After making accessories of Asian women during her Harajuku phase, Gwen Stefani has moved on to using African wax print as the main theme in her latest collection for L.A.M.B.
Month: September 2010
Skateboarding… in kitintale
hat tip: Africa didn’t ask you
Winnie
Link Africa
- “As oil workers prepare pipes for deepwater installation at the port of Takoradi, and the Ghanaian government passes legislation regulating the oil, Ghanaians are wondering whether the oil will benefit them.”
- “Naija Lingo is an online Dictionary for all your Nigerian pidgin/broken English needs. It is a dictionary for people who want definitions to Nigerian words or slang, names and phrases and created by the people (you) who know them”
- “In the case of one woman Brenyah mentioned, the efficiency of a new irrigation system gave the mother free time to walk her kids to school. For another, her mastery of machinery and greater participation in the family’s business encouraged her husband to start asking her opinion in family matters. “If a women helps to earn the household’s money, then she doesn’t have to depend on her husband,” says Brenyah, “and she will have a say in what the money is used for.””
- “the space in which we narrate Africa is changing. The “we” is changing, too -– as much in the posture as in the biography of the writer. Probably one is a reflection of the other, even for those of us who were not born to inherit the continent. The narrative space is changing, and what we’re finally starting to see is something complicated, something troubling, something beautiful. And we’re finally getting smart enough to hold all those things in our head at the same time. Dear Journalism, will you ever catch up?”
- “My biggest criticism is not that they are going to Africa to shed light on these “lost” recordings and forgotten about artists. I’m instead worried that they concentrate too much on those forms of music that fit nicely into the story that they, the DJs, want to tell about the music. The cataloging tendency tends to be a colonial one. Also, many of the DJs and label owners, perhaps because of its shared lineage with Hip Hop, have concentrated on Afro-Beat, or have given more weight to genres that are popular in the west like Rock and Funk.”
If you find something online that would be of interest to Vuga! readers and contributors, email tips to vugaafrica@gmail.com
Link Africa
- “Ghana has reduced the proportion of under-nourished people by over 75 percent since 1992. Currently, only 8 percent of its population remains under-nourished – roughly on par with many industrialized countries. In Ethiopia, primary education completion rates have increased by nearly 300 percent — meaning that millions of kids are now finishing at least eight years of schooling. Beyond that, Ethiopia is aggressively expanding access to secondary and tertiary education as well. In Burkina Faso, access to safe drinking water has increased by nearly 60 percent. Uganda has reduced its HIV/AIDS prevalence rate by over 60 percent.”
- “Africa has a new cheerleader, with even more financial clout. Bob Diamond, the new head of Barclays, is calling the continent an “incredible” opportunity.”
- “Africa is rich in untapped natural oil and gas reserves. With recent finds in Uganda and Ghana, the continent is certain to experience a flurry of exploration activity. Furthermore, Africa is expected to pass North America in 2011 and become the third largest producing area after the Middle East and Central/Eastern Europe.“
- “Anywhere along the maize belt, from Ethiopia down to South Africa and up to the Ivory Coast, a traveler can find a standard dish: maize flour boiled into a stiff porridge known as sadza in Zimbabwe, ugali in Kenya, and in the Bariba regions of Benin, dibu.”
- “You go to one of those fabulously elitist schools where everyone talks about privilege, classism, racism, sexism, etc. as if they don’t practice it in real life. But in order to really see the world, they decide to go somewhere where they can understand what their privilege looks like. So they choose AFRICA! Yay! A whole continent dedicated to helping white people understand what it means to be poor and undeveloped.”
- “Starting in December, Marvel’s king of the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, otherwise known as T’Challa or the black panther, will be the mysterious super hero filling in Matt Murdock’s crime fighting shoes in New York city”
- “Africa has been seen as something more than a curio in global investment terms since 2007, when the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China bought up a 20 percent share in Mr. Maree’s bank for $5.5 billion. Suddenly, The Economist writes, Africa had the financial world’s attention.”
If you find something online that would be of interest to Vuga! readers and contributors, email tips to vugaafrica@gmail.com
Bafumbira in the Diaspora
I would like to start this article on bafumbira in the Diaspora by declaring myself ineligible to write it on two accounts. Firstly, having recently returned to Uganda, I am no longer a Mufumbira in the Diaspora, though I will share my experiences of living first in Zambia and the U.S. over the past two decades.
My second and most important point is that I do not think I am necessarily more qualified to be writing about life in the Diaspora than anyone who may be reading this article. In this globalised world (I am getting very tired of reading this expression in print, but it is also very difficult to write anything these days without using it) we all experience a physical or mental disconnection from our traditional home. The forces of modernity; colonialism and capitalism have changed the landscape of our daily lives into something that our ancestors would find difficult to recognize. Even for those of us who still live under the same breathtaking horizon of Kisoro’s hills that our great-great grandparents looked up to, life continues to change at an immeasurable rate.
Link Africa
- “Today, Ajami is a whole writing system used by many Africans to conduct business transactions, to keep family histories, and to write poetry.”
- “Women’s rights activists have strongly condemned producers of Africa’s version of Big Brother because they did not evict a housemate who punched a female contestant on live television.”
- “And so it was that in March 2010 The World Health Organization announced that it would deliver millions of H1N1 vaccine doses to about a dozen countries in Africa in the weeks to come. This was despite their own website reporting very low occurrences of swine flu in Africa”
If you find something online that would be of interest to Vuga! readers and contributors, email tips to vugaafrica@gmail.com
MTV Generation
When the phrase “MTV Generation” was coined in the 1980s this is not what they were referring to. “This” is Thursday night at Steak Out; a bar, restaurant and club in tropical Kampala, Uganda, also known as “Rock Nite”. At the table beside me, a guy cradles his beer bottle like a microphone, singing every word to the 30 Seconds to Mars song playing; the tendons in his neck straining, the drops of sweat on his forehead shaken into rivulets. I don’t know whether to cringe or laugh, so I just look away.
The kids of Kampala’s growing middle class have been raised on MTV videos beamed into their living rooms by South African satellite television. Now they can go out to enjoy their favoured angst-driven guitar riffs and catchy pop tunes in the company of like-minded, equally inebriated individuals. Club scenes that were once dominated by Lingala music out of Congo, Western reggae, rap and hip-hop, and their African permutations, have been forced to make room for new tastes. Where young people once Ndombolo-ed, tonight they are head-banging.
