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Ugandan LRA kidnap survivor finds a family Canada.

Posted on December 30th, 2011

 

Jimmy Akana and Ryan Hreljac take a Christmas tree home in Kemptville, Ontario.

In 1999, Jimmy Akana was a 10-year-old boy in northern Uganda when he was introduced to a boy from Ontario. Canadian Ryan Hreljac was just 7 years old but he was involved in a project bringing clean water to Akana’s village.

In 2003, Jimmy and his family were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Jimmy managed to escape a few hours after the abduction. He later found a way to reconnect with Ryan Hreljac. Ryan’s family decided to help and they sponsored Jimmy to come to Canada.

 Now, nine years after his arrival, Awa Dlodlo spoke to him on the phone in Kemptville, Ontario, to see where life has taken him.

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A Zimbabwean musician finds a musical connection in Kitchener.

Posted on December 23rd, 2011


Ekhaya, a band from Kitchener, Ontario is made up of three Aboriginals, an Acadian and a Zimbabwean. So far they’ve been performing across Southern Ontario but the band is now working on the first studio EP. Ekhaya describe themselves as an all-Canadian band. Marc Montgomery speaks with Tichaona Magama, the band’s vocalist originally from Zimbabwe, about being part of this Canadian band.

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Canadian helps disabled Ugandans to become independent.

Posted on December 16th, 2011

Biira Gatrida. The woman who first approached Parekh for help.

CANUGAN Disability Support project was founded about a year ago by Canadian Navin Parekh. The project has already helped over 100 people living with disabilities in the western part of Uganda, by providing them with means of transportation and communication including tricycles, white canes and hearing aids.

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Festival Nomade in Montreal

Posted on December 15th, 2011

I recently had the opportunity to attend several events as part of the 2011 Festival Nomade, a celebration of nomadic lifestyles and cultures held annually in Montreal.

The Festival is the brainchild of Mohamed Ould Atigh, a Montreal restaurant owner and entrepreneur who hails originally from Mauritania. (Atigh also puts together a yearly Festival Nomade in Ividjaren, in his native country.) This year’s event, which ran from December 6 – 11, featured art, performances, and food from nomadic communities around the world, including several from Africa.

As part of the Festival, Atigh and the other organizers also collaborated with students from the McGill Anthropology department to put on a public screening of the documentary film Milking the Rhino — which explores land rights and conservation in a Maasai community in Kenya and a Himba community in Namibia — as well as a panel discussion concerning challenges facing African pastoral communities. (These students included me, though others did far more work organizing the events than I did.)

The highlight of my experience at the Festival Nomade was the Saturday night “Nomad Music Night,” which featured a communal dinner at the “Nomad Nation” artists’ space in Mile End, followed by an impressive series of performances, including by the Senegalese drummer Ahmadou Ngom.

Not all of the participants in the Music Night were members of nomadic cultures. Some played music inspired by these cultures. Others simply identified as people who, as the Festival Nomade website states, “believe that home is not always found in a physical place.” Indeed, a major goal of the festival is to share a nomadic ethos with the broader community; to preach a spirit of minimalism and community. Not only does the festival raise awareness of endangered nomadic cultures, it also aims to inspire change in the West so that these cultures might survive long into the future.

(Click here to watch a short documentary about the Festival.)

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The Canadian government condemns Nigeria’s law proposal criminalizing homosexuality.

Posted on December 9th, 2011

Professor Marc Epprecht. An expert in issues concerning Africa, gender and development, sexuality and international development.

Last week, the Nigerian Senate approved proposed legislation to outlaw gay marriage and ban public displays of affection between homosexual couples. And on Wednesday, that bill was introduced to Nigeria’s House of Representatives. If approved, it will make same sex marriage illegal and punishable by up to 14 years for the couple. The anti-gay bill elicited a strong reaction in Canada. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird spoke out against it. But, as our Africa reporter Awa Dlodlo tells us, an expert in gender studies on Africa says the minister’s public statement could actually backfire.

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African Canadian women living with HIV/AIDS share their lives on camera.

Posted on December 9th, 2011

“The woman I have become” is a documentary film that follows  the lives of eight women of African and Caribbean descent living with HIV/Aids in Toronto. The documentary first released in 2007, is still being used as an educational tool on HIV/AIDS in schools and clinics in Canada and abroad. Yet some of the women who shared their stories were afraid of being shunned by their community. Our Link Africa reporter Awa Dlodlo tells us why these women took that risk by being in the documentary.

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Alison Duke.

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Africa Portal plans to expand to a wider audience.

Posted on November 25th, 2011


An online service targeting researchers and policy makers working on African issues is celebrating its first anniversary today. Since its initiation a year ago, the website has recorded more than 59,000 different visitors who used the system. As our Link Africa reporter Awa Dlodlo tells us, the Africa Portal is planning on expanding and giving Africans more access to information that can help them make decisions based on well researched findings.  www.africaportal.org

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The Book of Mormon: A Sensitive and Complex Portrayal of African Realities

Posted on November 23rd, 2011

 

 

 

AP Photo/Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Joan Marcus

 

 

 

The Book of Mormon, the hit musical about missionaries in Uganda, features jokes about warlords, rape, HIV, and female circumcision. It may also be one of the most humanistic, complex, and respectful portrayals of Africa and Africans in Western popular culture in years.

I recently had the opportunity to see The Book of Mormon on Broadway. While, going in, I was vaguely aware that part of the story was set in Africa, I was unprepared for the central role that Africans would play. Read more…

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Rare African art comes to an exhibit in Old Montreal.

Posted on November 18th, 2011

Here’s a story on how two people from different worlds merged their passions to make rare African art accessible to the public. Their collaboration on photography and African art has produced the Spirits of the Mask-Dancers exhibit at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal.

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A Canadian cooperative reaches out to victims of obstetric fistula in Chad.

Posted on November 11th, 2011

Obstetric fistula is a condition that, according to the World Health Organisation, afflicts more than two million young women around the world. It goes untreated in the developing countries of Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. 

Now, a Montreal based organisation, called Stylafrique Coop, is holding a fundraising event to help victims of this condition in Chad.
http://www.stylafriquecoop.org/

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