News — west africa

On February 16, 1827, The Church Missionary Society (CMS) founded Fourah Bay College, the first college in West Africa.  The first principal of the college was Rev. Edward Jones, an African American minister.  It was located atop Mount Aureol in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

Originally intended as an Anglican missionary school to train teachers in the promotion of education and Christianity, it became a degree granting institution in 1876, when it became affiliated with Durham University in England. As a result of the affiliation, students at Fourah Bay studied the same curriculum and took examinations identical to those administered to Durham University students.  The curriculum of both institutions reflected the popular subjects of liberal arts institutions of the era: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, History, Natural Science, French, and German. Its most prominent 19th and early 20th Century graduates included Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, J. E. Casely Hayford, an early advocate of education and self-rule for West Africans, and Henry Rawlingson Carr, a prominent Nigerian educator and administrator. As one of the few places in pre-Independence Africa to offer post-secondary education, Fourah Bay College attracted sons (and daughters) of elite Africans from across the continent.  Its presence in Freetown allowed the city to tout itself as the Athens of West Africa.

During World War II, the British — the colonial government in Sierra Leone — took over Fourah Bay College because of its strategic location in Freetown and used the buildings as part of the war effort. The faculty, staff and students of the institution relocated forty miles away in temporary facilities in Mabang, Sierra Leone. After the war, Fourah Bay College returned to its location on Mount Aureol in Freetown.

Fourah Bay College continued its affiliation with Durham University until 1967, at which time the Sierra Leone government merged Fourah Bay College with Njala University College under a new federal system devised in 1966. Abioseh Nicol, a Sierra Leonean, became the first African president of the combined institution.  The union, seen as temporary at first, is now permanent.  In 2005, Fourah Bay College and Njala University are constituent colleges of the federal University of Sierra Leone.  Fourah Bay University remains an active institution of higher education with approximately 3,500 students.  As part of the University of Sierra Leone, it grants Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees.

The Second Ivorian Civil War was a five-month conflict in the west African country of the Ivory Coast (also known as Côte d’Ivoire) between 2010 and 2011. The main belligerents of the conflict were the military of the Ivory Coast, led by President Laurent Gbagbo who also recruited Liberian mercenaries and had as his allies the Young Patriots of Abidjan; and the Ivorian Popular Front. The opposition New Forces were led by Gbagbo political rival, Alassane Ouattara, who also recruited Liberian mercenaries and had militia support from Rally of the Republicans (RDR).  The United Nations (UN) maintained a small peace-keeping force in the country and France had special forces members there as well. Their presence was critical when France decided to support Ouattara.  An estimated three thousand soldiers, members of various security forces, and civilians were killed in the conflict in a nation of 24 million people.

The conflict was initiated by the disputed 2010 Ivorian presidential election. Presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara was declared the winner of the contest but President Gbagbo immediately disputed the results claiming that there was extensive voter fraud. The international community, which included the United States, the European Union, the African Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), all supported Ouattara and urged Gbagbo to step down. He refused and his followers soon initiated violence initially in Abidjan, the nation’s largest city.

On March 17, 2011, about thirty people were killed by central government-initiated rocket attack on a pro-Ouattara suburb of Abidjan. In the following days between March 21 and March 26 more violence occurred when fifty-two people were killed in Abidjan by supporters of Gbagbo. On March 28, 2011, the New Forces launched a military offensive across the country to drive Gbagbo from power.  They quickly captured a number of small towns and cities around the nation and on March 30, they took the capital, Yamoussoukro.

The following day, March 31, heavy fighting occurred in Abidjan as pro-Ouattara forces advanced through the city. At that point United Nations peacekeepers took control of Abidjan airport after pro-Gbagbo forces abandoned it. The fighting continued with claims of massacres by both sides.  The largest occurred in the town of Duekoue where an estimated 1,000 civilians were killed by both pro-Gbagbo and pro-Ouattara forces. Another massacre was reported on April 7, 2011 in the towns of Blolequin and Guiglo where an estimated 100 bodies were found.

