News — africa

Africa is predicted to be the next big economy that can rival China one day. This growth is primarily dependent on how Africa manages the next few decades. Current trajectories indicate sub-Saharan Africa has had an expanding GDP worldwide in the past decade despite shrinking. By educating and empowering women, creating jobs through massive industrialization, modernizing farming, improving infrastructure, and implementing better governance, the continent stands a chance. At the moment, it is not a question of whether Africa’s economy is rapidly growing but how the continent manages the next few decades to stand besides China as an economic powerhouse. Do you think Africa stands a chance?

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church established 1864 was the first African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E. church) in the state of Mississippi. It was also the site for T.W. Stringer Grand Lodge of Freemasonry for the State of Mississippi headquartered in Vicksburg and founded by Rev. T.W. Stringer in 1867. The church is located at 805 Monroe Street in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the corner of Monroe and First East streets. While the building that houses the church was built in 1828, a demolition took place in 1912 to build the present building. The most famous of the church’s early pastors was Rev. Hiram Revels who on February 25, 1870 took the oath of office to become the first Black U.S. Senator in the history of the United States. He was also the first president of Alcorn University.

Bethel AME Church was first organized and founded by Rev. Page Tyler, a missionary from Missouri. As the congregation grew, in 1868 the current church property was purchased at a cost of $28,000 from a white Presbyterian congregation that had built the church building on this site in 1828.

At one point in 1912 as the new building was being constructed, the congregation, then led by Rev. W.L. Anderson, met in a small chapel in the rear of a three-story hall on the campus of Campbell College. At that point the congregation numbered 550 parishioners.

Over time the congregation decreased due in part to the passing of its members. Nonetheless, the church community exhibited a strong desire to ensure the history of the church is preserved and continued to be shared. To that end, the city of Vicksburg and the state of Mississippi supported the successful effort to add the church to the National Register of Historic Places. On July 30, 1992 Bethel AME Church was added to the Register.

The Bethel AME congregation is currently led by Pastor Arnita Spencer who continues to share the message of God’s love and services to the community as well as the church’s historical legacy. Besides Senator Revels, prominent church members have included Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, the only African American member of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890, also the founder of the town of the all-Black town of Mound Bayou in 1887 and Campbell College in 1890, John Lynch, the first African American Congressman from Mississippi, L.J. Bowman, Alcorn State University President, and William H. Jefferson, co-founder with his wife, of Jefferson Funeral Home, Mississippi’s oldest-black owned business and oldest registered black funeral home in the state. Lucy C. Jefferson, William Jefferson’s wife, was a prominent civic organizer who invited Booker T. Washington to come to the state. She also organized the Mississippi Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs.

The Haitian Revolution has often been described as the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere. Slaves initiated the rebellion in 1791 and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony. The Haitian Revolution, however, was much more complex, consisting of several revolutions going on simultaneously. These revolutions were influenced by the French Revolution of 1789, which would come to represent a new concept of human rights, universal citizenship, and participation in government.

In the 18th century, Saint Dominigue, as Haiti was then known, became France’s wealthiest overseas colony, largely because of its production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 there were five distinct sets of interest groups in the colony. There were white planters—who owned the plantations and the slaves—and petit blancs, who were artisans, shop keepers and teachers. Some of them also owned a few slaves. Together they numbered 40,000 of the colony’s residents. Many of the whites on Saint Dominigue began to support an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony. The planters were extremely disenchanted with France because they were forbidden to trade with any other nation. Furthermore, the white population of Saint-Dominique did not have any representation in France. Despite their calls for independence, both the planters and petit blancs remained committed to the institution of slavery.

The three remaining groups were of African descent: those who were free, those who were slaves, and those who had run away. There were about 30,000 free black people in 1789. Half of them were mulatto and often they were wealthier than the petit blancs. The slave population was close to 500,000. The runaway slaves were called maroons; they had retreated deep into the mountains of Saint Dominigue and lived off subsistence farming. Haiti had a history of slave rebellions; the slaves were never willing to submit to their status and with their strength in numbers (10 to 1) colonial officials and planters did all that was possible to control them. Despite the harshness and cruelty of Saint Dominigue slavery, there were slave rebellions before 1791. One plot involved the poisoning of masters.

