Africa

Aisha Shaaban sits in her wooden stall at Mchikichini market in Dar es Salaam waiting for her customers. She’s among women recently trained on women empowerment and how to avoid Gender violence. Credit: Kizito Makoye | IDN-INPS

Tanzania Pushing Gender Empowerment Despite Hurdles

By Kizito Makoye

DAR ES SALAAM (IDN) – Despite efforts to promote gender equality, women and girls in Tanzania are still marginalised and largely under-utilised citizens – often suffering from discrimination and violence from their male counterparts due to a biased male-dominated system which often pushes women to the brink of survival.

However, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), various initiatives are being implemented to empower women, although they still face obstacles that prevent them from reaching their full potential.

Among others, the SDGs call for women’s empowerment, greater access to education, health care, decent work and fair representation in political and economic decision-making processes, and the following are just some of the initiatives in these directions currently under way in the East African country.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 16 January 2018

Photo: Avenue des Cocotiers, Douala, the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. The city is primarily francophone. Credit: Kayhan ERTUGRUL | Wikimedia Commons.

Cameroon’s Catholic Bishops Fail to See Eye to Eye on ‘Anglophone Problem’

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

YAOUNDE (IDN) – “It was like I was watching a horror movie” is how the bishop of Mamfe diocese in Cameroon’s South West Region described the scene he saw in the village of Kembong village.

Mgr Andrew Nkea had visited the village in the wake of the deaths of four soldiers late December, killed by unknown assailants (although the government claimed they were secessionists). In a retaliatory move, Cameroonian soldiers had incinerated the whole village.

“I saw more than 20 houses burnt down by soldiers and one dead body still lying there, being fed on by dogs and chicken,” said Nkea. Of the village’s 5,000 or so residents, only 30 remained, all huddled in the house of the area’s priest because “they had nowhere else to go.”

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 10 January 2018

Photo: Patrice Nganang by Georges Seguin (Okki) - Own work, 28 March 2010, Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Jailed U.S.-Cameroonian Professor and Writer Wins Release

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – A New York-based university professor jailed for his writings critical of President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been released from prison after an outpouring of support from free speech activists, students and academics around the world.

Stony Brook professor Patrice Nganang, who has dual citizenship in Cameroon and the United States, was facing five years imprisonment for “insulting the president”. He had been held for almost a month before being expelled from the country on December 27, 2017 and sent back to the U.S. where he teaches culture studies and comparative literature at the New York State University at Stony Brook. He is a published novelist and poet.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 05 January 2018

Photo: New President of Liberia, George Weah. Credit: Daily Post, Nigeria

An Encounter with a Star Footballer Now President of Liberia

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It was late 2003, the Liberian war was winding down after taking the lives of 250,000 civilians, spawning a small army of deadly child soldiers, and I was sitting at lunch in Monrovia inside the president’s palatial office and residence with the American ambassador on my right and George Weah, Fifa’s World Footballer of the Year, on my left.

When I introduced myself to the ambassador he made it clear he didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t happy having ended up with a journalist next to him. Every 15 minutes an aide would rush up to him with the latest news on the fighting. We could hear the sound of rifles cracking. I asked him if he was nervous. He ignored me. But Weah was more than ready to chat.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 02 January 2018

South African War on Corruption Moves into High Gear

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK | PRETORIA (IDN) – A shakeup in the African National Congress has boosted hopes that new party officials will make a clean sweep of the backroom dealings that have made millionaires out of a small South African elite and punished the majority with high unemployment and a national credit rating downgraded to “junk status.”

Business tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa, newly elected president of the African National Congress, has raised hopes that he will stamp out corruption, expedite job creation, improve the lacklustre economy and speed up the transfer of land to black people.

: Global Information Network; NEWSBRIEFS; 02 January 2018

Liberian Soccer Icon Plans Sweeping Changes as New President

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK | MONROVIA (IDN) – George Weah, Liberia’s president-elect, declared the country open to investment and pledged to tackle entrenched corruption, in his first speech to the nation since decisively winning an election on December 30, 2017.

Speaking at a press conference at his party headquarters, Weah thanked his predecessor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, for enabling Liberia's first democratic transition in over 70 years but said he was determined to usher in sweeping changes.

Weah, 51, faces sky-high expectations from young supporters who are desperate for jobs and better wages.

: Global Information Network; NEWSBRIEFS; 02 January 2018

Photo: Eritreans protest next to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. Credit: Klara Smits.

Eritrean Refugees in the Netherlands Want Ban on Diaspora Tax by Asmara

By Reinhardt Jacobsen and Klara Smits

AMSTERDAM | BRUSSELS (IDN) – Hundreds of Eritreans have been taking to the streets in various cities and refugee camps all over the world against the Eritrean regime to express solidarity with the unusual protests that took place in Asmara, the country's capital, on October 31. The latest in the protest series was on December 22, 2017 in Brussels next to the European Commission headquarters.

Among the protesters' demand is the closure of the Eritrean embassy in Brussels, which is responsible for the Netherlands, because people who have fled the country must fear the ‘long arm' of the regime and a culture of fear perpetrated by Asmara, according to a Dutch research report. This has prompted a debate in the Netherlands about the Eritrean regime's repressive activities in the country.

: Klara Smits; THE WORLD; Africa; 22 December 2017

Photo: Professor Calestous Juma. Credit: The Breakthrough Institute

Controversial Kenyan Advocate of GM Seeds Dies in Boston

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) –The Kenyan director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard University, Professor Calestous Juma, passed away in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 15, at the age of 64.

Juma served as Professor of the Practice of International Development, and was affiliated with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Center for International Development, and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

: Ramesh Jaura; NEWSBRIEFS; 19 December 2017

Photo: Patrice Nganang at the Paris Book Fair, by Georges Seguin CC BY-SA 3.0

Writers Protest the Arrest of New York Professor in Cameroon

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – The African Literature Association and other professional associations of writers and scholars are demanding the release of a Cameroonian-American writer and university professor, detained on December 6 without explanation at the airport in Douala, Cameroon.

Patrice Nganang, who teaches at Stony Brook University's cultural studies and comparative literature department in New York, was reported missing from a connecting flight to Zimbabwe where he was expected to meet up with his family.

The previous day he had published an article on the French website Jeune Afrique that was critical of the Cameroonian government’s handling of a series of strikes by the minority English-speaking population which is seeking equal rights with the majority French-speakers.

: Global Information Network; NEWSBRIEFS; 19 December 2017

Photo: Winner of the new student category, Moussa Ngom attending CESTI, Senegal. Photo: Hyppolite Valdez Onanina

African Fact Checkers Expose ‘Fake News’ And Win Prizes

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK | JOHANNESBURG (IDN) – Striking a blow against fake news, reporters from Kenya, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Cameroon scooped the top prizes this year in a competition organized by Africa Check, the leading fact-check organization on the continent.

Founded by the French news service AFP in partnership with the journalism department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Africa Check holds public figures accountable by sorting fact from fiction.

As well as producing its own reports, the website of Africa Check provides tips and advice on how to fact-check. It also offers a library of databases and fact-checking tools.