The brief war took an abrupt turn on April 11, 2011 when pro-Ouattara forces captured Gbagbo and placed him, his wife, and 50 supporters under arrest.  The capture was assisted by French special forces who now were ordered by their government to openly support Ouattara. After Gbagbo’s arrest, the fighting ended and Ouattara was sworn in as the new president of the Ivory Coast.

Nigerian student Victory Yinka-Banjo made headlines in 2020 when she scored straights As in her West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Weeks prior to that, she had been rated as the “Top in the World” in English as a second language (speaking endorsement) by the University of Cambridge International Examination (CIE), according to a CNN report. In the Cambridge IGCSE exam, the Nigerian teen acquired A* in all six subjects she sat for, the report added.

Today, the 17-year-old high school graduate has received 19 full-ride scholarship offers from universities across the United States and Canada. Documents cited by CNN show that Victory has been offered more than 5 million dollars worth of scholarship money for an undergraduate program of study.

“It still feels pretty unbelievable. I applied to so many schools because I didn’t even think any school would accept me,” Victory told CNN.

She received potential full scholarships from Harvard College, Yale College, Brown University and Princeton University. Other scholarship offers were from Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Virginia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In Canada, she was given the Lester B. Pearson scholarship from the University of Toronto and the Karen McKellin International Leader of Tomorrow (KMILOT) scholarship from the University of British Columbia.

Victory was born to Nigerian parents. Her mother, Chika Yinka-Banjo, is a senior lecturer at the University of Lagos while her father, Adeyinka Banjo, is a private sector procurement and supply chain executive. The teenager attributes her academic triumph to parental guidance, faith and hard work. She said her scholarship offers “have made me stand taller, smile wider, and pat myself on the back more often.”

Her hope is to study Computational Biology though she is yet to choose a school. Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Duke, and Johns Hopkins are on top of her list, she said, adding that she is still doing research on them.

Victory’s parents are proud of her achievement, and they are optimistic that her story will encourage other young Nigerians to go for gold. “It is noteworthy that she is not one of the Nigerian-Americans who often get into these schools because of their advantage of being born and bred in the US. She completed her secondary school here [in Nigeria]. It would be great if her story can be used to inspire the youths of our country,” Victory’s mother, Chika, told CNN.

Rosemond Brown sprang into Ghanaian and modest West African popularity about five years ago due to her signature rants on video which were posted on her social media accounts. These rants were usually highly charged criticisms of socialites and entertainers in her home country.

Brown, nicknamed Akuapem Poloo, had something to say about this actress’s fashion sense and that actor’s typecast roles. Occasionally, she spiced things up with sociopolitical critiques, echoing the pains and problems of Ghanaians. She was not well educated and you could tell from her command over the English language. But that too was a point of attraction – passable English anchored to volumes of confidence and a very deep awareness as to how social media works.

Soon enough, she was the guest on TV and radio programs, thus beginning her own life as a sort of minor Ghanaian celebrity. But she is currently known among some West African film fans as she has managed to transform herself into an actress in her own right.

In 2019, Grammy Award-winning-rapper Cardi B announced she was going to be in Ghana and Nigeria to perform two separate shows as well as spend a few days enjoying what both countries had to offer in December of that year. This West African tour was publicized by Cardi B herself as well as the promoters in West Africa. American entertainers are de facto global superstars and certainly, not even the high cost of tickets in the two lower-middle-income countries was going to stop the thousands who had planned to see the New York rapper.

The likes of CNN and the BBC did not even miss out on the content as Cardi B landed and spent a few days in Lagos, Nigeria’s second major city. She performed there in Nigerian on a Saturday night only to get on a plane some few hours later to head westwards to Ghana. It was the occasion of Ghana’s Year of Return and African-American and Hollywood celebrities were not in short supply in the country. Cardi B met up with fellow rapper T.I., among a host of others.

