In Ivory Coast, telemedicine revolution proves blessing for heart patients

Yahoo – AFP, David ESNAULT, September 14, 2019

Thousands of heart patients in Ivory Coast are checked by telemedicine
each year (AFP Photo/DAVID ESNAULT)

Bouaké (Ivory Coast) (AFP) - Every time Catherine Coulibaly's 19-year-old son had to make a routine appointment with the cardiologist for his heart condition, she gritted her teeth as she silently counted the financial cost.

It wasn't just the hospital fee -- there was the transport, food and accommodation, too, all of it amounting to a hefty burden for an Ivorian family on a modest income.

But thanks to telemedicine -- consultations that doctors conduct through the internet or by phone -- this cost is now a fading memory.

Her son can book an appointment at a telemedicine facility in a nearby town in northern Ivory Coast.

There, he is attached to monitoring machines which send the data sent to Bouake University Hospital in the centre of the country, where it is scrutinised by a heart doctor.

The fledgling technology has long been championed by health advocates for poor rural economies.

Ivory Coast has become an African testbed for it, thanks to a project linking the Bouake hospital's cardiac department with health centres in several northern towns, some of which are a four-hour drive away.

Telemedicine "caused a sigh of relief for the population of Bouake, Boundiali, Korhogo, everyone," says Auguste Dosso, president of the "Little Heart" association, which helps families with cardiac health issues.

Some 45 percent of the Ivorian population live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank's latest estimate in 2017. And the minimum monthly wage -- not always respected -- is only around $100, or 90 euros.

Heart disease surging

The pioneer behind the scheme is cardiologist Florent Diby, who set up an association called Wake Up Africa.

In Ivory Coast, heart disease, diabetes and other "lifestyle" ailments are surging, Diby explained.

Cardiac specialists are rare in Ivory Coast -- patients can spend much of their

income in transport and accommodation when they need a consultation 

(AFP Photo/DAVID ESNAULT)

"Urbanisation is making people more sedentary, and there's the rise in tobacco consumption, changes in diet, stress," Diby said.

Three decades ago, only around one in eight of the Ivorian population had high blood pressure -- now the figure is one in four, on a par with parts of Western Europe.

But in Ivory Coast -- and across Africa -- well-equipped cardiology units are rare.

"Ninety percent of heart attacks can be diagnosed by telemedicine, so for us cardiologists it's a revolutionary technology," said Diby.

The beauty of the telemedicine scheme is that neither the doctor nor the patient has to travel far.

The cardiac patient is hooked up to the electrocardiogram (ECG) and other diagnostic machines with the help of a technician in a local health centre, which is connected to a computer in Bouake's University Hospital.

The cardiologist there can then see the results in real time, provide a diagnosis and prescribe treatment.

The five-year-old project has already linked 10 health centres to the seven cardiologists at Bouake, enabling 4,800 patients in other towns to receive consultations by telemedicine each year. The goal is to expand this to 20 sites, doubling the intake.

Expertise France, the French public agency for international technical assistance, subsidises up to 185,000 euros of the network, which pays for equipment such as computers, artificial intelligence software and internet connections.

Diby is now calling for telemedicine to be expanded in other medical fields such as neurology and psychiatry, not just in the Ivory Coast, but across West Africa too.

That opinion is shared by other experts. Sixty percent of Africans live in rural areas, where shortages of doctors are usually acute.

But numerous hurdles need to be overcome, especially investment in computers and access to the internet, according to a 2013 analysis published by the US National Library of Medicine.

Egypt university expels female student for hugging male friend

Yahoo – AFP, January 13, 2019

An Egyptian couple embracing during a stroll on Pharos Island in the port
of Alexandria (AFP Photo/MOHAMED EL-SHAHED)

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's Al-Azhar university on Sunday said it had expelled a female student after she appeared in a video hugging a male colleague, accusing her of undermining the school's reputation.

The video, which went viral earlier this month, showed a young man carrying a bouquet of flowers kneeling before a young woman and then hugging her in what appeared to be a marriage proposal.

The video was apparently not filmed at Al-Azhar -- a branch of Egypt's highest Sunni Muslim authority -- but at another establishment, Mansoura University in the country's north.

