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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.
Ishmael Beah is a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his personal history, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider. Beah was born on November 23, 1980, in Mattru Jong, Bonthe District, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The Sierra Leone Civil War started in March 1991 when Beah was ten years old. When he was twelve, the war affected him directly. Rebel forces attacked his home village of Mogbwemo, killing his parents.
Beah wandered as a refugee from place to place for nearly a year, both alone and with a small group of boys who included his older brother. Shortly after his brother was killed, Beah was recruited as a child soldier in the Sierra Leonean government army when he was just thirteen years old. Beah took part in numerous battles with the army, but in early 1996, at the age of fifteen, he was rescued from the military by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and placed in a rehabilitation home in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city. He spent eight months in the home before being sent to live with his uncle. In November 1996, he traveled to New York City to take part in United Nation’s First International Children’s Parliament, a conference that addressed the devastating impact of war on children in various nations around the world.
In 1997 with the help of UNICEF, Beah left Sierra Leone and arrived in New York City, New York, where he lived with Laura Simms, his foster mother. Beah, now seventeen, attended high school at the United Nations International School. After graduating, Beah enrolled Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He also won Oberlin’s Dainne Vruels Fiction Prize for his Story at Noon.
While at Oberlin, Beah was an advocate for the rights of children caught up in war. In 2006 he gave a speech at the Religious for Peace Youth Assembly, titled “Religious Youth for Peace: Confronting Violence and Advancing Shared Security” in Tokyo, Japan. In 2007 Beah published A Long Way Gone: Memoirs
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
As trucks stacked up for days, Rwanda and neighboring Tanzania worked out a deal that scrapped plans for relay drivers but mandated transferring cargo at the border, “except for trucks carrying perishable goods and petroleum products destined to Rwanda,” the Kigali government said in a news release Friday.
Kenya last week began mandatory COVID-19 testing for truckers, ordering that they undergo tests 48 hours before leaving the Port of Mombasa — a shipping hub in the country’s second-largest city — or before entering Kenya from elsewhere in East Africa.
But Wednesday, a day after Kenya announced the return of more than 180 foreigners to Tanzania because of positive COVID test results, a Tanzanian regional official accused the Nairobi government of faulty testing.
Zambia also had closed its border with Tanzania for several days last week after several truck drivers, immigration officers and sex workers tested positive for COVID, Reuters reported.
Several heads of state in the EAC bloc — including Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Salva Kiir of South Sudan — last week agreed to double testing of truckers.
Now, as restrictions on businesses begin to slowly lift and the state continues to introduce its plans for reopening, it will be up to the people to determine how we will continue fighting this pandemic day-by-day—and make sure our houseless community members are not left behind.
Mutual aid programs are a part of the legacy and tradition of Black communities throughout America and the Diaspora.
From sou-sou origins in West Africa to the Black mutual aid societies during Jim Crow and the Black Liberation Movements in the 1960’s, our communities have always been able to tap into our collective power by using mutual aid programs as a way to care and look out for one another.
While we are overjoyed with gratitude for the local business owners and volunteers who are supporting our most vulnerable community members during this time, 2020 is the year that requires more from everyone in America; and in a big way.
That’s why we’ve included My Black Counts educational materials in our mutual aid support bags for houseless community members to learn more about our Get-Out-the-Count movement.
Following the introduction of cattle into the Caribbean in 1493, during Christopher Columbus’s second voyage, cattle ranching proliferated along a series of frontiers across the grasslands of North and South America. While historians have recognized that Africans and their descendants were involved in the establishment of those ranching frontiers, the emphasis has been on their labor rather than their creative participation. In his recent book, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900, historian Andrew Sluyter explores their creative contributions. In the article below he describes one such contribution, the balde sin fondo (bottomless bucket) and its role in cattle ranching on the Pampas of Argentina.
Africans did not play a creative role in establishing cattle ranching on the Pampas during colonial times. Yet by the early 1800s the presence of enslaved and free people from Senegambia (present-day Senegal and Gambia) on ranches resulted in the introduction of an African water-lifting device: the bottomless bucket, or balde sin fondo. With victory over Spain in 1818, Argentinean independence, and the opening of new export markets for livestock products, ranching expanded across the vast Pampas grasslands, and new practices dramatically changed the colonial herding ecology. Africans played a particularly creative role in a key aspect of that transformation, the supplying of drinking water to the herds as they expanded into pastures distant from major perennial streams. That challenge was familiar to Senegambian herders who had to supply water during the long drive southward from the fringes of the Sahara to the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers as the rains ended and the vegetation of the Sahel turned from green to brown.
