28 November 2021
Burkina Faso: Protesters yesterday Saturday in the capital Ouagadougou demanding the President’s resignation erected barricades and burned tyres. Organisers claim that lots were hurt in clashes with security forces – BBC was not able to verify this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59443521
27 November 2021
Covid/Omicron/Southern Africa: An overview of what is known so far about the new variant “Omicron” and what measures have been taken by countries world-wide to contain it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59442129
Anti-egalitarianism: Blaming an “insidious“ globalism, ultranationalists like Putin, Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Modi, Orbán and Boris Johnson “foster ethnic and religious division, fear of immigration, and panic about losing what is seen as the traditionally dominant culture of their nation”. Such attitudes make it more difficult to address the climate crisis together on a global level, to coordinate responses to Covid and they further xenophobia. Such anti-globalists try “to embed inequalities between peoples, solidify asymmetries of power between nations, and expand the privileges of international elites”. The article’s author calls this a “project of recolonisation”.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02687-8/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Wole Soyinka: The Nobel prize laureate has published a novel, “Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth”, his first novel in 48 years. Critics find it too difficult. The article’s author attempts to explain. Satire, he believes, is in Soyinka’s view, the only way to address the post-colony some 60 years into independence.
https://theconversation.com/making-sense-of-wole-soyinkas-difficult-and-brilliant-new-novel-172634
Tanzania: The article follows Walter Bgoya, managing director of independent Tanzanian publishing house Mkuki na Nyota through three decades of the many problems that beset (not only) the Tanzanian publishing industry. Walter Bgoya did manage to come out successful and his head high.
https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-an-independent-tanzanian-publisher-who-held-out-against-the-tide-168105
Ethiopia: News outlets and social media have been warned that information about military matters needs approval by the government before it is allowed to be published. In the meantime, state media have shown the Prime minister in military uniform in a rural setting. Sounding defiant, he said amongst other things that some territory had been retaken.
BBC Africa Latest Updates 26 November 2021. 13:29 26 Nov