Category Archives: News

Friday links

Rebranding as Racism  – Africa is a Country Apparently, Naija men are very romantic – Vibeweekly How the internet killed porn – Guardian Where there’s no such thing as an illegal download – via Worldcrunch Zadie Smith on libraries – NYRblog

Nigeria@50 – A Series

Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary is on October 1, 2010. To celebrate it, we are running a series titled Nigeria@50 at the groupblog NigeriansTalk. The first in the series, titled One Nigeria: Nigerian Unity 50 years Post-independence, was written by Kola of KTravula. The second is titled Nigeria at 50: Academic Medicine, and was written by… Read More »

New York Magazine profiles Jon Stewart

Check this out: “Here’s something you always like to see,” Stewart says, scanning the front page of the Washington Post.“ ‘U.S. Trade Deficit Startles Markets.’ Now, we’ve understood the U.S. trade deficit for a while. Are the markets small children that are easily startled? The next day, they’ll get an unemployment number and go, ‘Oh, I don’t… Read More »

Freshlyground and the Zimbabwean government

You probably already know about the Freshlyground music video. Well, in what is probably the least surprising news of the day, the Zimbabwean government has pulled their work visas. Upcoming concerts in Zimbabwe are cancelled. Listen to band members Zo and Simon talk on the PRI’s Global Hits programme here [mp3].

The East African common market

BBC’s World Business news discusses the soon-to-be-effected East African common market. The common market will include Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda. It will create a trading bloc of about 130 million people. The positive point is that trade will be easier among the countries of the common market, and the common market will be… Read More »

Africa – ‘dumping ground’ for fake goods?

BBC Focus on Africa Magazine: It is early morning in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and a small independent wholesaler is doing a roaring trade. The city’s street traders and small independent retailers have come to stock up on household products, one of which is toothpaste. This wholesaler stocks two brands. The first, the so-called genuine… Read More »

Chinua Achebe on what Nigeria means to him

Our 1960 national anthem, given to us as a parting gift by a British housewife in England, had called Nigeria “our sovereign motherland”. The current anthem, put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals and actually worse than the first one, invokes the father image. But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither… Read More »