The bottomless bucket provided the solution before windmills rendered it obsolete in the early twentieth century. The bottomless bucket lifted water from wells with the labor of a single person, even a child, on a horse. Observers at the time
Queen Nzingha, amazon queen of matamba west africa, joins the ancestors on this day. Nzingha was a warrior queen who waged war again Europeans. Her formation of strategic alliances and fighting prowess urged other great african leaders totake a stand against the colonialism/imperialistic regimes of Europeans.
“The family of George Floyd will like to acknowledge the message of solidarity resolution and virtual tribute from His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana.
For them, the victory in the praise was the fact that through his gestures and tribute in the wake of Floyd’s death, Akufo-Addo had won some goodwill for Ghana.
However, in spite of Akufo-Addo’s attempt to add to his feats, this time, the portrait was tainted by how police in Ghana on Saturday evening dispersed Black Lives Matter protesters in the center of Accra with brute force.
But since Saturday night, some of the protesters have said they believe the aggressive response of the police was motivated by other issues they highlighted in their protest, including the unsolved case of recent kidnapping and murder of three girls in Western Ghana.
As the issue of Ghana’s own police brutality against mostly the country’s poor was debated on social media, Accra-based social justice activist and artist, Nii Kotei, took the opportunity to remind his followers on Twitter about episodes of brutality he has been noting since 2019.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was created by the Treaty of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria, on 28 May 1975. It was created to promote economic trade, national cooperation, and monetary union, for growth and development throughout West Africa.
A revised treaty intended to accelerate the integration of economic policy and improve political cooperation was signed on 24 July 1993. It sets out the goals of a common economic market, a single currency, the creation of a West African parliament, economic and social councils, and a court of justice, which primarily interprets and mediates disputes over ECOWAS policies and relations, but has the power to investigate alleged human rights abuses in member countries.
There are currently 15 member countries in the Economic Community of West African States. The founding members of ECOWAS were: Benin, Côte dIvoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania (left 2002), Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Burkina Faso (which joined as Upper Volta). Cape Verde joined in 1977.
The structure of the Economic Community has changed several times over the years. As of 2015, ECOWAS listed seven active institutions: the Authority of Heads of State and Government (which is the leading body), the Council of Ministers, the Executive Commission (which is sub-divided into 16 departments), the Community Parliament, the Community Court of Justice, a body of Specialized Technical Committees, and the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID, also known as the Fund). The treaties also provide for an advisory Economic and Social Council, but ECOWAS does not list this as part of its current structure.
In addition to these seven institutions, the Economic Community includes three specialized institutions (the West African Health Organisation, West African Monetary Agency, and the Inter-governmental Action Group against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in West Africa) and three specialized agencies (ECOWAS Gender and Development
Chartered in 1672, the Royal African Company was a royally chartered company which had a legally based monopoly on English trade to West Africa until 1698. The monopoly specifically extended through five thousand miles of the western coast from Cape Sallee (in contemporary Morocco) to the Cape of Good Hope (in what is now South Africa).
The Royal African Company traded mainly for gold and slaves (the majority of whom were sent to English colonies in the Americas). Headquarters were located at the Cape Coast Castle (located in modern-day Ghana). The Royal African Company also maintained many forts and factories in other locations such as Sierra Leone, the Slave Coast, the River Gambia, and additional areas on the Gold Coast.
The Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1698, although it continued to engage in the slave trade until 1731. It was replaced by the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa in 1752.
Royally chartered companies like the Royal African Company were important tools in the opening of the African continent to slave trade and later imperial colonizing ambitions. The Royal African Company was the second such attempt by Parliament, as they had chartered the Royal Adventurers into Africa in 1660. This first attempt failed due to factors relating to a war with Holland.