Nevertheless the disciplinary council of the Al-Azhar University campus in Mansoura on Saturday "decided to expel the young girl definitively", university spokesman Ahmed Zarie told AFP.

He said the video had caused a "public outcry" and that the university's decision to expel her was because she had presented a "bad image" of Al-Azhar University, which strictly segregates the genders.

He said hugging between unmarried men and women violates "the values and principles of society".

The woman, however, can appeal the expulsion decision, Zarie said.

The young man who appeared in the video could also face sanctions, a spokesman for Mansoura University said, adding that the school's disciplinary council will meet on Monday to decide his "punishment".

Egypt, a predominantly Muslim country, is a largely conservative society.

Last year, prosecutors detained a female singer for four days for "incitement to debauchery" after an online video clip which included sensual oriental dances and suggestive gestures went viral.

And in 2017 another female pop singer was sentenced to two years in prison on similar charges, also over a video deemed provocative. Her sentence was reduced to a year on appeal.

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Vanilla and spice next to bloom in Dutch greenhouses

Yahoo – AFP, Maude Brulard, November 12, 2016

University of Wageningen researcher Filip van Noort and vanilla grower Joris
Elstgeest inspect vanilla orchids, part of four years of ground-breaking research
(AFP Photo/Maude Brulard)

Bleiswijk (Netherlands) (AFP) - Flowers more exotic than the humble tulip will soon flourish for the first time in Dutch greenhouses after intensive research into growing the capricious vanilla orchid to harvest one of the world's most expensive spices.

In the middle of potato fields in a central Dutch rural town, scientists from Wageningen University have for the past four years been nurturing vanilla orchids. And their research has been deemed a success.

"Based on our information, businesses believe vanilla is a plant with a lot of potential for Dutch greenhouses and have decided to start growing it," said researcher Filip van Noort.

How many orchids will be planted will be decided at the start of the next growing season in the spring, and it will take at least three years before the first Dutch-grown vanilla hits the market.

In Bleiswijk, home to the ground-breaking research, vines from about 100 plants stretch metres high in hot, tropical greenhouses. Hidden under fleshy, oval-shaped leaves are the buds, that will eventually become the vanilla pods so prised by chefs the world over.

"The challenge is to ensure the plants blossom and then to be able to pollinate them in a cost-effective way," said van Noort.

Cultivation of the vanilla orchid is hugely labour intensive as the orchid's flowers 

only last one day and must be pollinated by hand if they are to produce fruit

 (AFP Photo/Maude Brulard)

Black gold

Cultivation is hugely labour intensive. The orchid's flowers only last one day and must be pollinated by hand if they are to produce fruit. So it was an apt challenge for the Dutch -- renowned for their green fingers and their expertise in greenhouse cultivation.

"A few years ago we were looking for new plants which could be grown in Dutch greenhouses," explained van Noort.

The aim was to increase the variety of crops grown by Dutch farmers as they search for improved profits.

Vanilla made sense. Currently the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar holds a quasi-monopoly over world supply producing some 80 percent of global vanilla bean stocks.

It is also the world's second most expensive spice, with prices climbing to 350 euros ($380) a kilo this month -- compared with 60 euros in 2014.

"In the past the price was too low to be interesting. But today, with demand increasing, the prices are rising," said orchid expert Joris Elstgeest.

The long, black vanilla pods, with their distinctive caramel and at times woody scent, have to be collected by hand from the vines and then dried before being sold.

It is the sticky tiny black seeds scraped from inside the pods which are a baker's delight, lending an almost intoxicating flavour to everything from cakes and ice-cream.

The long, black vanilla pods, with their distinctive caramel and at times woody scent, 

have to be collected by hand from the vines and then dried before being sold 

(AFP Photo/Maude Brulard)

All organic

Originating from Mexico, the vanilla orchid was brought to Europe by Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus. But all attempts to grow it in milder climates failed for lack of the type of bee which pollinated the flowers.

It was not until 1841 that someone on the island of Reunion figured out how to pollinate the flowers one-by-one.

That method finally paved the way towards large-scale production, with Madagascar proving the most effective of growers.

But even if prices fall and as other countries explore possible vanilla crops, Dutch growers believe it will prove a good investment.

