Boot title: REPRESSIVE STATE AND RESURGENT MEDIA UNDER NIGERIA'S MILITARY DICTATORSHIP, 1988-98
Publishers: NORDISKA AFRIKAINSTITUTET - 2004 / No. of pages: 136 - Reviewed by Sheka Tarawalie
“The worst civilian government is better than the best military government” is a common saying of neo-liberal activists campaigning for the thriving of democracy. This means life is, at best, unbearable under the most soft-handed military government. But how will it look like in the most hard-handed one?
I know it is difficult for me to properly evaluate the performance of Tejan Kabbah as president of Sierra Leone after been (physically) out of the country for almost eight years. But thanks to the Internet for making our Planet in the words of Marshall McLuhan ‘a global village' with my on line newspaper (www.expotimesonline.net) coming for special mention, I have been able to keep in touch with developments in my country in such a way that renders my evaluation from a distance less problematic. Another problem may well be to what extent can my experience working as a journalist who survived loads ofpolitical persecution under various regimes, including Kabbah's, leading to my fleeing into exile,factor in my evaluation of his rule? It is indeed a tall order to give your appraisal of a regime under which you suffered indignation in the practice of your profession without letting that experience influence you. This is exactly what I have elected to achieve in this article which will run in series; I will try as best as possible to keep my distance from this experience so as to make my assessment stand the test of time. This article will examine Kabbah's legacy along the following themes: Democracy, Human Rights, National unity, Peace and stability, Economic Growth and Development
Operation Barras: The SAS Mission, Sierra Leone 2000 by William Fowler 2004 -Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London - 214 pages
It is a rather cruel co-incidence for the British army that I am doing a review on William Fowler's book, Operation Barras, The SAS Mission: Sierra Leone 2000 , at a time when British soldiers are arguably at the centre of one of the most critical moments of their institution, that is their reported inhuman actions towards prisoners of war in Iraq. It is definitely not a question of adding salt to injury, but rather one of those rare occurrences that cannot be easily explained other than by ascribing it to fate.UK's Daily Mail (6 March 2004, with my comments published on allafrica.com ).
Dumbeats Of War: By peering "into the dark liquid of the calabash to discover clues to the way forward, but the calabash often gets broken and like the other recurring image of the mirror that looks inwards into the poet and outwards into the world, its broken fragments are painfully pieced together in an effort to compromise his entire vision." Poems by Gbanabom Hallowell
TITLE: AFRICAN JOURNALISM WITHIN THE ETHOS OF THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE - AUTHOR: KOFI AKOSAH-SARPONG - PUBLISHER: CARLETON UNIVERSITY, OTTAWA, CANADA - PAGES: 168
REVIEW: The word 'culture' is a very loaded and often bewildering term, and its deployment to explain almost anything should be viewed with some skepticism. Cultural critics from Clifford Gertz to Edward Said and Kwame Anthony-Appiah are among the first to admit this, and the admonishment against "cultural essentialism" the phrase is almost always used defensively says it all. It is a warning against racialism or racism.
Innovation Prize for Africa Announces 2013 Finalists
Experts from across Africa develop market-oriented solutions to address sanitation, malaria, energy and other challenges while driving economic growth on the continent
CAPE-TOWN, South-Africa, April 25, 2013/ -- Ten African innovators have developed practical solutions to some of the continent’s most intractable problems.
Sierra Leone to vaccinate 1.4 million children during African Vaccination Week
Freetown, 26 April 2013 – From 26 to 29 April 2013 the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and its partners will vaccinate 1.4 million children under the age of five years against Polio. The campaign, which is synchronized with other West African countries, will be carried out nationwide and in line with the African Vaccination Week. Vaccines are estimated to save the lives of 2 to 3 million children worldwide each year.
TUESDAY MAY 7, 2013 -Two veteran journalists, now Members of Parliament representing Bo and Kailahun districts, today paid a courtesy call on the executive of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) where they formally congratulated the new President of SLAJ, Mr. Kelvin Lewis, on his victory in the Association’s last Biennial Conference and also pledged their support to the Association in its fight to have the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill passed into law and the Seditious and Criminal aspects of our laws repealed.
Hardly a day goes by without a news story on some violation of women’s rights. In recent months, appalling incidents of violence against women and girls, from Delhi to Johannesburg to Cleveland, have sparked public outrage and demands to tackle these horrific abuses.
The Monitoring and Compliance Unit of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd May 2013 presented monitoring reports to stakeholders at the SLTU Hall in Makeni. The monitoring reports were on the Ministries of Local Government (Local Councils), Health and Sanitation, Education and Agriculture.
Ambassador Foh speaks of how APC is sustained by the poor
Former Secretary-General of the governing All Peoples Congress, (APC) who was also recently appointed Sierra Leone’s Ambassador to China, Victor Bockarie Foh has encouraged the new Secretary-General of the party, Ambassador Osman Foday Yansaneh, “not to forget the down trodden as the APC is sustained by the poor.” He spoke on Thursday, 9th May 2013 at the APC Secretariat, whilst handing over to the newly elected Secretary-General of the party.
Sierra Leoneans in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week held a one-day meeting of all their nationals in the commercial city of Dubai .At the end of the meeting, they officially formed what they called ‘The Sierra Leone Nationals' Association in the Emirates," (SLNAE) with Ibrahim Bah as their Acting Chairman
Operation Barras: The SAS Mission, Sierra Leone 2000 by William Fowler 2004 -Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London - 214 pages
Dumbeats Of War: By peering "into the dark liquid of the calabash to discover clues to the way forward, but the calabash often gets broken and like the other recurring image of the mirror that looks inwards into the poet and outwards into the world, its broken fragments are painfully pieced together in an effort to compromise his entire vision." Poems by Gbanabom Hallowell