Sources:
Alexander M. Zukas, “Chartered Companies,” in Encyclopedia of WesternColonialism since 1450 ed. Thomas Benjamin (Detroit: MacmillanReference USA, 2007); K.G. Davis, Royal African Company (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1957); Robert Law, ed., The English in WestAfrica 1691-1699: The Local Correspondence of the Royal African Companyof England 1681-1699 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Contributor(s):
Bilow, Ali
University of Washington, Seattle
Entry Categories:
Hubert Ogunde , (born 1916, Ososa, near Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria—died April 4, 1990, London, Eng.), Nigerian playwright, actor, theatre manager, and musician, who was a pioneer in the field of Nigerian folk opera (drama in which music and dancing play a significant role). He was the founder of the Ogunde Concert Party (1945), the first professional theatrical company in Nigeria. Often regarded as the father of Nigerian theatre, Ogunde sought to reawaken interest in his country’s indigenous culture.
Ogunde’s first folk opera, The Garden of Eden and the Throne of God, was performed with success in 1944 while he was still a member of the Nigerian Police Force. It was produced under the patronage of an African Protestant sect, and it mixed biblical themes with the traditions of Yoruba dance-drama. His popularity was established throughout Nigeria by his timely play Strike and Hunger (performed 1946), which dramatized the general strike of 1945. In 1946 the name of Ogunde’s group was changed to the African Music Research Party, and in 1947 it became the Ogunde Theatre Company. Many of Ogunde’s early plays were attacks on colonialism, while those of his later works with political themes deplored interparty strife and government corruption within Nigeria. Yoruba theatre became secularized through his careful blending of astute political or social satire with elements of music hall routines and slapstick.
Ogunde’s most famous play, Yoruba Ronu (performed 1964; “Yorubas, Think!”), was such a biting attack on the premier of Nigeria’s Western region that his company was banned from the region—the first instance in post-independence Nigeria of literary censorship. The ban was lifted in 1966 by Nigeria’s new military government, and in that same year the Ogunde Dance Company was formed. Otito Koro (performed 1965; “Truth is Bitter”) also satirizes political events in western Nigeria in 1963. An earlier play produced in 1946, The Tiger’s Empire, also marked the first instance in Yoruban theatre that women were billed to appear in
Mali's beleaguered president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, made overtures on Sunday to the opposition coalition which is demanding his resignation, saying he is ready for talks.
Keita is struggling to maintain support in the poor and volatile country over a jihadist revolt and ethnic violence that have claimed thousands of lives, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and devastated the economy
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people rallied in Mali's capital Bamako demanding Keita's departure, in a show of force from his recently energised opponents.
That protest followed several demonstrations last month in the West African state over the outcome of recent parliamentary elections, which the president won, as well as over coronavirus restrictions.
A religious hardliner, Dicko was considered an ally of President Keita before he entered politics several months ago.
Last week officials from the UN, West Africa and the African Union (AU) held talks with Keita and Dicko separately.
Clinton’s primary challenger, Democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, endorsed her, but Sanders had a difficult time getting his diehard supporters to do the same.
In response to this rebellion, Sanders told his supporters the movement has to grow inside the Democratic Party, not outside of it.
(2016 Pennsylvania vote count…Clinton: 47.85 percent; 2,926,441—Trump: (48.58 percent; 2,970,733)
In 2016 Sanders was unable to hand over his Democratic socialist movement to Hillary Clinton and in 2020 Sanders is struggling to hand it over to Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The “Old New Left” wrote, “We are gravely concerned that some (Bernie Supporters), including the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America, refuse to support Biden, whom they see as a representative of Wall Street… Some of us think “endorsing” Joe Biden is a step too far; but we who now write this open letter all know we must work hard to elect him.
The editor of the Jacobin Magazine (which offers socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture) declared he was voting for the Green Party candidate, and took issue with the “Old New Left” haranguing young socialist.
With no clinical trials conducted in Africa, researchers have emphasized that Africa's Covid-19 research should be tailored to the continent's realities.
While some African countries, Nigeria, Zambia, Tunisia and Egypt are involved in the global Solidarity Clinical Trials, the continent needs support to develop its medicinal research potential, improve efficacy and quality as well as and encourage best medical practices.
Following the Malagasy Institute's Covid-19 drink, WHO's calls, reinforced by US Centers for Disease Control, urged people not to try the untested remedy arguing that Africans deserve to use medicines at the same standards as people in the rest of the world.
Thus, like other medicines, Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin were tested as part of Covid-19 treatment trials, so too should COVID-ORGANICS have been given the chance to allow a scientific and non-emotional rejection.