In past decades, synthetic vanilla flavourings were increasingly adopted by the food industry. But with a return to all things authentic and organic, the real stuff is making a welcome return.

Bleiswijk vanilla is wholly organic, say its Dutch growers, unlike in Madagascar, they claim.

Vanilla is also the world's second most expensive spice, with prices climbing

 to 350 euros ($380) a kilo this month -- compared with 60 euros in 2014 

(AFP Photo/Maude Brulard)

Half of Madagascar's vanilla is exported to Europe, and a third to the United States. But clients say the quality has been slipping, with producers harvesting the pods before they reach maturity to cash in on the price boom.

Some Madagascans even speculate the vanilla industry is being used as a front for the illegal trade in rosewood –- a sought-after product in China.

The Dutch consortium behind the project says it has already received lots of interest from local high-end restaurants as well as food companies.

The Netherlands is a global leader in the art of greenhouse growing with almost 10,000 hectares of this lowlands country set with rows of glasshouses growing all kinds of flowers, fruits and vegetables -- compared to just 1,900 hectares in France.

And researchers are already setting their sights on other spices.

"We've also got black pepper, which seems to be adapting well," said van Noort, adding indigo used to dye blue jeans was another project.

And perhaps saffron -- the world's most expensive spice derived from the saffron crocus -- could be next to flourish here.

Kenya Names Law Graduate as Gunman in Student Massacre

Jakarta Globe, AFP, Apr 06, 2015

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, left, flanked by his Deputy William Ruto,
 addresses a news conference at the State House in the capital Nairobi
on April 4, 2015. (Reuters Photo/Thomas Mukoya)

Nairobi, Kenya. Kenyan authorities have named one of the gunmen who killed 148 people in a university massacre as an ethnic Somali Kenyan national and law graduate, highlighting the al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab’s ability to recruit within the country.

Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said high-flying Abdirahim Abdullahi was “a university of Nairobi law graduate and described by a person who knows him well as a brilliant upcoming lawyer”.

The spokesman said Abdullahi’s father, a local official in the northeastern county of Mandera, had “reported to the authorities that his son had gone missing and suspected the boy had gone to Somalia”.

Describing Abdullahi as an A-grade student, Njoka said it was “critical that parents whose children go missing or show tendencies of having been exposed to violent extremism report to authorities”.

Kenya entered the second of three days of national mourning on Monday for those killed in last week’s massacre, the vast majority of whom were students.

Hundreds had packed Nairobi’s Anglican cathedral on Sunday, where Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said Easter services were overshadowed by “great and terrible evil” as police patrolled outside.

“These terrorists want to cause divisions in our society, but we shall tell them, ‘You will never prevail’,” the archbishop said.

Somalia’s Shabaab militants attacked the university in the northeastern town of Garissa at dawn on Thursday, lining up non-Muslim students for execution in what President Uhuru Kenyatta described as a “barbaric medieval slaughter”.

Although Kenyatta has vowed to retaliate “in the severest way possible”, there have also been calls for national unity.

He said people’s “justified anger” should not lead to “the victimization of anyone” — a clear reference to Kenya’s large Muslim and Somali minorities in a country where 80 percent of the population is Christian.

‘Kenya is at war’

The massacre, Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, claimed the lives of 142 students, three police officers and three soldiers.

Top Muslim and Christian leaders also offered their condolences.

“Kenya is at war, and we must all stand together,” said Hassan Ole Naado, the deputy head of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, saying the organization was helping to raise money for the funerals of those killed and the medical costs of the scores of wounded.

“We deeply feel the pain of the loss of young lives,” he added in a statement, warning that the Shabaab was aiming to “create religious conflict”.

Pope Francis called the killings “senseless brutality”, while the Cairo-based top Sunni Muslim body Al-Azhar has condemned the “terrorist act committed by Somalia’s Shebab”.

On Saturday, Shabaab warned of a “long, gruesome war” unless Kenya withdrew its troops from Somalia, and threatened “another bloodbath”.

Hours after the Shabaab’s warning, police in Garissa paraded four corpses of the gunmen piled on top of each other face down in the back of a pick-up truck.

