We are back for the 2023 season! As always, we’re talking straight. Two of us are complaining about working too hard, as one of us bitches about being fired. One thing we can all agree on, though, is that when you are an African, your job belongs to your relatives. But isn’t it time to reclaim our freedom and encourage personal responsibility?
In our last episode of the year, we wind up our coverage of the World Cup and get back to the business of talking about Africa. Are extravagant weddings necessary? Why do African leaders rush to Washington at the snap of President Joe Biden’s fingers?
After this episode, we’re taking a well-deserved month-long break. Once again, thank you so much for supporting Africa Straight Talk. We wish you a very merry and safe holiday season.
For true fans of the beautiful game, there are values we just have to set aside every four years to enjoy the World Cup. This is a candid discussion about how we become bigoted, vile, and even openly racist for those few weeks.
We don’t think so, but across Africa, leaders who are short of ideas are preying on the gullibility of the continent’s staunchly religious people. From prayer breakfasts to government bans of anything that even remotely resembles homosexuality in the media, religious myths have taken precedence over common sense.
Kwesi Wilson returns to the show to talk about the proliferation of evangelical churches in his country of birth, Ghana, and how their around-the-clock “speaking in tongues” ruined what was supposed to be his summer of recuperation and rejuvenation. Kwesi is a social commentator, news junkie, and professor of communication, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently, he launched a podcast called Telling Tall Stories.
When we started this podcast, it was difficult to imagine us coming this far–from 40 downloads of our first episode, to thousands. That’s all thanks to our loyal listeners, who have shown that there is a need for African stories and perspectives in this podcasting space. Episode 100 is a look back the motivation behind the founding of Africa Straight Talk, our present challenges, and what we think the future holds.
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!
In this episode, we offer “thoughts and prayers” for Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli, Africa’s Covid-19 denier-in-chief, who hasn’t been seen in public since Feb. 27 and is rumored to be hospitalized outside his country.
Word from the Motherland is that Magufuli, 61, who defied World Health Organization recommendations and stopped reporting his country’s coronavirus cases in May, has finally caught the virus and is in intensive care in a hospital somewhere between Kenya and India.
For much of the past year, Tanzanians have gone about their business as if the pandemic doesn’t exist, although some acknowledge there is an increase in cases of “pneumonia.” As you would expect, Magufuli is an anti-vaccine religious wacko who believes, “Vaccinations are dangerous. If white people were able to come up with vaccinations, a vaccination for AIDS would have been found.”
And, oh, he has a PhD in Chemistry, though, we suspect he fried his brains by getting high on the chemicals he was supposed to use for laboratory experiments.
If it’s true that Magufuli has finally caught the virus he’s been blowing kisses to for a year, does he deserve to live? And if the man known as “the Bulldozer” bulldozes through the virus, will he finally accept that it’s real?
When Jocelyne Béroard realized that there were not enough people in her native Caribbean island of Martinique to sustain her ambition to be a musical superstar, she decided to join hands with others and conquer the world.
The singer and songwriter joined hands with artists from neighboring Guadeloupe to form Kassav’, the seminal group that created the popular Zouk style of music, which fueled a dance craze that spread from the islands to the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Continue reading “Episode 39: How musicians from the tiny islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique invented the Zouk music that led to a dance craze in the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia in the ’80s. The story of Kassav’ as told by Jocelyne Béroard”Most African immigrants go to graduate school hoping to land a great white-collar job. Not Simileoluwa Adebajo. The 24-year-old Nigerian woman quit her job as financial analyst to open a restaurant and bring her country’s food and culture to Americans. Opened in 2018, Eko Kitchen is San Francisco’s first Nigerian restaurant and catering company. We spoke with her about her passion for food, and how her young business is navigating these unpredictable times of the coronavirus pandemic.
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