Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Ghana Celebrates


“It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else” - Kwame Nkrumah


Jeremy Paxman had Cameron Duodu (the renown Ghanaian journalist and writer) on BBC2's newsnight last night along with journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The discussion was about Ghana's 50th independence anniversary and the disappointment of other "independent" African countries

Paxman in his usual condescending way wondered if there was anything worth celebrating considering how poor Africans are despite independence while Yasmin felt that after 50 years Africans had themselves to blame for the current state of affairs.

Cameron Duodu made some valid points especially regarding comparisons of African countries with other former british colonies like India, Malyasia and Singapore, by pointing out that these countries had their own written languages (prior to colonisation) and their economy was built on their own culture and language while African economies are still largely based on European exploitation which has not changed despite "independence".

Ghana definitely has a lot to celebrate, as the first sub-Saharan country to break from Britain it prompted many others to seek independence in the following years. The country has been through a lot and despite its history it is doing well (at least compared to other west African countries).

Shame we can't say the same about naija but i'm sure we'll get there someday...

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And the most emailed story on the BBC site since yesterday is
(yeah you guessed right, another amusing story about naija)

"Welcome to the animal kingdom where man pikin dey show dog pepper"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6419041.stm

I don't know what the big deal is when dog meat is also a delicacy in many other parts of the world, even here in Europe (Switzerland)

as far as i'm concerned its just another excuse for the BBC to give a dog a bad name (forgive the pun)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love dog meat tremendously too. Fancy it being eaten in Europe and Asia too.