Five men have also been arrested in connection with the attack, including three “coordinators” captured as they fled towards Somalia, and two others in the university.

The two arrested on campus included a security guard and a Tanzanian found “hiding in the ceiling” and holding grenades, the interior ministry said.

A $215,000 bounty has also been offered for alleged Shabaab commander Mohamed Mohamud, a former Kenyan teacher said to be the mastermind behind the attack.

The Shabaab fled their power base Somalia’s capital Mogadishu in 2011, and continue to battle an African Union force, AMISOM, sent to drive them out that includes troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

The group has carried out a string of revenge attacks in neighboring countries, notably Kenya and Uganda, in response to their participation in the AU force.

Shabaab fighters also carried out the Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi in September 2013, a four-day siege which left at least 67 people dead.

Security forces criticized

Forensic investigators aided by foreign experts continued to scour the site, where one student survivor emerged unharmed from a wardrobe Saturday where she had hidden for over two days.

The remaining 600 traumatized student survivors from the now-closed college have since left Garissa, boarding buses for their home towns.

Over 200 family members of those killed continue their agonizing wait for the remains of their loved ones at the main mortuary in Nairobi.

One of them was 50-year-old Abraham Koech, who last heard from his daughter when she called him on Thursday saying, “Terrorists have come and I’m hiding under the bed.”

Koech said identification of corpses was difficult because the “bullets have deformed the heads” of the victims.

There has been growing criticism in the media that critical intelligence warnings were missed, and that special forces units took seven hours to reach the university, some 365 kilometers from the capital.

Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed defended the response, telling AFP that “fighting terrorism … is like being a goalkeeper. You have 100 saves, and nobody remembers them. They remember that one that went past you.”

Agence France-Presse

'Poo protest' topples British imperialist in South Africa

Yahoo – AFP, Lawrence Bartlett, 29 March 2015

A statue of British coloniser Cecil John Rhodes is covered in plastic bags as

 part of a protest by students and staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT)

on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

Cape Town (AFP) - A bucketload of human excrement flung at a statue has toppled a symbol of British imperialism in South Africa, marking the emergence of a new generation of black protest against white oppression.

The senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) on Friday bowed to student demands that a brooding bronze statue of colonialist Cecil John Rhodes should be removed from the campus.

UCT, the oldest university in South Africa and regularly ranked as the best on the continent, was built on land donated by Rhodes, a mining magnate who died in 1902.

A statue of British coloniser Cecil John

Rhodes is covered in plastic bags as part

of a protest by students and staff of the

University of Cape Town (UCT) on 

March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

Many of the students involved in the protests never lived under the injustices of white minority rule, but say they still experience racial discrimination 21 years after the end of apartheid.

The large statue of a notoriously racist Rhodes gazing across an Africa that he coveted for the British empire made them feel alienated on a campus still dominated by white staff, they said.

The "poo protest" was launched by a small group of students earlier this month, sparking a series of demonstrations demanding that the statue be torn down.

On Friday, the university senate voted 181 to one to remove the statue permanently from the campus, after vice-chancellor Max Price acknowledged "the many injustices of colonial conquest enacted under Rhodes' watch".

While the university council still has to endorse the move at a special meeting on April 8, the statue will be boarded up until it is handed over to government heritage authorities, university spokeswoman Pat Lucas said.

"It is certainly a victory for us," said student representative council president Ramabina Mahapa.

"It means we are being heard by the larger community."

A divisive history

But the disappearance of Rhodes is unlikely to end the debate on racial transformation launched by the protest, which gave rise to similar demands for change at two other universities.

In the east coast city of Durban, students at the University of KwaZulu Natal splattered white paint and anti-racism slogans on a statue of Britain's King George V.

Students and staff of the University of

Cape Town (UCT) protest against the

statue of British coloniser Cecil John

Rhodes at the university in Cape Town

on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger

Bosch)

And at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, activists want the institution to be renamed.

The protests have also sparked lively debate among academics, historians, politicians and writers of letters to newspapers.

Much of the debate has been surprisingly calm and thoughtful in a country with such a divisive history, but a bitter edge of racism lurks beneath the surface in Nelson Mandela's "Rainbow Nation".

