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!
Tag: africa straight talk
Episode 52: ‘Thoughts and prayers’ for Tanzania’s John Magufuli, who’s been missing
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?
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
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”Episode 30: Meet the woman who quit her corporate job to open San Francisco’s first Nigerian restaurant
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.
Episode 28: African fathers talk about trials and jubilation of raising their American children
Emmanuel Nado and Edwin Okong’o invite two other African-born fathers, Joe Kappia (Liberia) and Yawo Akpawu (Togo), to talk about how their fathers influenced the way they raised their children in the United States.
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 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?
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