The fruit of the baobab tree has been eaten for centuries in Africa, but has only recently gained the coveted status of superfood due to its high content of vitamins and nutrients. In Kenya, it has become an economic force to be reckoned with.
For a related story, go to: http://p.dw.com/p/2azDo

Deadly Diamonds (2009): Could Zimbabwe be suspended from the global diamond trade in the aftermath of the massacre at the Marange diamonds fields?

Did Robert Mugabe’s security forces seize control of a lucrative diamond field by gunning down hundreds of miners? With shocking evidence now uncovered, Zimbabwe's diamond trade faces suspension."We were told here are the guns, sitting in the truck, do you want to stay?" says Andrew Cranswick, CEO of the mining company who owns the rights to mine diamonds in Marange. After his company was evicted, the Marange fields were opened up to the people and tens of thousands of Zimbabweans came to dig, paying the police a commission. Yet the police didn't always play fair - "$15 million worth of diamonds were confiscated", says one former miner and soon the police were replaced by Mugabe's own military. "Mugabe needed a way to buy the loyalty of the army" says Ken Roth, "the military were ordered to kill".In the first week of November, helicopter gunships launched a massacre on the Marange diamond fields. Evidence has been collected of 200 deaths. Those who weren't killed were raped or crippled. "They told us if we wanted to go home we had to sleep with the men", says one woman, "the soldiers watched and laughed". Next month, the Kimberley process, the international body charged with stopping trade in conflict diamonds, will decide whether Zimbabwe should be suspended. Yet with many Western governments involved in Zimbabwe's diamond trade, a former delegate of the Kimberley process believes this deadly business may yet be protected.

The Gambia is one of Africa's smallest, most impoverished and least developed countries, with many of its 2 million inhabitants heavily reliant on subsistence farming and with a youth unemployment rate of around 40 percent. It is inevitable then that migration to seek work and support families back home has long been a regular way of life.

For decades, remittances have accounted for as much as 20 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), one of the highest rates in the world of a country's dependence on funding from its diaspora.

But in recent years, the number of youth leaving the country has soared. Despairing of The Gambia's political and economic situation (which until 2017 was frozen under the dictatorial regime of now deposed President Yahya Jammeh) many lost hope in the future and began looking for a way out; encouraged by the apparent success of some earlier migrants who had sent money back home and painted a rosy picture of life in Europe on social media.

In 2011 Libya's civil war opened a new gateway, albeit a highly dangerous one, for human traffic out of North Africa to Europe and tens of thousands of young Gambians attempted the journey. Since then, Gambians have consistently been in the top 10 nationalities attempting to take boats across the Mediterranean.

Tragically many have died in the process. Others who have made it to Europe have struggled in the face of racism, discrimination and increasingly tough EU regulations to deter economic migrants from staying.

Now some of these have returned home - either disillusioned that their dreams of a prosperous new life came to nothing, or, in the worst cases, deeply traumatised by the experience - and they are determined to discourage others from following the same path.

In a 22 December 1958 letter, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays invited King to address the graduating class of 1959; King accepted six days later. In these prepared remarks—his earliest known usage of this title—King invokes his common themes of anticolonialism and black self-respect.1 He places the domestic “social revolution" in a global context and urges the graduates of his alma mater to rise above the limits of “individualistic concerns,” submitting that all people are “caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

News coverage of the speech indicates that King modified this handwritten text at several points. He advised his audience to adhere to nonviolence, for the "oppressors would be happy if black Americans “would resort to physical violence” and reminded them of progress already made: “We’ve broken loose from the Egypt of slavery . . . and we stand on the border of the promised land in integration.”2 King reportedly closed with a warning against inaction: “If you go home, sit down and do nothing about the revolution which we are witnessing you will be the victim of a dangerous optimism.”3

There can be no gainsaying of the fact that we are experiencing today one of the greatest revolutions that the world has ever known. Indeed there have been other revolutions, but they have been local and isolated. The distinctive feature of the present revolution is that it is worldwide. It is shaking the foundations of the east and the west. It has engulfed every continent of the world. You can hear its deep rumblings from the lowest village street to the highest intellectual ivory tower. Every segment of society is being swept into its mainstream. The great challenge facing every member of this graduating class is to remain awake, alert and creative through this great revolution.

Shared for historical purposes. I do not own the rights.

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From the US National Archives.
Documents the early, turbulent years of OEO'S experiment in police-community relations in Washington, DC R.1: Police and citizens express their attitudes toward each other. A citizens committee is appointed by the D.C. government, but dissension ensues over control of the program. Project director, Robert Shallow addresses the group; community leader Marion Barry urges citizen control, A pilot precinct is finally selected. R. 2: Police engage in training sessions, and community leaders struggle to replace the committee with elected representatives. A citizens' board is elected and the white project leader is replaced by a black official, Fred Lander. R. 3: Dissension between OEO and the community continues, but several programs including citizen riders, an emergency center, local police recruiting and an escort service, get underway. The board continues to struggle, and the program is refunded. At the films close, a small boy expresses his bitterness towards the police."

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Reelblack's mission is to educate, elevate, entertain, enlighten, and empower through Black film. If there is content shared on this platform that you feel infringes on your intellectual property, please email me at Reelblack@mail.com and info@reelblack.com with details and it will be promptly removed.

Ted Vincent explores the work of Harry Haywood (born Haywood Hall), who, in addition to being a member of the African Blood Brotherhood, also initiated the Black Belt Republic scheme into the Communist Party, and continued as a Black Nationalist theorist

Credit To: Pacifica Radio Archives

Michelle Alexander, highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, delivers the 30th Annual George E. Kent Lecture, in honor of the late George E. Kent, who was one of the earliest tenured African American professors at the University of Chicago.

The Annual George E. Kent Lecture is organized and sponsored by the Organization of Black Students, the Black Student Law Association, and the Students for a Free Society.

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⁣Ba-Mbuti or Ba-Twa - Democratic Republic of the Congo [1938]

⁣Low Cost Housing - Kenya | 3 Apr 2014

As Kowie Bamboo Farm - EcoPlanet's Bamboo Plantation in South Africa's Eastern Cape - undergoes a transformation from degraded old agricultural land to a sustainability certified bamboo farm, the lives of those working for and living around EcoPlanet Bamboo's operations are also changing for the better... Learn more about the Kowie Bamboo Farm http://bit.ly/2rl33Gr