian tradition has always encouraged people to focus on poverty and humility (for easier entry into the kingdom of God), the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, when capitalism was strongly criticized...More here
If African leaders cannot see that there is something fundamentally wrong with an African man, an African woman, an African child being treated worse on their own continent than foreigners from Europe and North America are being treated, then we are in sad and serious trouble...More here
Sola Odunfa's elaboration on Economic and Financial Crimes Commission czar Farida Waziri's comments that the "extent of aggrandisement and gluttonous accumulation of wealth" has led her to believe some Nigerians might be "psychologically unsuitable for public office," is even more danming when read out loud:
A high profile panel aptly titled "Corruption Hunters," answered questions about international corruption and the role of the media during the 3rd Annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting back in April.
In Lagos, everything is informal. The bus system is informal—the government got out of mass transit business decades ago (though it has recently stepped back into public transport with a bus rapid transit line) and the system that includes more than 75,000 danfos was held together informally by the National Union of Road Transport Workers as one-part mass transit and one-part Ponzi scheme. One of the largest formal supermarkets in Lagos buys most of its product from informal wholesalers. Some major multinationals here distribute their products through informal networks. And informal merchants invest in the formal world.
Authorities in the city acknowledge that as much as 80 percent of the work force—and Lagos has between nine and 17 million inhabitants, depending on where you draw the boundaries and who’s doing the counting—is involved in the informal sector. The federal government also suggests that somewhere around 60 to 70 percent of the country’s economic activity derives in some way from the informal sector—and this means that, in aggregate, merchants like Prince Chidi Onyeyirim and Fatai Agbalaya are more important to Nigeria’s future than Shell, Mobil, and Chevron, the multinational oil giants that pump sweet crude from the Niger River Delta.
Mama Lucy Kampton is the founder and headmistress of Shepherds Junior School. Mama Lucy used to sell chickens. She saved her income and, in 2003, used it to start a primary school near her home in Tanzania, believing that education is the key to transforming a country gripped by poverty. Her spirit, determination and skill has enabled the school to grow over the last six years from one classroom with fewer than ten students, to a school that now serves more than 300 children at eight grade levels.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7aa0a85e-4ee3-4f50-b5d7-0a76ed3bcf81)
via 3quarksDailyFor three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.
Particularly relevant, black African and Arab scholars say, are accounts of how the African interpretation of Islam helped regulate the affairs of men, resolve disputes and provide a model of tolerance. Buried in the crumbling manuscripts of Timbuktu and neighboring cities, scholars are finding evidence of wars averted, sieges ended and lawlessness put to rest.Photo courtesy of Getty Images
The information is all the more valuable for moderate Muslim leaders because of the rise of less tolerant forms of Islam, like Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism or the Salafist movement in Algeria, that are expanding their foothold.
The musicals made in Egypt and Asia form a genre that is always highly popular with audiences in Africa. Yet the continent's filmmakers seem practically to ignore this art form, which has fed their own imaginations. What with the Egyptian musicals, Asian adventure films, and American productions, little place is left on Africa's screens for its local tales. However, even if African productions still face the same distribution difficulties on the continent, their singularity has developed and become more polished since Independence. It a priori seems paradoxical, therefore, that Africa's directors only rarely go down the musical route in cultures that are impregnated with music, song, dance, humourMore here
via FlyGirlsNontsikelelo Veleko lives and works in Johannesburg. She is a highly original photographer and project manager/co-coordinator at the Market Photo Workshop, where she previously trained in the art of photography.
Libyan Leader Ghadaffi's "king of kings" title is an insult to our African traditions. Before shouting about African unity let Gaddaffi first address the perpetual Arab discrimination of blacks in Libya and other member states of the Arab League...Until then, he remains "king of clowns."...It is time to address the Arab crimes against blacks starting with the story of the biblical Hagar, the trans-Saharan slave trade, the Egyptian exploitation of Nubia, the rape of black women and the imposition of their light-skinned bastard children as religious and community leaders of black Africans, the conflict in Darfur and South Sudan, the maltreatment of the so-called illegal immigrants in Arab states, the marginalized black populace of Arabia, to all the injustices you can think of.More here
More hereThe African Film Library, launched on Wednesday, 23 September 2009, consists of award-winning works from more than 80 filmmakers including Senegalese Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Mambety, Yousef Chahine from Egypt, Kwaw Ansah from Ghana and Haile Gerima from Ethiopia...The online library aims to create a new audience for existing and emerging African filmmakers through the digital archive of the continent's cultural cinematic heritage, and making African artists' works easily accessible via the internet to a wide viewership around the worldwide.
More hereThe crux of this piece is this: though the military claim to have relinquished power to democratically elected leaders in Nigeria, the fact is that they have remained firmly in control. They may not hold the horns of the political cow any longer, but they sure are milking it. In every key office in Nigeria today, you are likely to find a serving or ex military person. On the chairs and boards of major companies are former soldiers. On the thrones of powerful institutions are retired military officers.
It was said that the world domination that Japan failed to achieve militarily, it achieved by economic means. In the same way, the continued domination of Nigeria that the military could not sustain with their guns, they have succeeded in executing, sublimely, through the subtle pseudo-democracy they have installed in Nigeria. This has given them control of the key indices of political and economic power in the country.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=400ed57b-9cb8-44c0-bd72-909621b0048d)
...any organization that is trying to do any serious work around leadership in Africa has make young people the core of any programming. Otherwise you haven’t looked the demographics of Africa yet and seriously thought about the implications. Convincing the Mugabe’s of the world to step down, is only part of the problem – you have to ask who is replacing the old guard? Is there a pipeline? Are the replacements different? Or are they just a younger, hungrier, more cynical version of the same (see Kenya’s parliament today).More here
I see that your foundation does offer scholarships to rising leaders, that’s a good start. But if the intention is to grow leaders at home, I would offer scholarships to enable students to attend local institutions as well.
