mweshi

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.

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.

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!

Back from a semi-self-imposed boycott of my laptop over the four-day weekend, blogging drought, and continuing along the conversation of film, here’s a link to a short animation project Patrick Algaé of Treelion had talked to me about during TED Global called “The Return of Liaram.”

The Return of Liaram is an animated short film project directed by awarded Caribbean director Joel Cimarron who won in 2003, the International Competition Project Award of Annecy International Film Festival.

The film has a duration of 9’30 and will use a special animation paintings technique created by Joel Cimarron.

The influence comes from “Notebook of a Return to my Native Land” (1939), the early master work from surrealist Caribbean Poet Aimé Césaire Godfather of the Negritude movement whom surrealism movement’s founder Andre Breton said of “Notebook of a Return to my Native Land” : “this poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our times”.

The Return of Liaram is an attempt to make him a tribute.

To get a feel for the special animation paintings technique, it’s best you watch the film’s teaser trailer. I was fortunate enough to get an amazing explanation from Patrick that had my imagination doing acrobatics from the sheer passion in his description of the project!

Hat tip to Afromusing for the Return of Liaram link

Coincidentally, Pictoon is an animation outfit based in Dakar, Senegal (founded by Pierre Sauvalle, an animation director from Cameroon and Aïda Ndiaye, a Senegalese businesswoman) and under Patrick Algaé’s Treelion distribution umbrella that produced Africa’s first ever animated television series, Kabongo the Griot. Pictoon’s currently working on a project that will coincide with Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa called, “The Invicible Lions.” True African superheroes in the making!

While getting my weekly dose of Studio 53 on MNet’s Africa Magic this evening, I learnt of the passing of one of Africa’s greatest artists (film director, producer and writer) and the man considered to be the “Father of African film,” Ousmane Sembène (1 January 1923 — 9 June 2007).

I read Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood (originally written in French under the title Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu) while attending high school in Addis Ababa. At the time, it was one of the best African books I had ever read and till today it remains on top of my list.

It’s books by writers like Ousmane, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, and others that have influenced the strong desire in me to be part of the African Cheetah Renaissance and what I hope to accomplish while I live, breathe and traverse this boat we all call life.

To M. Sembène Ousmane, I say, rest in perfect peace Sir and thank you for putting Africa on the world’s map in your own unique way.

PS: Be sure to read this great article on the man and his work.

Armed with a few thousand dollars, digital cameras, and some lights, Nigerian directors have created a $250 million industry, thousands of jobs, and a sense of hope on a continent better known for blight and despair…

- This is Nollywood website

While at TED in Arusha, I had an interesting conversation with three film directors from Nigeria about the state of Nollywood and what may done to improve the quality of film making on the continent. Andrew Dosunmu (photographer and filmmaker) and Newton Aduaka (winner of the grand prize at FESPACO 2007 for his film “Ezra”), both based outside of Nigeria and making films of a different caliber than Nollywood and with bigger budgets, and Bond Emeruwa a Nollywood-based filmmaker featured in Franco Sacchi’s documentary “This is Nollywood.”

The question put on the table was whether Nollywood movies can be made with a higher quality of production; Andrew and Newton challenged Bond that they could produce good quality feature films with the same budget, equipment, crew, and actors.

Now, I have watched a number of Nollywood productions some good-some poor and I appreciate the fact that a lot of them have showcased stories of concern to Africans by overcoming several barriers and embracing digital film production. Granted, Nigeria is a 10lb. gorilla in terms of the number of films produced every year and no country on the continent can compare. However, I still believe the production quality can be improved and streamlined even with the budgets some of these films are made on.

In an earlier discussion with Bond, we talked of some sort of capacity building projects for aspiring film makers from around the continent to travel to Nigeria to learn from Nollywood and with the experience of Nollywood and perhaps an improvement in production quality, we might have an extremely powerful pan-African film movement highlighting all of this rich continent’s great stories, kingdoms, cultures, languages, and civilizations.

I can’t recall the last time a feature film was made in Zambia, but it seems we’re on the way to having our very first feature titled “Bad T!ming.” While doing some research online, I came across a project that was started sometime last year to document the production of Bad T!ming on the Film Zambia website and apparently the film is now in post production. One film every two years is certainly a far cry from the 1,000 to 2,000 that Nollywood would have produced during the same time, but I guess it is a start…

Well, TED Global wrapped up yesterday and quite a few of us were left a tad sad that such an amazing week was over. I believe the people of TED provided us with a great platform with which to communicate with one another and if we can harness the power of those present at TED, Africa’s future is looking very bright! Here’s a quick summary of some of the talks from yesterday.

Patrick Awuah - Cofounder, Ashesi University in Ghana

Africa can only be transformed through enlightened leaders.

The question of transformation in Africa is a question of leadership.

Every society must be intentional about educating its leaders.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala - former Finance Minister of Nigeria and Fellow of the Brookings Institution

Why is it that Africans want to totally take the other side of the aid coin by completely refusing it. Africa has been giving aid to the west since the slave trade and we should not be ashamed or refuse if they want to give it back. The US and Europe could not have been built without Africa’s aid. Let’s not be on the defensive for what the west is giving back.

Support women and create jobs. Put more resources in the hands of women:
Placing more resources in the hands of women results in greater spending on human capital, i.e. household services, health, education and food

Aid should be channeled to the right places with total involvement of its recipients from the onset; if this trend continues we won’t achieve any development. Africans need to take charge of where aid should be channeled.

Planted seeds

Emeka put it well when he summarized the conference and said “what we have done at this event is plant seeds.” Indeed the seeds of change, progress, and a new African renaissance have been planted!