TV and radio entertainment reporters tried to secure an interview and were told that the rapper had planned a meet-and-greet at the plush Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra.

But when the time came for the said meet-and-greet, the rapper did not show up. She would later claim that her team had failed to inform her probably because she was also trying to have some rest before her event in Ghana. But that did not stop a Twitter storm in Ghana, fueled by other local celebrities who had been to the hotel to say hello to Cardi B.

Not every one of these disappointed celebrities was critical of the rapper. One of Cardi’s defenders was Akuapem Poloo who guessed that the rapper may have been too tired to meet with her fans. Poloo’s vociferous defense, much like when she went on the offense against others, was appreciated by Cardi B who invited the Ghanaian actress to spend a few hours at the hotel.

The two later posted on Instagram and Twitter, their time together and even started calling each other pet names like “bestie” and “twinny”. Poloo spent Cardi’s days after the event in Accra with her, going places and meeting people.

And so when in April 2021 Akuapem Poloo was sentenced to a 90-day prison sentence over a nude photo she publicized along with her son, Cardi weighed in. Poloo had been arrested in the middle of 2020 after the photo first came out. Those who made calls for her arrest, including child rights activists pointed to the fact that her son was a minor. Her defenders described as hypocritical the effort to jail her over a situation that was probably happening in many homes – children seeing their parents naked. The court agreed with the conservative public opinion.

Cardi tweeted: “I seen a lot of Americans do photoshoots like that .Even tho is not my style I don’t think she was going for sexual more going the natural idea. I think jail is a bit harsh .Maybe social media probation or community service.”

Ghana does not have penal options for community service. As at the time of going press, Akuapem Poloo was in a medium security prison.

Actor Idris Elba and model Naomi Campbell joined some 65 other British celebrities, designers and politicians, mostly of Ghanaian heritage, in signing an open letter in support of gay rights in Ghana. Last month, a community center for LGBTQ+ people in the West African country was shut down by security forces just three weeks after opening. Religious leaders, politicians and anti-gay organizations had called on the government to close the center, which was operated by local charity LGBT+ Rights Ghana.

The 67 signatories of the open letter published on social media on Monday said they were worried about the developments in Ghana and called on the country’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, and other political leaders to provide protection to the LGBTQ+ community.

“We have watched with profound concern as you have had to question the safety of your vital work at the LGBT+ Rights Ghana Centre in Accra, and feared for your personal wellbeing and security. It is unacceptable to us that you feel unsafe,” wrote the signatories of the letter, many of whom are British-Ghanaian, including architect Sir David Adjaye and British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful. Elba’s mother was also born in Ghana.

“As prominent and powerful advocates for this great country, we are beseeching His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and political/cultural leaders to create a pathway for allyship, protection and support.

“We petition for inclusivity which will make the nation even greater and even stronger,” the letter added.

At the opening of the center for LGBTQ+ people last month, the Danish ambassador, the Australian high commissioner and some foreign diplomats were among the attendees, causing anger among many Ghanaians who lambasted the international community for promoting gay rights in the country and Africa as a whole.

In Ghana, gay sex is a criminal offense and punishable by up to three years in jail. Though no one has been prosecuted for same-sex relations in years, human rights activists say LGBT+ people are discriminated against, and often face death threats and abuse. President Akufo-Addo on Saturday said same-sex marriage will not be legalized under his presidency. “I have said it before, and let me stress it again, that it will not be under the Presidency of Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo that same-sex marriage will be legal,” he said.

Although some African countries are slowly accepting same-sex marriages, many are still very categorical in their denunciation of the idea. Some have even made it a capital offense punishable by death – Mauritania, Sudan, southern Somalia and northern Nigeria.

Many members of the LGBT community in these countries have been forced to hide their sexuality while others have fled their homes for fear of being attacked.