Inspired by events in France, a number of Haitian-born revolutionary movements emerged simultaneously. They used as their inspiration the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” The General Assembly in Paris responded by enacting legislation which gave the various colonies some autonomy at the local level. The legislation, which called for “all local proprietors…to be active citizens,” was both ambiguous and radical. It was interpreted in Saint Dominigue as applying only to the planter class and thus excluded petit blancs from government. Yet it allowed free citizens of color who were substantial property owners to participate. This legislation, promulgated in Paris to keep Saint Dominigue in the colonial empire, instead generated a three-sided civil war between the planters, free blacks and the petit blancs. However, all three groups would be challenged by the enslaved black majority which was also influenced and inspired by events in France.

Led by former slave Toussaint l’Overture, the enslaved would act first, rebelling against the planters on August 21, 1791. By 1792 they controlled a third of the island. Despite reinforcements from France, the area of the colony held by the rebels grew as did the violence on both sides. Before the fighting ended 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites were killed. Nonetheless the former slaves managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by l’Overture’s forces. By 1801 l’Overture expanded the revolution beyond Haiti, conquering the neighboring Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). He abolished slavery in the Spanish-speaking colony and declared himself Governor-General for life over the entire island of Hispaniola.

At that moment the Haitian Revolution had outlasted the French Revolution which had been its inspiration. Napoleon Bonaparte, now the ruler of France, dispatched General Charles Leclerc, his brother-in-law, and 43,000 French troops to capture L’Overture and restore both French rule and slavery. L’Overture was taken and sent to France where he died in prison in 1803. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of l’Overture’s generals and himself a former slave, led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 where the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti. France became the first nation to recognize its independence. Haiti thus emerged as the first black republic in the world, and the second nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States) to win its independence from a European power.

The Sharpeville Massacre, which occurred on March 21, 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa, was the incident that to that point resulted in the deaths of the largest number of South Africans in a protest against apartheid.  It also came to symbolize that struggle.

Sharpeville, a black suburb outside of Vereeniging (about fifty miles south of Johannesburg), was through the 1950s a community untouched by anti-apartheid demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns.  By 1960, however, anti-apartheid activism reached the town.  In March 1960, Robert Sobukwe, a leader in the anti-apartheid Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) organized the town’s first anti-apartheid protest.  In order to reduce the possibility of violence he wrote a letter to the Sharpeville police commissioner announcing the upcoming protest and emphasizing that its participants would be non-violent.

On March 21, an estimated 7,000 Africans gathered in front of the Sharpeville police station to protest against the restrictive pass laws.  Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful protest.  As they attempted to disperse the crowd, a police officer was knocked down and many in the crowd began to move forward to see what had happened.  Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire into the crowd.  Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police did not fire a warning shot above the crowd.  As the thousands of Africans tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into the crowd.  Sixty-nine Africans were killed and 186 were wounded with most shot in the back.

The Sharpeville Massacre awakened the international community to the horrors of apartheid.  The massacre also sparked hundreds of mass protests by black South Africans, many of which were ruthlessly and violently crushed by the South African police and military.  On March 30, the South African government declared a state of emergency which made any protest illegal.  The ban remained in effect until August 31, 1960.  During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested throughout the nation.  The South African government then created the Unlawful Organizations Act of 1960 which banned anti-apartheid groups such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress.

The South African’s government’s repressive measures in response to the Sharpeville Massacre, however, intensified and expended the opposition to apartheid, ushering in three decades of resistance and protest in the country and increasing condemnation by world leaders.  With the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994, the apartheid system ended.  Symbolically in 1994, Mandela signed the nation’s first post-apartheid constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre.

The Battle of Isandlwana, January 22, 1879, was the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War and would prove to be a significant and unexpected victory for the Zulu in a war which they ultimately lost to the British.