One white letter writer probably spoke for many when he suggested in the Cape Times that the student who threw the excrement at Rhodes should leave UCT and attend a university established by "his own ancestors".

But students have dismissed the argument that Rhodes should be honoured for donating land for the campus, saying he stole it from black Africans in the first place.

The discontent goes beyond symbols to cover admission policies and the racial make-up of the teaching staff.

Eusebius McKaiser, an author and commentator who attended Rhodes University and won a prestigious international Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, summed it up in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

"South African universities remain a testament to the country's colonial heritage in terms of what they teach, who does the teaching, and the morally odious symbols that haunt our campuses or lurk in their very names.

Students and staff of the University of 

Cape Town (UCT) shout slogans during

 a protest against the statue of British 

coloniser Cecil John Rhodes at the 

university in Cape Town on March 20, 

2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

"At Rhodes, 83 percent of senior management staff remain white and 77 percent of 'professionally qualified staff,' a category that includes academic teaching staff, are white," he said.

Mandela legacy

Whites make up about eight percent of South Africa's population of some 54 million.

McKaiser, who is of mixed race, defended the fact that he accepted a Rhodes scholarship, telling a radio interviewer that in moral terms the colonialist's money belonged to "the millions of black South Africans whose rights were trampled on".

He took the scholarship to Oxford "so that I could come back and show the middle finger to his legacy," McKaiser said.

Since the end of apartheid the names of some cities and streets deemed offensive have been changed, but monuments to South Africa's racist white-minority rule remain scattered throughout the country.

Much of that can be attributed to the racial reconciliation policies of liberation hero Nelson Mandela, who became the country's first democratically-elected president in 1994.

Another former Rhodes scholar, Shaun Johnson, wrote in South Africa's Times newspaper of his surprise when Mandela agreed in 2002 to have his name coupled with that of Rhodes in a new charitable organisation.

The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, of which Johnson is now executive director, provides post-graduate scholarships to young Africans.

Students and staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT) march on campus 

during a protest against the statue of British coloniser Cecil John Rhodes at

the university in Cape Town on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

"Mandela told us to expect controversy and embrace it, while remaining certain in the knowledge that what we were actually doing was what mattered," Johnson wrote.

"He said... whenever possible, we had to put history to work for a better future."

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa echoed Mandela's approach in his response to the UCT protests.

"The government's attitude and policy to all heritage sites -- including statues of former imperialists like Cecil John Rhodes, among others -- is based on a national policy of reconciliation, nation-building and social cohesion," he said.

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Iranian Students Celebrate Activist Tavakoli's Temporary Release

Radio Free Europe, October 22, 2013

Iranian student activist Majid Tavakoli delivers a speech in an undated photo

Supporters of Majid Tavakoli, a prominent jailed student activist in Iran and one of the biggest symbols of that country's embattled student movement, are celebrating his brief taste of freedom.

The opposition website "Kalame" reported that Tavakoli was given four days of leave after spending four years in prison, including several months in solitary confinement.

On October 22, the day after Tavakoli was temporarily released after posting bail, his fellow students at Tehran's Amir Kabir University gathered to celebrate his release, YouTube video shows:​

In one video, students are singing a well-known folk song that promises the end of winter. Some are holding pictures of Tavakoli and signs that say, "University is Alive."

Tavakoli was arrested after criticizing repression in Iran at a 2009 speech at Amir Kabir University.

He was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison on several charges, including spreading propaganda against the Islamic establishment and insulting Iran's leaders.

Human rights activists and others launched an online campaign in support of Tavakoli after state media mocked him by publishing pictures of him wearing women’s clothes after his arrest. His supporters suggested he had been forced to wear them.

Tavakoli's unwillingness to back off from his stances despite state pressure and harsh prison treatment have gained him a huge following. Many say he upholds the honor of Iran's student movement.

Iran's universities came under extensive pressure during the two-term presidency of former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Many students were summoned by disciplinary committees and security bodies and threatened. Some were banned from studying, while others were jailed for their political activities and critiques of the Iranian establishment. Liberal and pro-reform professors were also pressured, and several were reportedly forced into early retirement.

