Africa in China

Most of the debates on China in Africa has followed the flow from China to Africa but its not all one way traffic. Areas like "Chocolate City" in Guangzhou, China attracts thousands of African traders seeking business opportunities in the East. What the view like from this perspective?

Artists Bill Kouélany & Goddy Leye recently visited "Chocolate City" as part of their Sparck residency and produced "Chocolate Banana"

Also see Farhad A.K. Sulliman KHOYRATTY (fiction writer, editor, translator; Mauritius) Journey to the West published at 2010 IWP:

"I was in Hubei province, having boarded the ship a week earlier at Shanghai, a good
few provinces east. I was heading upstream towards East Tibet. It wasn’t a ship really, more
a low‐cost transport craft, a riverboat.
This is how I describe myself: 43, elegant, an adventurer at heart. My name’s Marco,
one of the most common names among Mauritian Christians my age. I am of Black African
origin spiked with some French here and there. I was brought up a Catholic but am now as
lapsed as can be. My wife, Lakshmi, is Mauritian Hindu...." More here

Jerusalema and Depictions of African Cities in Film

Excerpt from Don Mattera’s NFVF review:

“In Jerusalema, the Hollywood spectre almost consumes the narrative of South Africa’s urban cities... The ’foreign’ characters receive fleeting stereotypical treatment – just like some photographs on a wall; no origins, no history; no soul; just money, drugs, women bloodshed and death.”

http://www.nfvf.co.za/content/jerusalema-south-africas-new-oscar-hope-review

Emergency Healthcare Transport: Bicycle Ambulances

BEN Namibia launches bicyle ambulences manufacturing plant in Windhoek.

At least 100 feared dead in Lagos

pipeline blast

At least 100 people are feared dead after a construction vehicle accidentally ripped open an oil pipeline and triggered a huge explosion in Nigeria's largest city. Children fled from their schools as oil began spewing from the ruptured pipe just moments before the blast shook the outskirts of Lagos.

PangeaDay: an event lived worldwide

On May 10th 2008 at 18:00 GMT, 24 films will be broadcast during a 4 hour event. What makes this different is that this event, PangeaDay will be broadcast from six locations worldwide in seven different languages worldwide to be viewed through internet, television or cellphones with one unique purpose: to make each other know about the lives of others and focus on what makes us similar, instead of what makes us different and let us work together towards peace. This initiative came from Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's wish. As a TED Prize winner she was granted a wish in addition to a $100 000 USD award. PangeaDay is her wish, to change the world and create a day in which people of the world could come together through film.
The logistics of PangeaDay are awe inspiring: from Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro, films, live music and speakers will come together to inspire the whole world. The films chosen have been selected from more than 25000 films from over 100 hundred countries.These movies all share some characteristics such as being able to inspire, transform and enabling us to experience life through another's eyes.

Ethiopian emigrants/ Paris tension

Taxi

Khaled Al Khamissi

Khaled Al Khamissi's "Taxi" is a remarkable journey into the lives and labyrinths of this beast of burden that has become a best-selling modern masterpiece in the author's home country. "Taxi" brings together 58 fictional monologues with Cairo cabbies recreated from the author's own experience of traversing the city. The experience takes the reader on a roller-coaster of emotions as bumpy and noisy as the city's potholed and chaotic streets.Described as an urban sociology, an ethnography, a classic of oral history - and a work of poetry in motion - "Taxi" tells Herculean tales of the struggle for survival and dignity among Greater Cairo's 80,000 cab drivers.


Paperback, 216 pages, February 2008
Published by Aflame Books

[bigger story > taxis in African cities ]

City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development

Edgar Pieterse
Paperback, 240 pages, May 2008
Published by Zed Books Ltd


Cities are the future. In the past two decades, a global urban revolution has taken place, mainly in the South. The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people - slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance - have been well-documented.This book is a powerful indictment of the current consensus on how to deal with these challenges. Pieterse argues that the current 'shelter for all' and 'urban good governance' policies treat only the symptoms, not the causes of the problem. Instead, he claims, there is an urgent need to reinvigorate civil society in these cities, to encourage radical democracy, economic resilience, social resistance and environmental sustainability folded into the everyday concerns of marginalised people. Providing a dynamic picture of a cosmopolitan urban citizenship, this book is an essential guide to one of the new century's greatest challenges.The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people - slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance - have been well-documented. This book provides ways on how to deal with these challenges.

May 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1-84277-541-7