Since the British arrival in South Africa at the beginning of the 19th Century, Zululand had proved a troublesome nation in their efforts to control the region. During the first three decades of the century the British made no attempt to challenge Shaka, the founder of the Zulu Empire, and his immediate successors. From the 1840s through the 1860s however, British (and Boer) power gradually increased as Zulu military control grew weaker. By the 1870s the Zulu Empire threatened British expansion into the diamond and gold-rich interior. In 1878 the British High Commissioner of Southern Africa, Sir Bartle Frere, provoked a war with the Zulu, hoping for a sharp, short attack leading to the destruction of Zulu military power.

On December 11, 1878 Frere sent an ultimatum to Zulu King Cetshwayo, ordering him either to dismantle the military system of his nation or else face war with the British Empire. Cetshwayo had long made efforts to avoid outright war with the British; however he found it impossible to comply with this request and, just as Frere had anticipated, he refused to disband his army and instead prepared for war against the British.

On the 22nd January 1879 the British invaded Zululand. Their army was composed of nearly 1,800 troops, made up of both British and African men from the neighbouring British colony of Natal. Although they faced a force of roughly 20,000 Zulu warriors, the British felt assured of their victory due to superior military resources. However, the battle which ensued would prove to be an embarrassing defeat for the British as they were out-manoeuvred by Cetshwayo’s men. By the end of the battle the British had lost around 1,300 of their force of 1,800 while the Zulus suffered a relatively light loss of around 1,000 men.

The Zulus’ triumph, however, would not last long. In order to preserve the Imperial image of power and prestige and to avoid the Zulu victory inspiring other nations to revolt against British colonial rule, they launched a nine-month counteroffensive that would engage at least 17,000 British troops, the largest Army they sent to Africa. Britain would emerge victorious in this Anglo-Zulu War after their forces captured Cetshwayo on August 28, 1879, forcing him to agree to the dismantling of the Zulu Empire into 13 small states. Eight years later, on May 9, 1887, all of these states were annexed by the British. The Battle of Isandlwana, however, would remain an important landmark in the history of Africa as an example of defiance against European Imperialism.

Djenné, also known as Jenne or Dienné, is a southern Malian city that was an ancient center for trading and Muslim scholarship during its height. It is nestled on the Bani River and is approximately 220 miles southwest of Timbuktu. The city had a population of 26,267 people in 2009. During the flooding season, the city becomes an island due to it being situated on small hill near the river.

The city of Djenné was originally founded by the Bozo people around 250 B.C.E at a location known as Djenné-Jeno which was one of sub-Saharan Africa’s oldest known cities and is about 1 mile away from the city’s current site. The conversion of the city to Islam in either the 11th or 13th century caused Djenné to relocate to where it now currently resides. This new location resulted in Djenné becoming a major trading hub for commodities such as gold, salt, and salves along the trans-Saharan trade route.

Djenné was never a part of the Mali Empire despite its location but instead existed as a separate city-state that was protected by its geography and walls. The city was first conquered by Sonni Ali of the Songhai Empire in 1473. Morocco ended the empire’s reign in the region in 1591 and took over Djenné. Under Morocco the city became a flourishing center for trade and Muslim learning during much of the 1600s.

By 1670 Djenné was incorporated into the Segou Kingdom and remained under its governance until the Fulani ruler Shehu Amadou Lobbo conquered the city in 1818 for the Massina Kingdom. The Toucouleur Empire led by Umar Tall would come to control the city in 1861 and remained in power until the French conquered Djenné in 1893. Under French rule the city’s importance as a trading center declined.

Today, Djenné’s economy is mostly centered around agriculture. The city is home to a number of archaeological sites and many examples of Muslim architecture. The Great Mosque of Djenné, the largest mud-brick building in the world, was originally constructed in the 13th century but was rebuilt in 1907 after it was destroyed in 1834 by intentional flooding. The original mosque was one of the most influential Islamic learning centers in Africa during the Middle Ages. The current Great Mosque along with the city’s old section were designated as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Sites in 1988. Each year a festival is held with the primary focus of maintaining the mosque and all the city’s inhabitants take part.