In Uganda, for instance, same-sex relationships have been illegal since British colonial rule, and in neighboring Tanzania, the situation is no different. As political landscapes continue to change across the continent, new ideologies are slowly taking shape and societies are becoming more accepting as far as embracing same-sex relationships is concerned.

In January 2019, Angola shed the divisive “vices against nature” provision in its law, widely interpreted to be a ban on homosexual conduct. The changes were made on January 23 when the oil-rich southern African country parliament adopted its first new penal code since it gained independence in 1975 and removed the “vices against nature” provision that it inherited from its Portuguese colonizers.

There had been no known prosecutions under the law, but the “vices against nature” provision tended to place the lives of LGBT people in Angola under scrutiny.

In 2015, a Kenyan court ruled in favor of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission – a non-governmental organization supporting the LGBT community – which had moved to court to compel the Kenyan government to recognize it as a legal entity. In its ruling, the court argued that refusing to register the commission was an infringement of the right of association for gay people.

In Uganda, the controversial 2014 law criminalizing homosexuality has since been overturned, although the constitution still doesn’t recognize same-sex relationships.

In South Africa, LGBT people enjoy constitutional and statutory protection from discrimination at work, school, and places of worship, as well as, in the provision of goods and services.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has alerted West African nations to watch out for potential cases of Ebola. The alert was issued to six nations in the region after Ebola cases were recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea.

Guinea officially declared an outbreak last Sunday after confirming at least seven cases of the disease and three deaths, according to the country’s National Security and Health Agency (ANSS). This was after locals attended the burial of a nurse and started reporting Ebola-like symptoms.

Meanwhile, DRC on January 7 declared the emergence of Ebola after a new case of Ebola was detected in Butembo, a city in North Kivu Province, where a previous outbreak was declared over in June 2020.

“We have already alerted the six countries around, including of course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection,” the WHO’s Margaret Harris told a Geneva briefing, according to Africanews. Guinea’s neighbors include Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The WHO has pledged to procure Ebola vaccines to support Guinea which has helped to control the recent outbreak in DRC, according to CNN. The network also reports that WHO teams are already in Guinea to ensure prevention in health facilities, key locations and communities.

According to WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the current outbreak started in a border area of Guinea and that officials are working with health authorities in Liberia and Sierra Leone to increase surveillance in border areas.

“It’s a huge concern to see the resurgence of Ebola in Guinea, a country which has already suffered so much from the disease. However, banking on the expertise and experience built during the previous outbreak, health teams in Guinea are on the move to quickly trace the path of the virus and curb further infections,” said Dr. Moeti said in a statement.  “WHO is supporting the authorities to set up testing, contact-tracing and treatment structures and to bring the overall response to full speed.”

The statement also noted that WHO was reaching out to Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and other countries at risk in the sub-region. More than 28,000 people were infected with Ebola in West Africa between 2014 to 2016, resulting in the death of 11,000 of them.

The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission, according to the World Health Organization. It was first discovered in 1976 in South Sudan and DRC. The largest outbreak of the disease was recorded in West Africa between 2014–2016.

The incubation period of the disease is two to 21 days. Symptoms of the disease include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.

In what seems to be an unprecedented deal for Nigerian-born creator Roye Okupe, his African superhero universe under his YouNeek Studios library has now found a new home at Dark Horse Comics. Okupe will be developing his superhero series set in West Africa with the backing of a multimillion-dollar production house and he couldn’t be happier.

The 34-year-old moved to the United States at the age of 15 with nothing but dreams and his love for comics and superheroes. He dreamed of bringing his own version of the superhero universe to life and nursed those dreams through George Washington University and even after graduating, Washington Post reports.

Now the young creative is living his dream after he took a chance on himself and has landed an exciting partnership with Dark Horse. Okupe did what most people are too afraid to do in 2015. He quit his job as a web developer to work full-time on his comics under his YouNeek Studios library and began publishing his own animated comics living off his $401,000 severance.