Indeed, until 12 May 2020 when the WHO agreed to clinical trials of COVID-ORGANICS, President Rajoelina had criticized the West for a condescending attitude towards traditional medicine in Africa.
Some Senegalese mosques opened their doors on Friday after the government eased coronavirus restrictions, but others judged the rate of infection too high and stayed shut.
Senegalese President Macky Sall said this week that public prayers could resume in the West African country, provided that mosques obey social-distancing rules.
In the seaside capital Dakar on Friday, according to AFP journalists, thousands of worshippers flocked to Massalikul Jinaan mosque -- which is one of West Africa's largest and belongs to the powerful Mouride brotherhood.
Mosque spokesman Mor Daga Sylla told AFP that religious authorities had insisted the faithful wash their hands and keep one metre away from one another.
Major mosques in the capital, such as the Dakar Grand Mosque and Cheikh Oumar Foutiyou mosque, said this week that they would not open again, for example, citing health risks.
John Morrow was a teacher, scholar, and diplomat who became America’s first leader at two key postings, the West African country of Guinea, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
He was born John Howard Morrow on February 5, 1910 in Hackensack, New Jersey to John and Mary Hayes Morrow. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree (A.B., 1931) from Rutgers University, Morrow also earned his Master’s degree (M.A., 1942) and his Doctoral degree (Ph.D., 1952) both from the University of Pennsylvania. He also studied in France, receiving an advanced certificate from Sorbonne, University of Paris (1947).
Morrow began his career as a secondary school teacher in Trenton, New Jersey (1931-1945) and Bordentown, New Jersey (1935-1945). He then moved to Alabama where he became a Professor of Modern Languages and Head of the Department at Talladega College (1945-1954). Atlanta, Georgia was Morrow’s next home as he taught at Clark College in Atlanta (1945-1956). He then headed to the North Carolina College at Durham, now called North Carolina Central University (1955-1959). Throughout these academic postings, Morrow developed “a scholar’s command of Latin, French, and Spanish, and a reading knowledge of German and Portuguese.” Morrow also engaged in research on French colonial administration, including in West Africa, for many years.
This expertise and language abilities led to what many saw as a questionable appointment by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1959. In that year, Eisenhower appointed Morrow, as the first U.S. Ambassador ever, to the newly independent African country of Guinea. Having never previously held a government job, Morrow was nonetheless unanimously confirmed by the U.S. senate as the nation’s Ambassador to this country which had been called “the new battleground in the East-West Cold War.” Morrow’s nomination was also problematic for many because he was a black man being appointed to such a key post at that time. A Washington Post editorial called the appointment of
A Dallas police oversight board reported that it has had over 100 calls from residents complaining about police brutalizing protesters and reporting injuries as a result of police firing non-lethal but obviously harmful projectiles.
Louisville man defending himself from police attack shot and killed
Louisville police shot and killed restaurant owner David McAtee last week during a protest on behalf of George Floyd.
Minneapolis police claim they don’t fire rubber bullets, but protesters have reported being hit by projectiles and have shown news media large rocket- and bullet-shaped objects that police have fired at them.
The protest was one of many across the nation following the police killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day.
First, the Christian Monitor reported that Trump’s approval rating has dropped 20 points among voters over age 65, the biggest drop any other age group aside from 18-29-year-olds.
Prosecutors sought Monday to overturn former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo’s acquittal last year on crimes against humanity charges stemming from his alleged role in post-election violence that killed 3,000 people nearly a decade ago.
Gbagbo and former Ivorian youth minister Charles Ble Goude have both been unable to return to the West African nation since their January 2019 acquittals under the terms of their release set by the International Criminal Court.
“In the second ground of appeal, the Prosecutor submits that the majority erred in law and/or procedure in acquitting Mr. Gbagbo and Mr. Blé Goude without properly articulating and consistently applying a clearly defined standard of proof or approach to assessing the sufficiency of the evidence at this stage, judge Chile Eboe-Osuji said.
In the second ground of appeal, the Prosecutor submits that the majority erred in law and/or procedure in acquitting Mr. Gbagbo and Mr. Blé Goude without properly articulating and consistently applying a clearly defined standard of proof or approach to assessing the sufficiency of the evidence at this stage.
