Episode 90: Being an African-born American in the workplace ain’t easy

~ Edwin Okong'o

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 88: How a young Ugandan brought down the Ponzi schemer who stole from the poor

~ Edwin Okong'o

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 86: Samuel Pieh, a descendant of Cinqué of Amistad fame, talks about attitude and gratitude

~ Edwin Okong'o

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?

~ Edwin Okong'o

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 83: Honoring Arch. Desmond Tutu, Richard Leakey, and Sidney Poitier for their service to Africa

~ Edwin Okong'o

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

~ Edwin Okong'o

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!

Episode 81: U.S. Evangelicals trying to create ‘one [homophobic] nation under God’ in Ghana

~ Edwin Okong'o

Having failed to create “one nation under God” to match the words of their country’s Pledge of Allegiance, U.S. Evangelicals are trying create it in Africa by sponsoring anti-LGBTQ laws. We speak with two U.S.-based Ghanaians — Arthur Musah, and Kwesi Wilson — about how lawmakers in Ghana are taking cues from American Evangelicals to introduce a hateful law to crack down on the country’s LGBTQ community. If passed, the draconian law would not only punish suspected gay people, but also any person — including family members — who fails to report them to authorities. Behind the bill is an American right-wing extremist group known as World Congress of Families, which has ties to white supremacist organizations.

Born to Ghanaian father and a Ukrainian mother, Musah is an award-winning filmmaker, whose films explore African identities in a globalized age. He is gay and has become one of the leading figures in opposition to Ghana’s proposed hateful bill.

Wilson is a professor of communication, social commentator, and founder of the Afrikan Trumpet, a blog and podcast exploring how art can be used to create change.