mweshi

Afromusing tagged me to answer the question why I blog about Africa. Put simply, I blog about Africa because I believe the continent has a lot more to offer than we see through many media outlets.

Africa is my home and a land of immense beauty, great food, fantastic sights, captivating music, and amazing people. We have our problems, but I believe we have many more success stories than failures and I remain overly optimistic about the future. I moved back to the continent precisely because of this and have never looked back.

I blog about Africa because I want to share some of the amazing experiences I’ve had and continue to in living and working on the continent. This is a continent steeped in rich history with an equally prosperous future ahead. With the advent of the accessible internet, the cheetah generation will ensure that Africa 2.0 takes it rightful place on the world stage.

With this, I tag:

Bankelele

Simunza

Zambian Economist

Babukadja

It’s always a good thing whenever the power of the internet is used for good! Today marks the second annual Blog Action Day, with poverty being this year’s theme.

I live on a continent that has seen some of the most extreme conditions of poverty and strife, yet it continues to move along and I believe in more positive ways than one. This is evident in the strides many great African minds are making in the fight against several aspects of poverty through business, innovation, and technology.

While we have this very important topic in today’s limelight, let’s not forget to highlight some of the many positive stories of progress in Africa and share them with the rest of the world today!

Also, be sure to also attend at least one Stand Up & Take Action to end poverty and inequality and for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) event this weekend!

Note from Blog Action Day website:

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day (TODAY!). The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Global issues like poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple, clear answer. By asking thousands of different people to give their viewpoints & opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens through which to view these issues.

Against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals is the theme for this year’s Stand Up days of action. Unlike previous years where the event took place over a single day, this year the Stand Up team has spread the event over three days beginning on Friday, 17 October and ending on Sunday, 19 October.

As with a lot of campaigns and action days this year, you too can participate by using several social networking channels that have been setup (Twitter, Facebook, Stand Up blog, Flickr) in addition to the good old fashion way of participating by attending an event. I’ll be participating in one of the events here in South Africa on Saturday.

Don’t forget that you can create your own event by grabbing an event toolkit!

MobileActive 2008 is underway today in Johannesburg! Wish I was there, but due to conflicting work schedules and the number of events we participate in/undertake at work during the months of September and October, I can’t be at the conference. However, I’ll be sure to follow the conference from my desk. If you’re interested, there are a couple of avenues to follow the events at the conference: website, conference blog, twitter, YouTube, Flickr

MobileActive aims to bring together innovators using mobile platforms for social change.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, TEDAfrica will not take place this September. An announcement came in last week about this and I’m sure it has made the rounds already. Really looked forward to attending this conference as it would have built on the momentum from TEDGlobal in Arusha.

Apple’s premier event of the year, the Macworld Conference & Expo, kicks off on Tuesday, 15th January 2008 at 9am PST or 5pm GMT for us on the African continent with Steve Jobs’ keynote or State of the Mac address! Anyone involved in any form of creative process whether it be film, art, design, music, photography, etc. will want to watch the keynote or at least read up on summaries. It’s a jam-packed session of all the new and shiny goodness to expect from Apple and other companies developing for the Mac platform in the year ahead and rarely disappoints, if at all!

There’s a lot of buzz around the net with several sites throwing their predictions into the hat on what new gadgets and software Sir Steve & company will be announcing. Some of the most comprehensive coverage can be found at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Wired.

What has transpired in Kenya since the election has been quite depressing to say the least. It’s sad to see a nation that was well and truly on its way to economic prosperity suddenly digress in that manner. The scale of violence has left me speechless, especially after getting firsthand accounts from friends caught up in areas that witnessed the worst of it.

Nonetheless, amid all of the political bickering that continues while lives are being ruined, cheetah innovation, ingenuity and passion shines bright as a group of friends and fellow TEDsters have come up with a new tool to help people chronicle/document incidents of violence, looting, etc. around the country called Ushahidi, Swahili for witness.

Thanks for the tip Hash.

I’m probably a bit late in blogging this, but do join the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and the Stand Up and Speak Out campaign set to kick off in the next few hours! Millions of people around the world will rally together from 21:00hrs GMT today, the 16th of October until tomorrow evening at 21:00hrs to speak out against poverty and inequality and for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Let’s help “break the world record so we can break the record of broken promises.”

Live jazz is hard to come by in Lusaka on a weekday, let alone jazz being played by one of Africa’s jazz legends for a great cause! Imagine my surprise when I heard that Hugh Masekela was playing at the Lusaka Golf Club on Wednesday night while having drinks with friends over at our favorite spot after what had already been a busy and hectic week.

A couple of friends had been talking about some tickets they had for this “music gig mid-week,” last weekend but they didn’t quite explain the magnitude nor the cause behind it; I figured it would include the regular lineup of guys I’ve heard playing ad nauseam over the past weeks so I wasn’t too bothered about it. The concert was set for 8PM and I was being told about Hugh playing around 8:30PM. Almost shot myself in the foot by thinking he’d be in town for the week, with the SADC summit currently taking place, and I’d be able to catch him on Friday night or something. In retrospect, I can only imagine what insults I would have been hurling at myself had I missed the concert.

After learning that it would be a one-night-only event, I went along with my friends and it was definitely worth it! Hugh played all his splendid hits to a very ecstatic crowd and everyone left the venue on a hump day high when the band finished playing around 12:30AM.

It was only when we got to the Golf Club that I learnt of the nature of “the gig.” The “African Solidarity Concert” was organized by the Darfur Consortium, an African and International Civil Society Action for Darfur of which Mr Masekela is a Goodwill Ambassador.

Proceeds from the concert will go towards

supporting the efforts of the women of Darfur to empower themselves, their families and their communities through support for the Belil Internally Displaced Persons Women’s Community Centre, in South Darfur

The Darfur Consortium

Very glad I went as it was a worthwhile mid-week outing. Good thing I also had my cam handy, more shots of Hugh on Flickr!

On Friday last week, I visited the Henry Tayali Visual Arts Council recently to check out an exhibit that I heard about over the radio. The artist exhibiting his pieces is none other than Lawrence Yombwe, one of Zambia’s prolific painters. His “Aesthetics for All” exposition is a revelation of his experiences and travels inspired by the Mbusa (initiation classes which cover such diverse topics as good governance, justice, love, hygiene, and respect for all) culture of the Bemba ethnic group. Mr. Yombwe’s paintings of acrylic on hessian have become a trademark of his work which has been collected by many prominent businesses and individuals in Zambia and around the world. This was the artist’s 11th solo exhibition and it ran through the month of July.

On display were paintings such as:

Mundu, Extended Family, Escort, and What is corruption?

The paintings also reminded me of an exhibition I had the chance to check out in 2004 called “Schematic Tantrums” by Kenneth “Zenzele” Chulu, another prominent contemporary artist in Zambia. Zenzele drew his inspiration for the paintings from rock art found around Zambia.