In appealing that decision, the prosecutor’s office said that decision was “legally and procedurally defective such that it cannot have the legal effect of dismissing all charges against M. Gbagbo and Mr. Ble Goude.”
As governments struggle to contain COVID19, public service announcements and communication must focus on making citizens accept that the illness is a reality, giving them the knowledge to prevent and treat the infection and debunking myths and fake stories which impact the effectiveness of the response.
This could save many lives
There is fertile ground for fake stories about Corona to thrive
If there is a thin line between love and hate, there is an even thinner line between fake news and reality, especially on social media.
While lockdown-induced mischief cannot be ruled out, there are other reasons fake news and misinformation thrives: low trust, information asymmetry, a culture of weaponizing information, life experiences, cultural beliefs, myths and fragile social cohesion.
Fake news of conspiracies against Africans and Muslims is too close to the reality of botched vaccine trials in northern Nigeria and two European scientists proposing that coronavirus vaccine trials start in Africa.
As a few West African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria begin to relax lockdown rules, governments, the media and civil society must intensify communications aimed at sharing factual information on coronavirus prevention and cure; building and keeping trust; and defusing existing and new prejudices.
At 12.21 pm on Sunday, May 10, 2020 I spoke to Mr Kagina Karashani about the progress of his father’s treatment, and we discussed visitation plans following the decision of Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) administration that due to the Covid-19 scare, only one person would be allowed to see him per visitation session.
Before I was appointed to head the Media Council (MCT) we traversed the country conducting training in journalism ethics, press club leadership skills, election reporting, investigative reporting and feature writing.
He later joined the Daily News before moving on to join the Tanzania School of Journalism (TSJ) as a tutor.
In the last years of his life, the veteran journalist, who nurtured many Tanzanian journalists continued to train, especially in investigative skills, feature writing, as well as journalism ethics.
Among the books he wrote or contributed to were: To Write or Not to Write – Ethical Concerns in Journalism; Poverty Reporting – A Manual for Tanzanian Journalists; Media Ethics: Duties and Responsibilities; Feature Writing Manual and Investigative Journalism Practice in Tanzania.
In 2002, the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations formally agreed to the creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a so-called 'hybrid court,' to bring justice and reconciliation to the country and region.
David Crane spoke with Tom Sheehy, a long-time staff member on the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives, addressing the Special Court, its lessons, relevancy for today, and the state of contemporary international justice.
I also had a quarterly meeting with all of the civil society organizations of Sierra Leone to discuss their perspectives on justice, the Special Court, and various related issues.
I felt in putting together my General Strategy that the Special Court for Sierra Leone was only one star in a galaxy of stars working together to bring peace to that war-torn land.
Greatest responsibility was the standard by which the Special Court for Sierra Leone was established.
Africa breached the 200,000 mark on June 10 according to the AU’s Africa Centers for Disease Control, which at the time reported that there were 203,899 cases along with 5,530 deaths and 91,398 recoveries.
VIDEO
May 22: Cases pass 100,000 mark
\tConfirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa passed the 100,000 mark barely 24-hours after the deaths hit 3,000.
The five most impacted nations were as follows:
\t
\t\tSouth Africa: 19,137 confirmed cases
\t\tEgypt: 15,003
\t\tAlgeria: 7,728
\t\tMorocco: 7,300
\t\tNigeria: 7,016
\tSouth Africa is the most impact across the continent and in the southern African region.
April 18: Cases across Africa pass 20,000 mark
\tConfirmed cases of coronavirus passed the 20,000 mark barely 24-hours after the deaths topped 1,000.
Additional files on UNECA report from AP
April 17: Africa’s coronavirus deaths pass 1,000 mark as cases approach 20,000
\tAfrica’s coronavirus deaths have surpassed the 1,000 mark according to tallies by the john Hopkins University.
Europeans have been interested in African geography since the time of the Greek and Roman Empires. Around 150 C.E., Ptolemy created a map of the world that included the Nile and the great lakes of East Africa. In the Middle Ages, the large Ottoman Empire blocked European access to Africa and its trade goods, but Europeans still learned about Africa from Islamic maps and travelers, like Ibn Battuta.
The Catalan Atlas created in 1375, which includes many African coastal cities, the Nile River, and other political and geographical features, shows how much Europe knew about North and West Africa.
