The Myth and Reality of Paul Kagame
October 14, 2011 By 2 Comments
Paul Kagame Spins Youtube
May 14, 2011 By 10 Comments
I just wasted 47 minutes watching the latest installment in Youtube’s much hyped “World View” series with presidents and prime ministers; this time the subject was Rwanda’s Life President, Paul Kagame. The interview was conducted by Khaya Dlanga, the South African blogger and “Youtube partner.” Billed as “… the first YouTube World View interview with […]
Would Susan Rice have been a good choice for US Secretary of State?
January 24, 2013 By 5 Comments
Remember Susan Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State who wasn’t? It might seem old news now, as Senator John Kerry sits in front of his colleagues seeking their constitutionally-mandated “consent” to his appointment to become the next U.S. Secretary of State, replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the wake of President Barack Obama’s re-election in November, […]
Al Jazeera Joins The ‘Africa Rising’ Bandwagon
January 22, 2013 By 5 Comments
We recently posted a bit on Forbes Magazine’s list of the 40 richest Africans. In a similar vain, Al Jazeera has chosen to glorify Africa’s privileged few and feed into Western media outlets’ current obsession with the “Africa Rising” narrative by releasing their four-part series, “Tutu’s Children.” With the first two episodes up on the […]
The (very unpopular) Nigerian finance minister who wants to be President of the World Bank
March 27, 2012 By 5 Comments
Yesterday the African Union added their backing to Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s run at becoming World Bank President. She announced her candidacy on Friday, just hours before Obama told everyone he’d picked South Korean-born rapper Jim Kim (now backed by Paul Kagame). But how do Nigerians look at this? Some are puzzled by the government’s silence, and local media reports that Ali Mazrui wrote to President Jonathan urging him to offer louder and stronger support to Okonjo-Iweala’s campaign.
‘Nigeria’s own Donald Trump’
September 23, 2011 By 1 Comment
MTV Base, the music channel’s African subsidiary carried on satellite TV, have been making these upbeat video features, where a group of upwardly mobile young Africans–most based on the continent–interview leading businesspeople, entertainers and a few public representatives (I spotted Julius Malema and Paul Kagame in the series promo). At the same time the interviewers […]
Weekend Special, July 23
July 22, 2011 By 1 Comment
* Philip Gourevitch, of The New Yorker, probably still healing from the mauling he got over his admiration for Paul Kagame (and probably regretting losing his cool), decides it’s may be better to write about Rwanda’s national cycling team for the magazine. (Hint: It’s Tour de France month so let’s publish a piece about Africans […]
Weekend Special /July 1, 2011
July 1, 2011 By 1 Comment
* Damien Ma, at The Atlantic, blogs about a story on a Chinese website on “the growing phenomenon of Chinese men marrying African women, as Chinese presence in Africa continues to expand.” The post and comments are replete with insights and stereotypes; most of it not Ma’s fault. Here’s the caption on the original for […]
‘Making Rwanda a more tragic place than it needs to be’
April 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Stephen Smith in The London Review of Books: I am not arguing that we should all know everything there is to know about Rwanda. My point is that we don’t seem to want to know what happened in 1994, or what’s happening now. We’ve learned the wrong lesson from the organised massacre of 800,000 people, […]
