CBC radio 1’s Jian Ghomeshi conducted a “rare” interview with Jason Russell of KONY2012 fame this week. Russell, who is on some kind of media tour (he indulged the most prominent British media outlet in an interview that was an embarrassment to that paper, a few days ago and now Canada of course) remains brazen […]
Guest Post by Robert Nathan They’re not your average musicians. Sons of West African griots and court musicians brought up in Washington DC and St. Louis, Weedie Braimah and Amadou Kouyate have straddled the Atlantic all their lives. Indoors, they assiduously studied the kora and the djembe under the guidance of their fathers — master […]
By Melissa Levin It was in Yeoville sometime in the 1990s that a ‘spook’ from South Africa’s now ruling party, the ANC, with whom I was acquainted began asking me questions about my father. My family had migrated to Canada, which he knew, and he was asking questions like, “when,” and “was your dad ever […]
Guest Post by Robert Nathan To be 419′ed is to be fooled. Duped. Swindled. At least that’s the meaning as far as Nigerian slang is concerned — of which this book has plenty on offer. The question is: does Will Ferguson’s Giller-winning novel deliver on the award hype, or does it 419 us? The answer is… yes. […]
The Globe and Mail ran with an article this weekend titled “In case you missed it: This is the African Century”. If anyone is getting excited by the sarcasm oozing from the headline, anticipating a scathing critique of the hope/ful/less cliché of African futures, let me assure you that your enthusiasm is misplaced. In the […]
After spending its first six years in power largely ignoring the continent, the Conservative Party of Canada has finally “discovered” Africa. Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper undertook a four-day trip to Senegal and the DRC—only his second trip to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office in 2006, and his first in five years.
The sprawling Toronto Zoo clearly never heard about the controversy surrounding the German Augsburg Zoo’s experience of setting up an “African village” in the summer of 2005. If they had, perhaps they would’ve been more circumspect before hosting one of their own.
The rapper Awadi was a founder of a Senegalese’s brand of political hip hop. As ‘kola wrote on this blog, Awadi was at the forefront of a 1990s social movement that helped to galvanize a youthful constituency to help elect Abdoulaye Wade as the new president in 2000. “Of course, after [Wade] got the presidency, […]
What is it with the conviction, that you can save yourself and the world by shopping? Last week the tony Canadian chain, Holt Renfrew, began selling “the bag that can change the world.” For just $50, consumers can purchase a Tory Burch designed sack, some of the proceeds of which will go to feeding hungry African children. Feeding hungry children, wherever they may be, is a noble cause. But the persistence in undergirding a system that starves them in the first place detracts from the gesture.
The music of the Lijadu Sisters can make the twins’ fans do all sorts of things.
