theblackbottom

Source: The Guardian
In 2009, businessman Femi Akinde needed to travel quickly across Nigeria. Without immediate access to the internet, it took him a day to book a plane ticket. Finding a number to make a phone reservation took time; connecting – on erratic phone lines – even longer; and bank forms had to be filled in [...]

Source: VOA
SILINGA, Ghana – Economist Jeffrey Sachs unveiled his new Millennium Village Tuesday, in Silinga, north Ghana.  The Millennium Villages Projectis based on the belief that poor villagers are stuck in a “poverty trap” and if given enough resources, they will become self-sufficient. Sachs’ critics say the demonstration is neither scientific nor sustainable.
Nabari village lies on [...]

Source: IPS
Tomson Chikowero was ashamed of his job. He did not want anyone finding out what he did to earn a living, so he used to wake up early every morning and leave his home in Hatfield, a residential suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare, under the cover of darkness.
And he would [...]

Source: BBC News
I decided on a title for my memoirs long before I wrote one sentence. It was to be called I Never Did Make It To Timbuktu.
As a young journalist, three cities fascinated me – I thought nothing could be more adventurous and romantic than to get a byline from Timbuktu, the [...]

Source: New York Times
John Atta Mills, the president of Ghana, died on Tuesday at a military hospital in the capital, Accra, five months short of finishing his first term in office. He was 68.
News of his death came on state-run television. The government gave no cause of death, but Mr. Atta Mills [...]

Source: VOA
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma made history Sunday by becoming the first female elected to lead the African Union Commission.
The African Union’s new chief replaces Gabonese incumbent Jean Ping, who led  the 54-member organization since 2008. The 63-year-old Dlamini-Zuma is the former wife of South African President Jacob Zuma and recently served as his [...]

Source: VOA
KAMPALA, Uganda – While the world’s leading experts on HIV/AIDS are preparing for the upcoming AIDS 2012 Conference in Washington, D.C., one young Ugandan activist is focusing on problems much closer to home.
“I am Barbara Kemigisa, I am an activist and an upcoming artist, a single mother living with HIV,” [...]

Source: Allianz
Poor, illiterate, rural grandmothers are installing and managing solar power plants across India and Africa, putting ‘professional’ engineers to shame. Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College shows them how to do it.

When he was a young man in the 1960s, Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy left his privileged, highly-educated home and went to dig [...]

Source: PRI’s The World

Over the past year, a new dance craze has popped onto the Ghanaian music scene and has been making waves across West Africa and beyond.
It is called “Azonto” and calls for dancers to sort of act out their occupation. It has spread out of Ghana and has become a rage in Ghanaian [...]

Source: VOA
WASHINGTON – A U.S.-based organization is carrying on the legacy of the late basketball star Manute Bol by continuing to build schools and work for reconciliation in South Sudan. The recent work comes despite South Sudan’s many struggles during its first of year of existence as a country.
Immediately as he enters the Washington offices [...]