The plight of black people in the United States is well documented. In fact, it started with slavery, centuries before the country was founded. Slavery ended in the United States following the Civil War. But that would no be the end of the suffering of African Americans. Jim Crow laws were enacted in the southern states, which had fought against the abolition of slavery and lost. The era of segregation and systemic racist violence and lynchings of black people lasted from 1877 to 1960. Segregation should have ended with the President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing or the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Continue reading “African Immigrants Join Fight for Social Justice in America”Category: Blog
Episode 26: Examining International Response to George Floyd’s Death and Systemic Racism in America
Our guests, Nigerian-American Dr. Amanda Felix, and Ghanaian-born Prof. Kwesi Wilson spare no one in their critique of the world’s response to George Floyd’s death in the hands of Minneapolis Police. Africans, Europeans, Asians — everyone gets a fair share of the venom.

Episode 25: African Immigrants Increasingly Protesting Against Racism in the United States
Protests continue in the Unites States over the murder of George Floyd, another unarmed black man killed in police custody. Our guest Tom Gitaa, president and publisher of Minneapolis-based African community newspaper, Mshale, about why African immigrants are increasingly rising to protest racism in America.

Episode 24: Honoring African Mothers
Many African fathers proudly — some even loudly — take credit for the success of their children. But if they were to be honest, they’d admit that our mothers play bigger roles in shaping our lives. This week we tell you about out mothers and other African women who made us who we are.

Episode 23 — Has Africa Dodged the Coronavirus Bullet?

As the world watched the coronavirus overwhelm health systems in well-developed countries, many warned that there would be millions infected and hundreds of thousands dead in Africa. In this episode, we try to make sense of why it hasn’t quite turned out that way.
Episode 22: Revisiting the Dream of a United Africa

In a series to celebrate women’s month, we speak with Amira Ali, and Teboho, two Bay Area-based African women activists from Ethiopia and S. Africa, respectively. They have teamed up with others to launch Afrika Moja, a collective that hosts salon-style discussions to explore various ways to unite Africans at home and abroad for the sake of the continent’s future.
Continue reading “Episode 22: Revisiting the Dream of a United Africa”Episode 21: Is the Eco, West Africa’s Proposed Regional Currency, Dead Before Arrival?

In this episode, our guest, Kwesi Wilson, a Ghanaian-born commentator and professor of communication, joins us to discuss the viability of a regional African currency. Following the announcement in late 2019 that former French colonies were going to finally going to get rid of the CFA, there was excitement that those countries would finally achieve economic independence from the European power.
Continue reading “Episode 21: Is the Eco, West Africa’s Proposed Regional Currency, Dead Before Arrival?”Episode 20: Can Africa Recover From a Colonized Mind, Or Are We Doomed?

In our last episode, we spoke with Yawo Akpawu, an exiled educator and human rights activist from Togo, about the west African country’s 2020 presidential election, which, as he predicted, didn’t end the rule of Faure Gnassingbe. This week, we extend the conversation beyond Togo to talk about the future of Africa, and what he thinks is a difficult (but possible) task to bring good governance to the continent.
Episode 19: Fighting the Politics of Nepotism in Togo
In this episode, Africa Straight Talk speaks with Yawo Akpawu, an exiled educator and human rights activist from Togo, about his life, his work, his cautious optimism, and his take on the west African country’s upcoming presidential election, which is scheduled for Feb. 20, 2020.

Episode 18: A Ghanaian’s Perspective on “The Year of Return”
In this episode, we speak to Kwesi Wilson, a San Francisco Bay Area-based Ghanaian-born professor, who took his American students to Ghana in 2019 as part of “the Year of Return”, a Ghanaian government campaign to attract descendants of African slaves to their ancestral land. The ambitious project challenges black citizens of European, American, and Caribbean nations to go beyond visiting as tourists to become investors, and even offered them citizenship and land. What grade does our professor give the project?