But Iran’s new president, Hassan Rohani, has set a very different tone. In an October 14speech at Tehran University, he criticized the treatment of students and professors, saying, "I tell the security bodies and the Intelligence Ministry to pave the way for scientific diplomacy and trust universities, students, and professors."

-- Golnaz Esfandiari

Liberia students all fail university admission exam

BBC News, 26 August 2013

Liberia education system is said to be in a "mess"

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Liberia's education minister says she finds it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed this year's university admission exam.

Nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed the test for admission to the University of Liberia, one of two state-run universities.

The students lacked enthusiasm and did not have a basic grasp of English, a university official told the BBC.

Liberia is recovering from a brutal civil war that ended a decade ago.

'Dreams shattered'

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, recently acknowledged that the education system was still "in a mess", and much needed to be done to improve it.

Many schools lack basic education material and teachers are poorly qualified, reports the BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh from the capital, Monrovia.

However, this is the first time that every single student who wrote the exam for a fee of $25 (£16) has failed, our reporter says.

It means that the overcrowded university will not have any new first-year students when it reopens next month for the academic year.

Students told him the result was unbelievable and their dreams had been shattered, our reporter adds.

Education Minister Etmonia David-Tarpeh told the BBC Focus on Africa programme that she intended to meet university officials to discuss the failure rate.

"I know there are a lot of weaknesses in the schools but for a whole group of people to take exams and every single one of them to fail, I have my doubts about that," Ms David-Tarpeh said. "It's like mass murder."

Ms David-Tarpeh said she knew some of the students and the schools they attended.

"These are not just schools that will give people grades. I'd really like to see the results of the students," she added.

University spokesman Momodu Getaweh told Focus on Africa that the university stood by its decision, and it would not be swayed by "emotion".

"In English, the mechanics of the language, they didn't know anything about it. So the government has to do something," he said.

"The war has ended 10 years ago now. We have to put that behind us and become realistic."

‘Our partnership with Radio Netherlands ‘ll help tackle corruption’

Nigerian Tribune, 20 June 2013

Dr Ayo Ojebode

Dr Ayo Ojebode is the Head, Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan. He speaks with Adewale Oshodi on the forthcoming collaboration between the department and the Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which he believes would make young people contribute to the war against corruption in Nigeria. Excerpts:

THE department will be collaborating with the Radio Netherlands Worldwide on a youth forum titled, Ending Corruption in Nigeria: What Can Naija Youths Do?, which will be coming up on June 26. What is the whole idea all about?

The Department of Communication and Language Arts and Radio Netherlands Worldwide share a passion which is equipping and enabling citizens to air their views in constructive and safe ways. RNW strives to stimulate online and offline discussions and create platforms for safe interaction among youths in African countries including Nigeria.  In this case the discussion started on the social media when we asked our Facebook friends what topic we should discuss.

We received nearly 300 suggestions from our Facebook fans combined, many of them young Nigerians. After analysing all the comments, we decided to respond to the repeated tip that the proposed discussion forum should address the issue of corruption. Many other relevant suggestions were made, such as terrorism and identity, but we felt it was important to address something that everybody could relate to.    

I understand only about 60 students are being invited for the programme. Why is it selective in nature, when a larger number of students in the department can actually benefit be attending?

We can take slightly more than 60 students but we are unable to cope with a huge crowd because we want an intensely interactive forum. We don’t want just another gathering characterised by noise, side-talks and fanfare and ending just there.

But we live in a virtual world, meaning that students who cannot participate physically in the discussion can participate virtually. Students are encouraged to follow the Twitter debate (via the hashtag #EC4NY). They could post their questions on Facebook to facebook.com/CLA.UINigeria; or forward them as mail to comlangarts@gmail.com.

 

Can you explain how the Department of Communication and Language Arts and the Radio Netherlands Worldwide started this new-found relationship?

Our university is very passionate about internationalisation. Our University’s administration is very concerned about relationships that connect town and gown; theory and practice. This partnership between our Department and Radio Netherlands Worldwide is an example of such relationships.  I was a visiting researcher at the University of Leiden’s African Studies Centre in 2010, in Leiden, Holland. While there, I was interviewed by a staff of Radio Netherlands Worldwide, who then invited me to visit the station at Hilversum, Holland. During a subsequent stay in Holland, I was asked to contribute articles to the Station’s website, and my students made comments en masse on my contributions.