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was a politician who served as the fifth President of Tanzania from 2015 to 2021. Magufuli was born on October 29, 1959, in Chato, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), to John Joseph Magufuli and an unnamed mother. Growing up, Magufuli attended the Chato Primary School from 1967 to 1974. He also attended the Kateke Seminary School from 1975 to 1977, then relocated to Lake Secondary School in 1977, graduating in 1978. Magufuli graduated from Mkwawa High School in Iringa, Tanzania in 1981. After graduating, Magufuli enrolled in the Mkwawa College of Education where in 1985 he received a Diploma in Education Science, majoring in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Education. Magufuli also attended the University of Dar es Salaam where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Education degree in 1988, a master’s degree there in 1994, and doctorate in chemistry in 2009.

Magufuli began his professional career as a teacher at The Sengerema Secondary School in Sengerema, Tanzania. He later quit his teaching job and became an industrial chemist at the Nyanza Cooperative Union Limited. While there he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1995, where he represented the Chato district. He was appointed Deputy Minister for Works during his first term as MP by President Benjamin Mkapa. Magufuli would become Minister for Works following the 2000 election.

On January 4, 2006, President Jakaya Mrisho Kilkwete moved Magufuli to Minister of Lands and Human Settlement. He also served as Minister of Livestock and Fisheries from 2008 to 2010 and Minister of Works from 2010 to 2015.

On July 12, 2015, Magufuli was nominated as CCM’S (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) Presidential candidate for the 2015 election. Magufuli won a majority vote in the final round of the primary against Asha-Rose Migiro and Amina Salum Ali. Magufuli then faced candidate Edward Lowassa in the Presidential election held on October 25, 2015. On October 29, 2015, Magufuli was declared the winner by the National Electoral Commission (NEC). His running mate, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was declared vice president. During his presidency, Magufuli took on many issues but he was most notable for his measures to curb unnecessary government spending including cutting unnecessary foreign travel by government officials. Magufuli also reduced his own presidential salary from $15,000 to $4,000 a month. Magufuli presidency was not without its controversies. These controversies included being accusing of having autocratic tendencies seen in restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on LGBT rights, and a crackdown on members of the political opposition. He was also known of promoting misinformation about COVID-19 over the pandemic in Tanzania.

Magufuli won reelection against Tundu Lissu in the 2020 Tanzanian general election. On March 17, 2021, Magufuli died at the Emilio Mzena Memorial Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the age of 61. Magufuli’s cause of death was not known, but according to his vice president Suluhu, he suffered from a heart condition for many years. On March 20, 2021, Magufuli was laid-in-state at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Magufuli was at one time married to Janeth Magufuli. The couple had three children together.

Inspired by the Black Power movement in the U.S., the Nigerian playwright, Obi Egbuna, founded the British Black Panthers (BBP) in 1968 in London’s Notting Hill.  In Britain, people of Caribbean, African, or South Asian descent, who were mainly immigrants from former British colonies, were considered to be “black.”  The tripling of Britain’s black population from 300,000 to 1 million from 1961 to 1964 led to increased racial and class tensions, especially in London’s Afro-Caribbean community.  These tensions led to more police repression and the creation of the BBP.

While the BBP was not an official chapter of the Black Panthers, it was the first Panther organization outside the United States, adopting the Panther’s symbols of military jackets, berets, and raised fists.  Under Egbuna, BBP fought against police brutality. London police attempted to destroy the new party by arresting Ebguna and two other Panthers on bogus charges of threatening police.  Ebguna was found guilty, and while he was in prison, Althea Jones, a Trinidad-born Ph.D. student at the University of London, became the leader of BBP by 1970.

Althea Jones along with her partner and later husband, Eddie Lecointe, South Asian Farrukh Dhondy, and Neil Kenlock changed the focus of BBP.  The Party began grass-roots organizing of local black communities in England around each community’s issues of racial discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and medical and legal services. The BBP moved their headquarters to Brixton, a poorer black community in London.  Under Jones’s leadership the Panthers became a highly effective community organization that also collaborated on white working class issues and fought British imperialism. Like the Black Panther Party in the U.S., they stressed working-class solidarity in addition to fighting racial discrimination and oppression.

