l'AFRiQUE...and other stories

So I made a twitter recently (@saparaba) after resisting for YEARS and YEARS. Finally someone was able to convince me that its a great tool for bringing the news to you instead of going out of your way to find it and though I hate to admit it…they were completely right. I have so many tabs open (yes I’m at work and shouldn’t have been on Twitter in the first place), but there are a bunch of articles I want to read! So instead saving them in my favorites (because let’s be honest…that’s like throwing it in a black hole) I’m going to save them in a post. I was probably going to end up reblogging them anyway. 

Guest post: the 3 key ingredients for sustaining Africa’s growth - Financial Times

Poverty Has a Creation Story: Let’s Tell It - Think Africa Press

One Hippopotamus and Eight Blind Analysts: A multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali - Bridges from Bamako

Iran’s Wooing of Africa Yields Scant Results as Sanctions Bite - VOA

Fighting the Fat: The Growth of Childhood Obesity in Africa (Older Post) - Africa on the Blog

Curbing Ambitions (South Sudan)  - The Economist 

I’ll tag them when I’ve read them all. 

crankyskirt:

Baka Forest People women playing the river like a drum

Mind. Blown. This is dope… so inventive.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. Stop everything right now. I’m amazed. 

(via thefemaletyrant)

I enjoyed reading this article. I was and still am guilty of assuming all is well if the media says so (lame…I know). A woman is president of Malawi now? She sold the presidential jet? Guess that means Malawi is well on its way to development *Moves on* It was nice to sit down read about some of the very contradicting issues this president is facing. Each person will have their own opinion on her performance depending on what lens you look at it from. I’m interested to see how she fares in next year’s elections. 

Also…let us not speak the words Madonna and Malawi in the same sentence again. I’m over it. 

emzorzin3d:

Keeping for future reference. Pasted from this Yahoo question but the original source link appears to be broken.

A
ABEBA Flower (Ethiopia)
ABBA Born on Thursday (Ghana)
ABENA Born on Tuesday (Ghana)
Acai (ashai) Shyness (Sudanese)
Adanna Father’s loving daughter
ADA First born (…

After growing up not seeing my name on mugs and keychains, I always get excited to see it written on a list somewhere. Seeing as I grew up in the US I don’t know any other Arabas. Seeing it written on a list is almost like confirmation that the others are still out there. AND YET somehow…ARABA (BORN ON TUESDAY - GHANA)…NOT ON THIS LIST?!

I has a sad. 

(via jadoreafrica)

Superhero has become an internet sensation after turning up heat on electricity companies following spate of power cuts

Casual readers of optimistic headlines about Africa’s high growth rates and record levels of foreign investment might be forgiven for thinking all is well on the continent – or at least that, with ‘Africa Rising’, all will be well before too long. But many of the perspectives and figures underlying these simplistic narratives obscure the complex reality of rising inequality, success in only certain specific sectors, and – crucially – jobless growth.

Indeed, on the continent itself, there is a rising sense that Africa’s growth isn’t creating enough jobs for the millions entering the labour market each year. By some estimates, 50% of young people in South Africa, and 40% in Kenya and the DRC, are unemployed. In Nigeria, approximately 30 million youths are jobless. And the International Labour Organisation estimates that in 2012,247 million workers in sub-Saharan Africa were in vulnerable employment. Also worrying is the fact that having an education does not seem to help. In response to an advert for 100 drivers in Nigeria last year, the Dangote Group received 13,000 applicants including 8,460 with bachelor degrees, 704 with masters and 6 with PhDs. With Africa’s youth population expected to double by 2045, this could prove to be a ticking time bomb; one only needs to look at the likes of Tunisia and Egypt for a forewarning of what a growing numbers of highly-educated unemployed young people can lead to.

Broadly-speaking, there are two ways of looking at the problem: 1) the economy’s demand for labour isn’t sufficiently strong to generate enough jobs because growth isn’t fast enough and/or the sectors which are growing are not labour intensive enough; or 2) the supply of potential workers isn’t appropriately educated and skilled for the jobs that could be available.

