Monday, March 18, 2024
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Tag: Burkina Faso

Africans organize to end the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation

Feb. 6 is the international day for the abolition of all kinds of female genital mutilation and cutting. The practice of FGM/C in Africa and the Middle East is a thousand-year-old tradition consisting in cutting the clitoris of baby girls, teenagers and women with a razor blade or an ugly special knife. While the exact number of girls and women worldwide who have undergone FGM/C remains unknown, at least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries have been subjected to the practice.

Long Live Tongogara and Thomas Sankara

Let us remember two fallen sons of Mother Africa who truly represent and exemplify the bravery and patriotism which best defines our collective fighting spirit and resolve, Comrade Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s former president, and the commander of ZANLA’s guerilla army, Gen. Josiah Magama Tongogara. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Sankara’s assassination, a cowardly act carried out by the neo-colonialist stooge and poor excuse for an African, Blaise Compaore.

Broutage and coupé-decalé: A cybercrime way of life in Western Africa

The protagonists of cybercrime in the western part of the African continent are teenagers or even younger, high school students, boys, girls, men and women from all social classes. The majority of them for the past decade dropped out of school to devote themselves to cybercrime so as to earn a lot of money rapidly. Their office is the internet café, where they quarrel and joke in an ambiance of noisy excitement. When they earn money – up to millions of U.S. dollars – they loudly demand respect from everyone. They rent apartments and buy new cars and laptop computers.

Shola Adisa-Farrar brings her new CD home Feb. 15-16

Shola Adisa-Farrar is coming home to debut her new CD, “Lost Myself,” on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 15-16, in Oakland and San Francisco. Perhaps you remember her from The Ultimate Hustler reality television show she starred in Oct. 4-Dec. 13, 2005, while she was in New York? Maybe you recall how much fun you had with Shola as guide in the Walking in the Spirit: Black Paris and Beyond tours while there? No?

African herbalist teaches the ancient art of herbal healing

Opesanwo Ifakorede is a local herbalist that was originally taught about the world of herbs by his grandmother a generation ago. He recently did an “Urban Practical Herbalism Workshop” at Deep Roots Urban Refuge in East Oakland. For those that did not get a chance to make it, I really want to whet your appetite for the subject. Check out Opesanwo Ifakorede in his own words.

The 6th annual successful Silicon Valley African Film Fest does it...

The images we see in the Western media of Africa and Africans show an Africa that is always on its knees, begging for aid, where there is nothing but wildlife and poverty. This myopic view needs to be changed so that Africa can take its deserved seat at the global table of economics and politics as equal partners. The Silicon Valley African Film Festival, from film screenings to food, entertainment, African marketplace, dialogue with filmmakers, Innovate Africa Technology forum, etc., is guaranteed is leave audiences with a deeper appreciation of Africa and Africans.

Burkina Faso: France, the US and the spirit of Sankara

Paul Sankara says the Burkinabe army is supporting the people against the coup plotters. Dr. Gnaka La Goke says that anyone who thinks the presidential guard would attempt a coup d’état without the knowledge and complicity of the U.S. and France is refusing to see how things are done in the 21st century.

From Burkina Faso to the Congo: Challenging the quest for president...

The dominant challenge facing Congolese people is the lengths to which President Joseph Kabila will go to maintain a stranglehold on power. This unresolved question represents the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It will continue to dominate the political landscape through 2016, when Kabila is Constitutionally mandated to leave office.

People of Burkina Faso drive Blaise Campaore from power

In 1987, African revolutionary Thomas Sankara, the president of Burkina Faso, called on his fellow African heads of state to join him in refusing to pay debt they could not rationally owe to their former colonizers. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Ouagadougou to demand the resignation of Sankara’s assassin, President Blaise Campaoré.

Wanda’s Picks for October 2014

Sunday, Oct. 12, marks our 19th Annual Maafa Commemoration. This is a time when we gather to remember our African ancestors, especially those who endured the transatlantic slave trade or the Middle Passage, the Black Holocaust. It is a time for Pan Africans to gather and celebrate life and recommit ourselves to the work of liberation: spiritual, psychological, economic and political.

Everywhere is war: European warlords strike again – this time in...

As Africans, our struggle must be focused on achieving our inalienable right to self-determination – to develop our own political and economic systems and put in place our own political structures, free of interference from the outside world. Only we can turn the tables – only we can achieve our own liberation from systems that continue to keep us in a state of dependency and disarray.

Pan African designs adorn leatherworker Shaka Camera’s hand tooled bags at...

Shaka Camera of Oakland, a leather worker for over 43 years, specializes in hand stitched and hand tooled leather bags embellished with beads, shells, silver and bronze acquired from his multiple trips to Africa. Shaka will show his work at the 42nd annual KPFA Crafts Fair on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 and 9, at the Concourse in San Francisco.

Ten days in LA

In a Hollywood Reporter article, Spike Lee is quoted: “In 1989, ‘Do the Right Thing’ was not even nominated [for best picture],” said Lee, with some mock outrage. “What film won best picture in 1989? ‘Driving Miss Mother F-ing Daisy!’ That’s why [Oscars] don’t matter,” said Lee. “Because 20 years later, who’s watching ‘Driving Miss Daisy?’”

Wanda’s Picks for December 2011

Sobonfu Somé, West African healer, says that when people die and become ancestors, they get smarter and often try to repair any damage they may have made while in this physical form. Ancestors want to be busy making our lives better. She said we can call on them to intercede on our behalf when we are troubled.

Wanda’s Picks for October 2011

October is Maafa Commemoration Month. The term Maafa refers to the Black Holocaust, that period when African people were stolen and traded in the greatest, most widespread cooperative economic venture to date, which resulted in the displacement of human beings as commodities. The Kiswahili term Maafa extends that definition of loss and trauma, that is, PTSD or post-traumatic slave syndrome – the flashbacks, both conscious and unconscious, reoccurring instances of the atrocities 150 years after the end of slavery which have direct association to the brutality of chattel slavery.

The coup in Cote d’Ivoire

Growing evidence suggests the West, led by France, engineered a political and military coup in Cote d’Ivoire to re-colonize that country. The president of Gambia says, "Western neo-colonialist sponsored agents in Africa ... are ready to walk on thousands of dead bodies to the presidency."

Toward African freedom in Libya and beyond

The fundamental stimulus of the attack on Libya is greed, not the protection of the Libyan people. In fact, the people of Libya have suffered more during this bombardment by Western powers and their allies than during the entire 41 years of the leadership of Muammar al-Gaddafi. We must be clear that the attack on Libya is an attack on Africa. The great danger of the attacks on Libya is that they are being used by the U.S. to test the effectiveness of AFRICOM, the African Command, and this adventure will open the door to direct military intervention in Africa.

Pentagon burns bio-fuels to secure fossil fuels; more of both come...

Opponents of biofuels planting projects, in Africa and other parts of the global South, argue that cropland should be used to grow food to feed people, not to grow more combustible fuel, especially not fuel for the U.S. military.