As part of their community work the BBP engaged in legal advocacy for blacks in 10 British cities as well as in London.  The high point of their advocacy work was their defense of the Mangrove restaurant that was the central meeting place for Notting Hill’s Caribbean community.  The police regularly harassed and raided the Mangrove without ever finding any drugs.  The BBP helped organize a demonstration against the police that led to the arrest and charging of nine black leaders with inciting a riot.  These nine included the owner of the Mangrove, Althea Jones-Lecointe, and Darcus Howe.  The Mangrove Nine trial was Britain’s most influential black power trial.  Jones-Lecointe and Howe represented themselves at the trial and demanded an all-black jury as a jury of their peers.  The jury acquitted all nine defendants, and for the first time, a judge publicly acknowledged that there was “evidence of racial hatred” within the London police.

Other BBP achievements included creation of a Youth League and the Freedom News newspaper, and organizing a march of 10,000 people protesting the Immigration Bill of 1971 that reduced black immigration.  In 1973 the BBP split into two factions, and ended soon after.  The BBP had many offshoots, including British Black Women’s Group, Squatter’s Rights Movement, and the Race Today magazine.  The long-neglected BBP has been highlighted in 2017 in a photography exhibit at the Tate Museum, a proposed film on the Mangrove Nine, and airing of Guerrilla, a new drama series loosely based on the BBP.

Mohamed Siad Barre (Maxamed Siad Barre) was a military general in Somalia and the country’s third president. He came into power in October of 1969, leading a coup d’état against the elected government. Barre ruled over Somalia until 1991 when he was overthrown by militias, leading the country into a bloody civil war.

Barre was born in Shilabo, Ethiopia, in 1910 to a nomadic family from the Marehan clan. He spent his formative years attending school in Luuq, Italian Somaliland, and Mogadishu for his secondary education. He later joined the colonial police force. After Somalia gained independence in July of 1960, Barre became the Vice Commander of the Somali National Army.

In 1969, Somalia’s President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke was assassinated, and a military group, the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC), staged a coup d’état, allowing Barre to assume power. Barre dissolved the constitution, parliament, and arrested politicians from the previous regime. The SRC renamed the country The Somali Democratic Republic and declared it a Marxist-Leninist one-party state. Barre adopted scientific socialism based on the teachings of the Quran and Marxism. He tried to rapidly industrialize and modernize the country by creating a new writing system, promoting cooperative farming, and leading an anti-tribal campaign. During Barre’s regime, all of Somalia’s major industries, from farming and oil to banking, were nationalized.

Barre pushed the idea of a Greater Somalia which refers to joining areas that Somalis are indigenous to, which includes Djibouti, the Ogaden in Ethiopia, and Kenya’s North Eastern Province. In July 1977, the Ogaden War broke out after the Barre’s administration tried to unite all these regions into Greater Somalia, starting with the Ogaden. The Somali National Army attacked Ethiopia, which was then under the socialist regime governing the nation. Somali armies were able to capture a significant part of Ogaden, but the war led the Soviet Union to shift their support from Somalia to Ethiopia. After the Soviets’ decision, the socialist world turned its back on Somalia. With the help of 15,000 Cuban troops, the Ethiopians pushed the Somali soldiers out of Ogaden in 1978. Somalia in turn cut its ties with the Soviet Union and switched its allegiance to the United States.

Discontent against the Barre regime grew after Somalia’s defeat in the Ogaden War. With the country’s economic sector crumbling, the entire nation faced a financial crisis, intensified by growing corruption among government officials. Although Barre led an “anti-tribalism” movement early in his regime, he now singled out the Isaaq tribe and subjected them to arbitrary arrests, rape, and torture. He also formed the Red Berets, a paramilitary unit to brutalize other clans. Consequently, many of them formed militia groups often supported by Ethiopia.