In reality, both are true. However, the latter can influence the former, and it is the latter to which we will now turn.

Read on here

Which reminds me…earlier this week, MEND issued a statement threatening to carry out attacks on muslims and mosques in Nigeria “in defense of Christianity”, a response to the terror Boko Haram has waged in the northern states. 

Jeggings Party - Yaw Siki 

Oh hot damn. This is my new jam. 

palmofmyhands:

ABLADE GLOVER (Ghana)
Glover was born in Accra, Ghana in 1934. He is a scholar, teacher, and painter whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the world. Dr. Glover has had an extensive academic career studying art and education at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana from 1957 to 1958 and the Central School of Art and Design in London from 1959 to 1962.

He is the founder and Executive Director of the Artists Alliance Gallery in Accra.Ablade Glover is known for his abstract painting. Working in oils on canvas he concentrates on unique marketscapes and townscapes which are instantly recognizable. (Bio Source)

(via ghanailoveyou)

williamsonsbeauty:

a tuareg man  > http://williamsonsbeauty.tumblr.com/

(via thefemaletyrant)

I figured I’d share one of the videos I watched yesterday. Eumeu Sene vs. Balla Gaye

Another disclaimer: I have NO idea what’s happening here, but after watching it with Harold we agreed that a MAJOR upset just went down. 2:32…So pumped up the gate needed to be pushed DOWN. 

wrestlingisbest:

Leader of the Pack

I love everything about this. EVERYTHING. Especially because somehow I ended up watching Seneglese Lutte videos for a bit longer than I’m willing to admit. I wonder if this is Senegalese. 

I don’t want to assume that I know what’s going on in this picture, but I see the pride on this little guy’s and it reminds me of how important it is for communities, no matter where they are, to include and collectively raise their youth. Show them love and give them confidence. 

(via african-eyes)

OMG. Dead.

(via thatnigeriankid)

b-sama:

In fact, as I show in a recent piece in African Affairs, looked at since the end of the Cold War, wars are not becoming more frequent in Sub-Saharan Africa. To the contrary: according to the Uppsala Armed Conflict Data Program, the preeminent tracker of warfare worldwide, wars in the 2000s are substantially down from their peak in the early 1990s. Even if one counts an uptick during the past two years, there were about one-third fewer wars in Sub-Saharan Africa in the period compared to the early-to-mid 1990s.

Another prevailing view is that Sub-Saharan Africa is the most war-endemic region. Not so, especially if one looks at the continent’s history since 1960. Wars in Sub-Saharan Africa (compared to other world regions) are not longer or more frequent on a wars-per-country basis. Those distinctions effectively go to Asia, where between wars in India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, among others, wars are more frequent and longer lasting.

The pattern holds true for extreme cases of mass killing, like Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in the mid-2000s. Such events are on the decline in Africa; viewed across time, Africa is also not the regional leader of such events on a per-country basis.

My point is not to engage in crude regionalism, but rather to suggest that what often transpires as common sense about Sub-Saharan Africa is wrong.

The bigger point is that we may be witnessing significant shifts in the nature of political violence on the continent. Wars are on the decline since the 1990s, but the character of warfare is also changing. There are today fewer big wars fought for state control in which insurgents maintain substantial control of territory and put up well-structured armies to fight their counterparts in the state—Mali not withstanding. Such wars were modal into the 1990s. From southern Africa in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and even Zimbabwe to the long wars in the Horn in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan to the Great Lakes wars in Rwanda and Uganda, the typical armed conflict in Africa involved two major, territory-holding armies fighting each other for state control.

Today’s wars typically are smaller. They most often involve small insurgencies of factionalized rebels on the peripheries of states. Today’s wars also play out differently. They exhibit cross-border dimensions, and rather than drawing funding from big external states they depend on illicit trade, banditry, and international terrorist networks.

“We may be witnessing significant shifts in the nature of political violence on the continent” One hopes. Funny because a friend sent this to me a while back. It’s an old article, but the timing is great. Glad this new article came out right after I read the old one.