By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW York (IDN) – For the first time in 150 years, Ethiopia’s Oromo people celebrated “Thanksgiving” in “Finfinee” – generally known as Addis Ababa. The country’s largest ethnic group turned up in the hundreds of thousands to mark “Ireecha” – a public outdoors event. People gathered around water bodies, […]
What a Kenyan Senator Attending UN Meeting Experienced in US
By Isaac Mwaura The writer is a Nominated Senator and chairman of the Albinism Society of Kenya. @mwauraIsaac1 mwaura.isa@gmail.com.NEW This article was first published in Standard Digitial. NEW YORK (IDN) – It is Wednesday September 25, 2019, and I am rushing to take my seat at a Kenyan side event on peace, organised by our […]
World Bank’s Cash Handouts Lift Tanzanians from Poverty
By Kizito Makoye KILOSA, Tanzania (IDN) – Hidaya Juma looks gaunt and weary. Her sun-parched skin and tattered clothes tell it all. She is poor. Juma, a 43-year-old single mother of four, who lives in Kisanga village, Kilosa district, in Tanzania’s eastern Morogoro region, lives in a mud-walled house that is prone to flooding. Her […]
Advocates for Biafra and Journalists Against Corruption Face Gov’t Crackdown
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – The war may be over in a place called Biafra – a region of states in the southern part of Nigeria – but it remains a flashpoint for ethnic tensions that simmer just below the surface. This September, the leader of the Indigenous People of […]
Drought Catapults Zimbabwe into a National Disaster
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – In a new low water mark for Zimbabwe’s troubled economy, two million people in Zimbabwe’s capital have now been left without water after the government ran out of foreign currency to pay for imported water treatment chemicals. Zimbabwe’s capital city shut its main water works […]
Ugandan TV Host Wins Coveted Prize for Investigative Journalism
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – Ugandan investigative reporter and news anchor Solomon Serwanjja is the 2019 winner of the Komla Dumor award. It goes to a journalist committed to changing the narrative about Africa. Serwanjja, a presenter at Uganda’s NBS TV, hosts one of the channel’s prime-time shows. He has […]
Russia Making Further Inroads into Zimbabwe
By Kester Kenn Klomegah MOSCOW (IDN) – Russia maintains very friendly relations with Zimbabwe, thanks to ties which evolved during the struggle for independence. Since then, it has had a very strong mutual sympathy with and friendly feelings toward the southern African people, government and country. One of the fora in which relations between the […]
Kenya Must Move Fast to Reverse Deforestation
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – Since independence, natural resources in Kenya have been on a fast track to extinction. Today, nearly half of all its forests are gone, resulting in more droughts, floods and other dire consequences for communities, ecosystems, food security and infrastructure. From 10% of the country covered […]
Rising Demand for Palm Oil Threatens African Culture
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – The palm oil industry is growing by leaps and bounds around the globe but its overnight success is worrying environmentalists. An estimated 7.5 million acres of land traditionally used or inhabited by local communities has been acquired by palm oil companies, according to GRAIN, a […]
Ghana’s First President Predicted Black-on-Black Troubles in Africa
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, warned as far back as the 1960s that political independence from European colonial oppressors without economic independence was a recipe for disaster.Nkrumah, who authored The struggle continues, Class Struggle in Africa and Neo-colonialism – the last stage of imperialism, among […]