By the 1400s, Portuguese sailors, backed by Prince Henry the Navigator, began exploring the West coast of Africa looking for a mythical Christian king named Prestor John and a way to the wealth of Asia that avoided the Ottomans and the powerful empires of South West Asia. By 1488, the Portuguese had charted a way around the south African Cape and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa, in what is today Kenya, where he encountered Chinese and Indian merchants. Europeans made few inroads into Africa, though, until the 1800s, due to the strong African states they encountered, tropical diseases, and a relative lack of interest. Europeans instead grew rich trading gold, gum, ivory, and slaves with coastal merchants.
In the late 1700s, a group of British men, inspired by the Enlightenment ideal of learning, decided that Europe should know much more about Africa. They formed the African Association in 1788 to sponsor expeditions to the continent. With the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, European interest in the interior of Africa grew quickly.
Geographical Societies were formed and sponsored expeditions. The Parisian Geographical Society offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first explorer who could reach the town of Timbuktu (in present day Mali) and return alive. The new scientific interest in Africa was never wholly philanthropic, however. Financial and political support for exploration
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.
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
In the following article Dr. Clarence Spigner, Professor of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes the life of the first patient to die of Ebola on U.S. soil and the larger crisis of Ebola in West Africa. He views it as a consequence of a long history of disease, poverty, and underfunded health care systems in the West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia which are at the center of the 2014 epidemic.
On September 20, 2014, a forty-two year-old Liberian native, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived in Dallas, Texas from a plane flight that originated in Monrovia, Liberia. Duncan came to the United States ostensibly to reunite with his estranged teenaged son and the boy’s mother, Louise Troh, who had at one time been his girlfriend in Liberia. Troh and her son lived in Dallas.
Unknown before that point, Duncan entered the international public consciousness because he had flown from the hot zone of the Ebola virus outbreak then occurring in West Africa. On March 30, 2014, Liberia reported two cases of people with the Ebola disease. Six months later on September 30, over 3,000 people had died from Ebola in West Africa including more than 1,000 in Liberia alone. Duncan, who would be the first reported case of Ebola in the United States and as of this writing, the only fatality, was symptom-free and not contagious when he left Liberia by way of Brussels, Belgium and Washington, D.C.
The deadly Ebola disease has symptoms similar to the mosquito-borne infectious malaria. Both malaria and Ebola are endemic to Africa, though malaria is now far more widespread and dangerous. So is West Nile Disease which like malaria is mosquito-borne and was first identified in 1937 in the East African nation of Uganda.
Unlike those diseases, Ebola is spread by physical contact with an infected person or animal. The virus is not airborne. The rapid spread of Ebola and the even more rapid spread of fear of a worldwide distribution of the Ebola virus comes from the knowledge that diseases like
Lying on the Atlantic in the southern part of West Africa, Liberia is bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte dIvoire. It is comparable in size to Tennessee. Most of the country is a plateau covered by dense tropical forests, which thrive under an annual rainfall of about 160 in. a year.
Republic.
Africas first republic, Liberia was founded in 1822 as a result of the efforts of the American Colonization Society to settle freed American slaves in West Africa. The society contended that the emigration of blacks to Africa was an answer to the problem of slavery and the incompatibility of the races. Over the course of forty years, about 12,000 slaves were voluntarily relocated. Originally called Monrovia, the colony became the Free and Independent Republic of Liberia in 1847.
The English-speaking Americo-Liberians, descendants of former American slaves, make up only 5% of the population, but have historically dominated the intellectual and ruling class. Liberias indigenous population is composed of 16 different ethnic groups.
The government of Africas first republic was modeled after that of the United States, and Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Virginia was elected the first president. Ironically, Liberias constitution denied indigenous Liberians equal to the lighter-skinned American immigrants and their descendants.
After 1920, considerable progress was made toward opening up the interior of the country, a process that facilitated by the 1951 establishment of a 43-mile (69-km) railroad to the Bomi Hills from Monrovia. In July 1971, while serving his sixth term as president, William V. S. Tubman died following surgery and was succeeded by his longtime associate, Vice President William R. Tolbert, Jr.
Tolbert was ousted in a military coup on April 12, 1980, by Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe, backed by the U.S. government. Does rule was characterized by corruption and brutality. A rebellion led by Charles Taylor, a former Doe aide, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), started in Dec. 1989; the following
Ivory Coast's government on Tuesday accused the opposition of \"plotting\" against the state after it vowed to set up a rival government following bruising presidential elections won in a landslide by the incumbent, Alassane Ouattara.
