Rethinking African education policy: Education is meaningless unless you understand the vast expanse of life, its sorrows and joys
We know “an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he or she knows absolutely everything about nothing” about the world about him or her.
Loud on climate change, Kenyan president contradicts himself by sanctioning paved road construction through forest
The Kenyan government wants to build a 32-mile tarmac road through what has been suggested as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to connect two counties, and the country’s environmental agency, the National Environment Management Authority, issued an environmental impact assessment licence for the project last month. The project would cut through 15 miles of closed canopy forest and likely increase vehicle traffic into animal paths.
World music revolution: How and why Africa had fastest-growing recorded music revenues in 2022
There is also Afrobeat – different from Afrobeats – a blend of jazz, funk and traditional West African rhythms popularised by Nigerian musical icon and political agitator Fela Kuti in the 1970s. Then there’s Afropop, a rich variety of contemporary styles. The traditional soukous dance music out of Congo and other parts of Central Africa. The rhythmical and heavily vocal shaabi and chaabi heard on the streets of North Africa. Kenya’s benga and Tanzania’s bongo flava reverberate across dance floors in East Africa, just as fuji and highlife do in West Africa.
Reculturalisation: Long demonised as satanic, African-inspired religions are gaining traction in Latin America
Followers of African-based religions are on the rise in South America new data shows, a reflection of how the region’s African heritage is gaining a greater voice beyond Brazil where such traditions are widely recognised.
US presidential election fever in overdrive as ‘Blank Space’ singer Taylor Swift conspiracy theorists get psyops all wrong
If there is a psyop going on, it’s being run by those crying wolf. Black propaganda can be effective, but it is notoriously hard to do right, Linebarger writes, as it “needs to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country.”
Changed character of how countries go to war: In Russia’s conflict in Ukraine robots are fighting robots
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, small aerial drones have played an outsize role in the war in Ukraine – with thousands of drones being used to monitor the battlefield, watch enemy movements, and carry explosives.
Emmanuel Adebayor: In an African family, as soon as there is money nobody wants to work, everyone becomes boss
Emmanuel Adebayor, 39, is everywhere at this Africa Cup of Nations: in the television studios, explaining what was happening in front of him; in the executive suites of stadiums, where he makes appearances as a “legend”; and in the hotels of some of the teams, enjoying chats with players old and new.
From witch trials in to fears of the Illuminati in 1800s, America was a nation of conspiracy theorists
The middle of the 19th century also saw thousands of Americans join new religious movements during the Second Great Awakening. One popular group, the Millerites, was founded by William Miller, a veteran of the War of 1812 who used numeric clues in the Bible to calculate the ending of the world: October 22, 1844.
Why 1,500 years on, Matron Saint of Ireland fuels disillusionment with patriarchal and historically dominant Catholic Church
Brigid the goddess was associated with everything from poetry, healing and metal crafting to nature, fertility and fire. She was honoured on the midwinter holy day of Imbolc, still commemorated on February 1, which also became St Brigid’s Day.
Ethnic cleansing is not a crime on its own, but a general description of a string of crimes
To name just a few recent examples, ethnic cleansing has been used to describe: Israel’s mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza; the flight of nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan seized control of the contested enclave; the killing of civilians in Darfur in Sudan’s on-going civil war; and the Ethiopian military’s forced expulsion of people from the country’s Tigray region.
