There is no shortage of Africans with ingenious ideas. Many have created prototypes of their inventions, but why do they continue to struggle to scale up? We talk about some of the geniuses we’ve interviewed on Africa Straight Talk.
Author: Edwin Okong'o
Edwin Okong’o is not your typical, stereotypical African. He is a storyteller by any medium necessary™. Okong'o is an award-winning journalist, humorist, satirist and memoirist. He received his master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied radio, newspaper, magazine, and online multimedia storytelling and editing. Okong’o’s journalistic work, provocative commentaries, and stand-up comedy performances have appeared in numerous media across the world. He is the winner of several honors, including a Webby Award for his short documentary, "Kenya: Sweet Home, Obama", which he made for the PBS program, Frontline.
Episode 90: Being an African-born American in the workplace ain’t easy
We discuss various topics, including Black people in positions of power who harass and sabotage other Black people because they don’t want to be seen as engaging in the same cronyism white people practice in the workplace every damn day.
Episode 89: A brutally honest African perspective on Putin’s war on Ukraine
They say when the world sneezes, Africa catches the cold. Putin’s war on Ukraine is no exception, and we offer an unapologetic analysis. (WARNING: This one got heated. Some language might be offensive).
Episode 88: How a young Ugandan brought down the Ponzi schemer who stole from the poor
When Daniel Leinhardt and his family lost all their savings to an international cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, he decided to go after the Ugandan director of OneCoin scam. He speaks about the scheme that derailed his university education, and how he was pleasantly shocked when Ugandan authorities arrested John Mwangutsya.
Mwangutsya was Uganda’s director of OneCoin, a cryptocurrecy multilevel marketing scheme that defrauded people around the world of $4 billion. OneCoin was founded by Bulgarian-born Ruja Iganatova, who vanished in 2017 when it became apparent that she was defrauding people.
Episode 87: Are Africans abroad becoming smooth criminals?
It used to be that the only way Africans stole from Americans was from far away by means like the infamous 419 e-mail scam. Nowadays we are doing in the United States, and a lot of us are getting busted and going to prison.
Episode 86: Samuel Pieh, a descendant of Cinqué of Amistad fame, talks about attitude and gratitude
As part of our Black History coverage, Emmanuel Nado speaks with Samuel Pieh, the great-great-grandson of Joseph Cinqué of the Amistad fame. Born Sengbe Pieh in what’s now Sierra Leone, Cinqué was captured as slaves and shipped to the Spanish colony of Cuba. In 1839, Cinqué led a slave revolt on La Amistad, a ship that was transporting him and other slaves within Cuba. They commandeered intending to sail to Africa, but ended up in the east coast of the United States. After a saga that only ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against surrendering the slaves to Spain, Cinqué and 52 other Africans sailed back to Sierra Leone as free men.
Cinqué’s revolt was captured in Stephen Spielberg’s 1997 film, Amistad, for which Samuel Pieh was a consultant.
Pieh works for the United States Department of States and is currently in service in Haiti. He has lived and worked in several African countries as an officer of the U.S.Department of State. He founded many youth organizations while in service in these countries and provided mentorship to the youth. Check out his autobiography, Beyond the Amistad Saga.
Episode 85: Why are Africans celebrating coups?
Is this the decade of military coups in Africa? We ask because there in the last two years, there have been five coups on the continent. Thankfully, most of them have been bloodless. That’s perhaps because in countries like Guinea and Burkina Faso, people have taken to the streets in support of military takeover of civilian governments. Is the experiment of western-style democracy in Africa over?
Episode 84: King Khoisan’s cannabis and S. Africa’s misplaced priorities
South Africa has major problems ranging from failed post-Apartheid land reforms to racial inequality to rampant corruption. But none of them, it seems, is larger than having a near-naked indigenous king who grows and smoked dagga, as marijuana is know down there.
Episode 83: Honoring Arch. Desmond Tutu, Richard Leakey, and Sidney Poitier for their service to Africa
The new season of Africa Straight Talk begins with at tribute to three recently departed African men who loved and believed in Africa. South African Arch. Desmond Tutu, Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, and trailblazing, Academy Award-winning actor, Sidney Poitier, showed their love for Africa in their own special ways. The episode ends with yet another foreigner — the American junk food company KFC — insulting the quality of Kenyan food.
Episode 82 — Africa in 2021: Even with Omicron variant, we’re still resilient
In this last episode of the year, we look back at how Africa coped with a difficult 2021. We also revisited some of the amazing guests we had here on Africa Straight Talk. As we complete our second year of podcasting, we’d like to thank you, our dear listeners, for bringing us this far. You have nurtured us from that new podcast that had a couple of hundred downloads a week, to one listened to by more than 15,000 people every month. Now we must take some much-needed time off to replenish our energies so that we may come back stronger. Finally, we wish you a safe and happy festive season, and a happy new year. Once again, thank you, and see you in 2022!
Africa Straight Talk 
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