The standoff pitched the West African nation deeper into a three-month-old crisis that has claimed several dozen lives, triggering EU appeals for calm and dialogue.
Hours after 78-year-old Ouattara was declared victor with more than 94 percent of the vote, Justice Minister Sansan Kambile accused the opposition of \"acts of assault and plotting against the authority of the state.\"
The Abidjan public prosecutor has been asked to investigate, Kambile said, warning that \"all options are on the table.\"
Opposition leader Pascal Affi N'Guessan had told reporters late Monday that opposition parties and groups were forming a \"council of national transition.\"
\"This council's mission will be to... create a transitional government within the next few hours,\" N'Guessan said.
The goal, he said, was to \"prepare the framework for a fair, transparent and inclusive presidential election.\"
Ouattara's landslide in Saturday's vote had been widely expected -- two opposition leaders had called for a boycott of the ballot and a civil disobedience campaign.
But the protests and bloody clashes have also stirred traumatic memories of a crisis a decade ago that tore the country apart and dealt it lasting economic damage.
Around 3,000 people died after then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat by Ouattara.
N'Guessan late Monday said the \"transitional council\" would be led by opposition veteran Henri Konan Bedie, 86, a former president and long-term adversary of Ouattara.
\"Keeping Mr Ouattara as head of state could lead to civil war,\" he warned.
- Confrontation -
In Abidjan, the economic capital, security forces blocked off roads close to Bedie's villa.
They fired teargas to disperse small groups of supporters and journalists outside, preventing the staging of a press conference called to follow up Monday night's announcement.
In Daoukro, an opposition stronghold 235 kilometres (146 miles) north of Abidjan, anti-Ouattara protesters were manning barricades.
\"These results are a farce, \" said one, who gave his name as Firmin. \"We are going to carry on with civil disobedience until Ouattara steps down.\"
In contrast, Ouattara supporters sang his praises, saying he had strived to end instability in the world's top cocoa producer and revive its battered economy.
\"He has worked hard for the country. He has to carry on, not just for us, but for our children,\" said Hamed Dioma, a scrap-metal worker in a rundown district of Abidjan.
\"We are going to party.\"
Anger sparked by Ouattara's quest for a third term has revived memories of past feuds left mostly unreconciled after a 2002 civil war split the country in two.
Thirty people died in clashes before Saturday's vote, often between local ethnic groups allied to the opposition and Dioula communities seen as close to Oua
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.
Alice Nkom broke barriers for women by becoming the first female barrister in her country of Cameroon. She is also well known among Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) activists worldwide because of her legal advocacy for gay rights.
Nkom was born in 1945 in Poutkak, Cameroon in West Africa to Martin Nkom Bayi and Alice Ngo Bikang. She was one of eleven children. Nkom pursued higher education in France at the University of Toulouse (1963-1964) and completed her studies at the Federal University of Cameroon (1968). In 1969 at the age of 24 she became Cameroon’s first female attorney. Throughout her law career Nkom has defended low income and vulnerable people, including political prisoners, street children and women. Since 1976, she has been a stakeholder in one of the most prestigious law firms in Cameroon. After seven years of marriage, Nkom went through a divorce in 1979. She has two children, Charles and Stephane, and eight grandchildren.
The year 2003 was pivotal for Nkom. As a delegate from Cameroon, she visited Portland, Oregon as a participant in the World Affairs Council’s International Visitor Program sponsored by the U.S State Department. She returned to Portland in 2011 as a distinguished alumnus of that program. Her experiences in Oregon opened her eyes to the power of participatory democracy, community organizing and youth involvement in politics. Back home she engaged young people and women in voter registration. This work continues.
In 2003 in an effort to provide support and legal defense to LGBTQ persons in Cameroon, Nkom founded the nonprofit Association for the Defence of Homosexuals (ADEFHO). No other group does this pro bono advocacy work in her country or the rest of Western Africa. In Cameroon, engaging in same-gender sexual acts can lead to fines and imprisonment. Many of the people are arrested on rumor.
By 2011, Nkom had participated in 50 trials of LGBTQ people and facilitated the release of an additional 50 clients without trials. That same year the European Union