Like every new venture, it was tough starting out alone and seeking investors and a presence on TV. The world of superheroes was at its peak then, with Spider Man breaking records at the box office but Okupe found himself at the end of a dark hole when he was told his main character’s race would not cut it.

Obviously. Those investors lacked foresight because a fictitious African world Wakanda was about to make $1 billion at the box office in the near future and they had just missed the chance of signing what could ‘YouNeekly’ change the world of comics.

An unplanned meeting at New York Comic-Con in 2019 with the editor in chief at Dark Horse, Dave Marshall can be etched in history as the start of something new for Okupe.

Prior to the meeting, Okupe had built his own fan base on social media with about 90,000 loyal followers who have been enjoying his self-funded works. Prior to starting his own comics, he had to learn everything from scratch — publishing, marketing and publicity — and how the comic world works.

He did not have the following that Marvel, DC Comics or Dark Horse Comics have so he decided to deliver full comic novels to his audiences instead of the monthly issues. That worked for him largely due to the diversity he was pumping into the industry.  

His fans have come to love the three books in his African Superhero world that are interlinked and all authored by him. According to the Post, his book, “Malika: Warrior Queen”, is about a 15th-century superhero; “Iyanu: Child of Wonder” is about a teenage orphan with superpowers, while “E.X.O.” is an Afrofuturist superhero tale.

Africans believe it takes a village to raise a child and the same goes for the YouNeek novels written by Okupe. He enlisted other African creatives to help his work come to life especially with the illustrations. Bringing on board, Chima Kalu, Sunkanmi Akinboye, Raphael Kazeem, and Etubi Onucheyo, Toyin Ajetunmobi, Godwin Akpan, and Tarella Pablo. 

“I think the immediate impact with Dark Horse’s legacy is that you’re going to have a lot more people paying attention. It’s also going to shine a light on the African continent and what it has to offer when it comes to the entertainment industry, specifically comic books,” Okupe said.

Marshall respected Okupe’s market knowledge and the structure of his universe. “I was impressed by what Roye had accomplished having built YouNeek from scratch. Exciting artwork, compelling stories – just good comics.”

For the African comic universe creator, maintaining complete control and moving seamlessly into his partnership with Dark Horse remains his topmost priority. He is also appreciative of the chance taken on him to develop his universe.

“YouNeek Studios is unlike anything in American comics today. I hope to see the YouNeek acquisition prove to comics that there is absolutely a market for these stories, told by creative teams that have the knowledge to tell them right, and I see more publishers picking up books like these in the future,” said Mike Richardson, Dark Horse C.E.O. 

Dark Horse will be revamping the three books already published. “Malika: Warrior Queen” and “Iyanu: Child of Wonder” will be out on September 7 and 21 respectively whiles “E.X.O” will be released on October 19. 

There are other books set to be released that the Dark Horse and Okupe will work on. Okupe’s next move might be to get his works to Hollywood. “To me, this is an unprecedented deal. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I’m just really excited to see what’s to come,” he said.

Malian singer Salif Keita has announced his entry into politics as a member of the West African country’s transitional council which will play a major role in the transition to civilian rule. The 121-member transitional council is expected to be in place for 18 months and will vote on legislative reforms and other changes before elections are organized.

Keita will be on the council alongside members of the military junta, former militants and members of civil society. The council, at its inaugural meeting on Saturday, approved as its president Colonel Malick Diaw, one of the army officers behind the August coup which overthrew President Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta. President Keita won a second term in elections in 2018 but the opposition accused him of collapsing the country’s economy and worsening the security situation in the country.

Diaw now becomes the third military figure appointed to hold major government positions following the overthrow of President Keita. Former Defence Minister Bah Ndaw currently leads the country while junta leader Col Assimi Goita is the interim vice-president amid concerns over what the opposition calls the militarization of affairs of the country.