By the end of the 1990s the rebel group, Somali National Movement and other armed militias stormed the capital at Mogadishu forcing Barre to flee to Gedo, Somalia in January 1991. Unable to regain control of Mogadishu which was now under the control of the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aideed. Barre fled Somalia for Nairobi, Kenya and then Lagos, Nigeria. He died in Lagos on January 2, 1995 at the age of 85 and was buried in Gedo, Somalia.

Following global anti-racism protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the U.S., monuments connected to slavery and colonialism became the target of Black Lives Matter protesters across the world. In Iceland, which is not free of racism, thousands of people attended Black Lives Matter meetings organized by African Americans to show solidarity with the issue in the U.S. and explore matters of inequality in its own society. While countries joined calls to remove statues of colonial-era figures from public spaces, in Iceland, Independence Party deputy MP Vilhjálmur Bjarnason proposed that his country erected one — a statue that would celebrate the life and legacy of Hans Jonatan, believed to be the first Black man to settle in Iceland.

Before achieving celebrity status in Iceland, Hans Jonatan (he had no surname) was a slave in Denmark. He fought in a war, lost a famous case on slavery, and escaped by fleeing to Iceland. His story was largely forgotten until recently when a major genetic study identified some 780 living descendants of him.

Born into slavery in 1784 on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, then under Danish colonial rule, Hans Jonatan’s mother was Emilía Regína, an enslaved African woman on a sugar plantation owned by a Danish-German family named Schimmelman. Hans Jonatan’s father is believed to be of European heritage.

“[Hans] lived as a house slave somewhat protected from the rough field sites, the dissent and rebellions in the fields and somewhat exposed to the nice sides of aristocratic life,” Gísli Pálsson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, said in an interview in 2019.

At age seven, the Schimmelmans took Hans Jónatan to Denmark, where he lived in Copenhagen for about ten years. While there, he began reading and engaging with the growing discourse in Copenhagen about colonies and plantations and freedom and slavery, according to Pálsson, who wrote a biography about Hans Jónatan called The Man Who Stole Himself.

Pálsson said Hans Jonatan’s growing desire for freedom was one of the reasons he enlisted in the Danish navy in 1801. He probably thought that showing his allegiance to the Danes might make him free. But after surviving the war – one of the major battles in Denmark’s history – he came back still a slave. His superior officers, who admired his bravery, later advocated on his behalf to Denmark’s crown prince and de facto ruler, the future King Frederik VI. The crown prince wrote in a letter that Hans Jonatan “is considered free and enjoys rights.”

But the Schimmelmans argued that Hans Jonatan was their property and they could sell him back to St Croix. Hans Jonatan went to court to assert his freedom, in what would become a famous case at the time. Unfortunately, he was not able to produce the letter from Prince Frederik and in 1802, the court dismissed his claim. He was subsequently ordered to return to the Schimmelmanns, who were ready to sell him in St. Croix.

But Hans Jonatan fled, sailed to Iceland, and settled in the small village of Djupivogur. Around 1802 when he arrived in the remote Icelandic fishing village, locals warmly welcomed him. “He lands before racism arrives from Europe,” Pálsson said. “Before that, you had friction of course between people and groups, but not necessarily a hint at something in their genes, or the colour, or the character.”

Hans Jonatan lived in Djúpivogur, first as the store keep in the trading post, and then later as a peasant, according to one account. He married a local woman, had children, and lived as a free man until his death in 1827 after suffering a stroke.

It would take years before authorities in Denmark were able to find out where Hans Jonatan had escaped to. In the early 2000s when they found out, the descendants of Hans Jonathan in Iceland were also exploring their roots. Researchers who had the idea to re-create Hans Jonatan’s genome had started work during that period. At the end of the day, their study was able to reconstruct 38 percent of Hans’ maternal genome in absence of any physical remains. They traced it back to West Africa, and researchers now say that Hans Jonatan’s mother may have come from Benin, Nigeria or Cameroon.