So when that producer enquired whether we might be interested in partnering with them in organising a discussion at the University of Ibadan, I did not hesitate. Mutual trust had long been established, so it was easy to work together.

How do you think the forum will benefit the youth, the department, the institution and Nigeria in general?

There are several ways in which this can benefit the youth and the country. Think of the Nigerian youth. Although they represent more than half of our population and have been constantly told that they are the leaders of tomorrow, they often complain that they’re not heard. In fact, they are robbed of their voices and slots. You remember that the position of the national youth leader of a prominent political party in Nigeria – a slot meant for the youth – is occupied by a 60-year old grandpa! I hope that through the discussion itself, and its prolongation on various national and international media, the voices of the youths will be heard.

Where can people/readers find out more about this debate?

Starting 26 June, we invite everyone to follow the debate and its follow-up discussions on Twitter via the hashtag #EC4NY, which is an abbreviation for ‘ending corruption for Naija youth’. The Radio Netherlands Worldwide will also continue the discussion on its Facebook page. Same will happen on the FB page of our department: facebook.com/CLA.UINigeria.

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Ghana's John Mahama launches Hope City project

BBC News, 4 March 2013

An IT university will be built at Hope City

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Ghana's President John Mahama has launched a project to build a $10bn (£6.6bn) IT hub near the capital, Accra, within three years.

Dubbed Hope City, it will have Africa's tallest building, at a height of 270m (885ft), an investor says.

It will be built on empty land and will employ about 50,000 people and house 25,000 people, the investor adds.

In January, Kenya unveiled plans to build an "Africa's Silicon Savannah" within 20 years at a cost of $14.5bn.

Kenya's Konza Technology City, about 60km (37 miles) from the capital, Nairobi, is supposed to create more than 200,000 jobs by 2030.

Mr Mahama said the private sector would spearhead the building of Hope City.

"Government has led growth since independence with all the major investments... The time has come for the private sector to take over," he said at the project's launch.

"We can see that already in several sectors, including ICT [information, communications and technology] and telecom."

The head of local technology giant RLG Communications, Roland Agambire, told the BBC that his company was investing in Hope City with the aim of making Ghana globally competitive.

"What we are trying to do here is to develop the apps [applications] from scratch," he said.

"This will enable us to have the biggest assembling plant in the world to assemble various products - over one million within a day," he said.

The IT hub would be made up of six towers, including a 75-storey, 270m-high tower, "the highest in Africa", RLG Communications says on its website.

"Hope City will provide work for 50,000 people and will host 25,000 inhabitants," it adds.

It would include an IT university, a residential area, a hospital, as well as social and sporting amenities, the BBC's Sammy Darko reports from Accra.

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Africa - "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

"..  Let me tell you where else it's happening that you are unaware - that which is the beginning of the unity of the African states. Soon the continent will have what they never had before, and when that continent is healed and there is no AIDS and no major disease, they're going to want what you have. They're going to want houses and schools and an economy that works without corruption. They will be done with small-minded leaders who kill their populations for power in what has been called for generations "The History of Africa." Soon it will be the end of history in Africa, and a new continent will emerge.

Be aware that the strength may not come from the expected areas, for new leadership is brewing. There is so much land there and the population is so ready there, it will be one of the strongest economies on the planet within two generations plus 20 years. And it's going to happen because of a unifying idea put together by a few. These are the potentials of the planet, and the end of history as you know it.

In approximately 70 years, there will be a black man who leads this African continent into affluence and peace. He won't be a president, but rather a planner and a revolutionary economic thinker. He, and a strong woman with him, will implement the plan continent-wide. They will unite. This is the potential and this is the plan. Africa will arise out the ashes of centuries of disease and despair and create a viable economic force with workers who can create good products for the day. You think China is economically strong? China must do what it does, hobbled by the secrecy and bias of the old ways of its own history. As large as it is, it will have to eventually compete with Africa, a land of free thinkers and fast change. China will have a major competitor, one that doesn't have any cultural barriers to the advancement of the free Human spirit. …."