Libation: An African Tradition
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.
Maya AngelouAccra, Lusaka and Luanda, the capital cities of Ghana, Zambia and Angola respectively, have been identified as the Sub-Saharan African cities that have the highest potential for growth over the next five years, according to the MasterCard African Cities Growth Index. As the entire African continent with its population of over 1 billion people is going through a fundamental transformation, this new Index puts a spotlight on the economic and human factors driving urban growth over the next five years.
The Index, produced on behalf of MasterCard by Professor George Angelopulo of the University of South Africa (UNISA), was launched today at the second Africa Knowledge Forum hosted by MasterCard in Johannesburg, convening thought leaders from academic, business and government sectors. The Forum explores how cities across Africa are playing an increasingly important role in driving national and regional growth, how they need to compete on the global stage in order to attract inward investment, and how these cities urgently need to manage their natural and human resources more effectively as they grow.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mastercard-study-reveals-african-cities-070000002.html
Before the gold rush, few cars disturbed the dirt road cutting through the lush hills to this village in central Ghana. Then, two years ago, 10 Chinese men arrived with a Ghanaian business partner who said he had a mining licence.
Soon, bulldozers were turning vast patches of forest dotted with oil palms and cocoa trees into fields of mud.
By October last year, about 100 Chinese men and women were living in makeshift camps around Mpatasie, according to the village chief, Nana Agya Owusu. Some carried guns to protect their claims. Locals, who had hoped to benefit from the gold production but had seen few benefits, were becoming angry. So were the Ghanaian authorities, who had recently deported dozens of illegal Chinese miners.
“Six trucks carrying armed forces came and attacked the Chinese,” Owusu said, describing the Oct. 11 raid in the Mpatasie area, a two-hour drive from the regional capital, Kumasi. “They took many of them away.”
When a group of miners tried escape into the forest, a 16-year-old Chinese boy was killed by the security forces. His shooting prompted a rare public complaint from the Chinese Embassy in Ghana, which is more used to trumpeting the two countries’ growing trade, worth more than $2.3 billion in the first half of 2012, a 72 percent increase from the same period in 2011.
The killing highlighted the mounting social and environmental problems in thebooming small-scale mining sector in Ghana, Africa’s second-biggest gold producer.
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Source: NYT
Enough was enough.
Backed by his captain Massimo Ambrosini and followed by the rest of his teammates, Milan’s Kevin-Prince Boateng left the pitch, leading to the suspension of their friendly with Pro Patria in Busto Arsizio on Thursday afternoon in the 26th minute.
He and the team’s other black players, Urby Emanuelson, Sulley Muntari and M'Baye Niang, had been subjected to deplorable racist abuse from a section of the Carlo Speroni stadium. Milan had tried to get the match stopped earlier, asking the referee to take action, but to no avail.
Visibly upset, Boateng took matters into his own hands, grabbing the ball and kicking it against the barrier that separated him from the perpetrators among the crowd, before collecting the rebound and making to leave.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/blog/_/name/espnfcunited/id/2579?cc=5901
The United States congratulates President John Dramani Mahama and the people of Ghana for the successful election on December 7.
Nearly 80% of the electorate voted, continuing the Ghanaian tradition of widespread public participation in the democratic process. This is the sixth successful presidential and parliamentary election since 1992, and further demonstrates the people of Ghana’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=259099