“This is a decisive time for Mali,” multiple Grammy-nominated singer Keita told Bloomberg. “It’s very important that we correct the mistakes that have been made in the past.”

Keita is a record-making millionaire, award-winning soulful Afropop singer with global repute. Born into Mandinka culture which sees albinism as a curse or bad luck, he has been singing to highlight the plight of those with albinism across Africa. Growing up in the Malian capital, he joined the government-funded music band, Super Rail Band de Bamako.

At the beginning of the 1970s, he became the lead singer for the group that played Afro-Latin sounds. It was the group Les Ambassadeurs, which Keita joined in 1973, that offered him the platform for international recognition. The group would later flee Mali and settle in Ivory Coast due to political unrest. In 1984, Keita moved to Paris. In 2019, he announced that he was returning home to his country.

He had the year prior to that retired from recording and had begun speaking strongly against political tension in his country. “It’s hard to be a good person when you are corrupt, and our politicians are always corrupt,” Keita, known as the “golden voice of Africa”, was quoted by The Guardian in February 2019. “Mali is the most corrupt country in the world after Cameroon.

“Democracy is not a good thing for Africa. We were all happy to see democracy come to Africa, but it destroyed the human sensibility. To have a democracy, people have to understand democracy, and how can people understand when 85% of the people in the country cannot read or write? They need a benevolent dictator like China has; someone who loves his country and acts for his country.”

General elections in Ghana took place on December 7 as the West African nation held its eighth uninterrupted polls in 28 years to choose a president and lawmakers. Election officials say results may be known by the middle of the week although there was an earlier promise to declare the winner of the presidential race in 24 hours.

The electoral process was described by local and foreign observers as free and fair even though minor pockets of violence, including the gunning down of a ballot box snatcher, occurred in a few places.

In spite of Ghana reveling in the envy and praise showed to the country by others in Africa and the rest of the world, not everyone in the capital city Accra and beyond felt proud about Monday’s feat. The people of the small rural town of Bimbagu South in the region of North East were not even in the least inspired to take part in the election.

According to local reports that emerged during Monday’s polls, residents of Bimbagu South, a largely agrarian community, refused to vote after complaining that their local and national government had turned deaf ears to pleas for infrastructural development. The elections of 2020 were therefore boycotted in other to attract attention for the plight of the people.

Nationally-syndicated radio station Joy FM reported that on Monday morning, election officials were pictured sitting idly with no resident bothering to pass by to vote. Empty ballot boxes remained as they had been set up between 7 am and 5 pm local time.

The news of this boycott managed to arrest the attention of a considerable number of Ghanaians in bigger and better-developed cities. This was in spite of the omnipresence of information about key legislative races in more vibrant parts of Ghana.

Bimbagu South’s rebellion was praised by many including an Accra-based social activist who tweeted: “Yes, a vote strike. One of the boldest political statements in the last decade. They are expanding our political imagination. Now watch out for the bourgeois condescension that’s going to emanate from Accra.”

Ghana runs a mixed presidential and parliamentary system of government where elections are held every four years. Members of Parliament (MPs), who represent what Ghanaians call constituencies, are not legally responsible for infrastructural development although they have to lobby the executive for this.

However, the promise and expectation of such infrastructural development on the part of MPs, have come to be part of the country’s political culture. The people of Bimbagu South would have cried over the last several years to the MP who represents that electoral area to attend to the bad roads and the lack of potable water and the lack of infrastructure for education and healthcare.

According to Joy FM, the residents of the area made their intentions to boycott December’s elections known in October. But this was largely dismissed as Ghana’s politicians have become used to what they see as attempts at blackmailing them into providing for their constituents.

On the analyses of how Bimbagu South was able to maintain strictly zero turnouts, it was revealed that the northern town holds barely 2,000 people with only a little more than 400 registered to vote. In the scheme of the overall constituency, this was not much, however, that did not seem to bother the principled poor folks.