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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — A Finnish-Somali filmmaker has scooped the grand prize at the Pan-African film festival known as FESPACO in Burkina Faso. The head of the prize jury called the winning feature a courageous film.
Director Khadar Ahmed’s film, The Gravedigger’s Wife, explores what people will do for love. It focuses on Guled, whose job it is to wait outside the hospital to bury the dead, and what he does to save his sick wife.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Mere hours before the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference, a major environmental confab, drawing world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden, Uganda has arrested six activists who are challenging a $3.5 billion oil pipeline project that stretches 900 miles through two East African nations, shipping crude from fields in western Uganda to international markets.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Drilling companies are on the run—or at least they should be.
A worldwide movement to reduce global warming and protect endangered supplies of water has turned its firepower on the growth of oil well drilling, particularly in areas of precious wildlife preserves in southern Africa.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — The Secretary General of SWAPO, Namibia’s governing party, appears to have been napping as women around the world stepped up to demand tough measures from their political leaders against gender-based violence.
Sophia Shaningwa, who serves in SWAPO’s upper echelon of party officials, left her party’s feminist wing in a state of shock when she dismissed concerns about appointing a convicted rapist to serve on the party’s policy advisory and research body.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — The much-awaited pan-African film festival opened on October 16 in Burkina Faso's capital city of Ouagadougou at the Palais des Sports with dancers, acrobats and celebrities, including Senegalese Grammy nominee Baaba Maal.
This year’s theme was Cinemas of Africa and the Diaspora: New perspectives, new challenges.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — The trial of the accused killers of Thomas Sankara, revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso—including his former friend Blaise Compaore who succeeded him as president and went on to rule for 27 years— has now been adjourned to October 25 after defense lawyers asked for more time to prepare their case. It was to have opened on October 11 in the capital Ouagadougou.
Fourteen men are being tried over the assassination in 1987. Near the Thomas Sankara memorial site, many expressed the hope that the trial would shed light on his murder.
By Franck Kuwonu, UN Information Officer
NEW YORK (IDN | Africa Renewal) — BMS7 took place in New York, in July. In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Franck Kuwonu, Ambassador Kimani, chair of the Seventh Biennial Meeting of States (BMS7) to consider the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) and its international Tracing Instrument (ITI), talks about the proliferation of dangerous firearms in Africa, and welcomes efforts to trace ammunitions. These are excerpts from the interview.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Celebratory messages of love and appreciation for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu poured in from across the world on the Nobel Peace laureate’s 90th birthday on October 7.
A week’s worth of events culminated on his birthday with the 11th Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture delivered this year by four global leaders.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Out of 118 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2021, only six have gone to African writers with only two to Black Africans. So, there was a measure of celebration, excitement, and pride when this year’s prize was awarded to Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah.
By Lisa Vives
Global Information Network
New YORK (IDN) — In the years he’s been president, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has never learned to love free speech on the internet. Long before the trial of prominent YouTube commentator and genocide survivor, Yvonne Idamange, the President issued a dire warning: “Those that you hear speak on the internet, whether they are in America, in South Africa, or in France, they think they are far.
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