Not sure what to make of the video. The video was filmed “in Africa.” Kage Sparks, who calls himself “the African Street Ambassador,” and whose family hails from Kenya and Tanzania, has his “tribe riding for me.”
Film Critic
February 11, 2011 By 1 Comment
The 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick “Commando” is narrated–”shot for shot”–by a 9-year old Tanzanian boy. (The video is is part of a campaign by a US-based NGO; forget the politics, just indulge in the joy of children).
Via Boing Boing
Swahili Cipher
January 27, 2011 By 1 Comment
Thomas Gesthuizen, known by followers of Africanhiphop.com as Juma4, has been running the number one African Hip Hop site and radio show in the world for a few years. The site, which has had various incarnations over time, has included a lively forum for African Hip Hop heads, as well as a radio show webcast monthly in several languages with contributors from all over the world. It is a great example of the power of the web to facilitate the coalition of a nascent global community. We decided to ask J4 to participate in our 5 Questions feature. Check the interview after the jump.–Chief Boima.
’5 Networks that Matter in East Africa’
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Rakesh Rajani, the head of Tanzanian “citizen-centered initiative”, Twaweza, on the “five key networks that need to be considered and collaborated with in development efforts.” According to the World Bank Blog Rajani’s insights are based on “years of experience working in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.”
H/T: Zein Rahemtulla
Viva Tanzania
November 8, 2010 By 2 Comments
For all the gross, lurid news stories or the films you see about fatal violence against, and neglect of people suffering from albinism in East Africa, this one about Tanzanians electing an albino, Salum Khalfani Barwani, to Parliament, is good news. Barwani, an opposition MP, will represent a rural constituency. (BTW, a well-known rapper, Sugu, was also elected to Parliament in the elections in which the majority party’s parliamentary shrunk by over 50 seats.)
Image: Pieter Hugo, “Portraits of people with albinism” (2003)
Africa: The Final Frontier
August 4, 2010 By 2 Comments
If you can afford it, you can’t afford to be without it.
That would be the tagline for Spears Wealth Management Survey (WMS), a British magazine I had never heard of until yesterday, when I ran across this article, Flight Mischief. Seems their Caroline Phillips went traveling around the “hotspots” of East Africa via (what else?) helicopter to give us a glimpse of the good life. Here’s how she sets the scene:
VIDEO EVIDENCE / SWAHILI HEARD ON BET TELEVISION
November 6, 2009 By 1 Comment
… And it was not on a program about wildlife.
BET, the American music and reality TV channel is not usually associated with cosmopolitanism, so when the Tanzanian rapper, Gsan (from the legendary crew, XPlastaz), turned up on the BET Hip Hop Awards broadcast rapping in Swahili, I was shocked. As part of the awards show the producers pre-recorded a series of cyphers. Like the one above with DJ Premier (remember him together with Guru?), KRS-One, Wale, Nipsey Hussle and, of course, Gsan.
There he is at 1:31 holding his own.
FILM / NATIONAL BLACK PROGRAMMING CONSORTIUM
October 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I like the documentary film programming put out by The National Black Programming Consortium here in the US. They’re also got with programming that explore life on the continent. Like the three films below just posted on their website.
FILM: A PANTHER IN AFRICA
September 29, 2009 By 1 Comment
The full film, about a Black Panther who fled Kansas City in the American Midwest in 1970 for a new life in Tanzania (by director Aaron Matthews), is now online.