What is worrying is the fact that Hans Jonatan is still considered property. Kirsten Pflomm, a fifth-generation descendant of Hans Jonatan, in 2018, petitioned then Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to declare Hans Jonatan, posthumously, a free man. But the prime minister replied in a letter back to her that he “cannot reverse time or the verdict of the past, no matter how incomprehensible it may seem.”

Denmark has however been taking steps recently to address its colonial past. In 2018, it unveiled its first statue of a powerful Black woman in its capital Copenhagen. The 23-foot statue of the Black slave rebellion leader, Mary Thomas, was created by Danish artist Jeannette Ehlers and Virgin Island native La Vaughn Belle. Mary Thomas, otherwise known as “Rebel Queen”, was a Caribbean woman who led a fierce 19th-century revolt against Danish colonial rule.

A statue to Hans Jonatan would not only be in recognition of his character, but would also honor his descendants and other enslaved people who fought for justice, said Pálsson. “He has a thousand descendants and their story is remarkable. Many of those in the second and third generation had to struggle with adversity. A monument would also honour these people and speak to the present moment that we are living in.”

Two teenagers were fatally shot by their older brother on Friday night while they were headed home from a Ramadan service at the Somali Center of Kansas City, authorities disclosed. The suspected killer, identified as 25-year-old Hanad A. Abdiaziz, was killed by the Kansas City Police during an armed standoff the next day, People reported.

Authorities also said they’re yet to establish the motive behind the killing of 16-year-old Abdulwahid and 14-year-old Abdirahman Abdulaziz. “Two young lives were taken last night as two teens were shot returning home from Ramadan services at their mosque in Historic Northeast KC,” the police department announced on Twitter.

Following the double homicide, the police sought the public’s assistance in locating the suspect. And though they managed to track him down a day after the incident, they were unable to take him in alive.

“Officers attempted to make contact [with] the suspect, but the suspect presented a short barreled rifle,” Kansas City police added. “An officer fired his service weapon, striking the suspect. Officers immediately performed life saving measures. Suspect was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced deceased.”

In an interview with 41 Action News, a teacher for the deceased teens, Ayman Hassan, expressed his shock at the incident, adding that the boys were amazing and not the type to get into any kind of trouble.

“They were amazing, we have had no complaints from them they were not like trouble makers or something like this,” he said.

Hassan, who said the brothers were killed hours after they had led a prayer service, also praised their commitment to their religion. “Memorizing the whole Quran knowledgeable, well versed of Islam.”

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe that was set up to help raise funds to cover funeral costs for the brothers and other expenses has so far raised over $60,000 – surpassing its $50,000 goal.

Gabon is a former French colony in Central Africa bordered by Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon to the north, Congo Brazzaville to east and south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. It is a country of just over two million people and although it is a nominally rich country due to its oil, the majority of its people are not beneficiaries.

The country used to be part of what was known as the French Equatorial Africa Federation. It was established in 1910 and comprised the following territories: Ubangi-Shari (now majorly known as the Central Africa Republic); French Gabon; French Congo (now split between Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic) and the territory that is now called Chad.

The Pygmy people are thought to be the autochthonous people of this region that includes modern Gabon. The Pygmy people are a constellation of different ethnicities in Central Africa whose way of life was negatively impacted by the coming of the Europeans and continues to be so even after colonization.

For instance, from 1910 to 1940, the lands of the Aka, a Pygmy people, were presided over by the French Equatorial Africa, which forced tribes within the vicinity into rubber manufacturing. Their habitats in the forests enabled them to revolutionize their hunting techniques such as using nets as opposed to spears and encouraging more women to become hunters as well.

There are concerns, however, that traditional knowledge and many Aka rituals are slowly disappearing because of the drastic change of lifestyle and reduction of game in the forest due to modernization.

It was in the 15th century that the first Europeans, the Portuguese, arrived in this area of the Atlantic Ocean’s coast. They went inland into Central Africa, making encampments around the Komo River in modern-day Libreville, Gabon’s capital city. They called the estuary of the Komo, a gabão, Portuguese for “cloak”.

Gabão was corrupted by later arriving Europeans, giving us the modern iteration of the name: Gabon.