Away from Africa

Last week we attended our first Broadway show (after living in New York city for many years!), to see the much-acclaimed Fela! I was a fan of Fela Anikulapo Kuti 's music well before I ever imagined living in Africa and marrying an African, to boot. French acquaintances introduced me to his music as a student in Paris, and I was immediately smitten. In the late seventies and early eighties, when I met my future spouse and learned so much more about Africa, Nigeria seemed to be the shining star of the continent, with industry and close to 100 million inhabitants. Unfortunately, politics brought the country down; I still see it as a beacon, however, and I believe it is again on the rise, after I attended the recent African Economic Forum : it is now an even more populous country, with a plethora of highly educated people and oil revenue, I hope, being better routed, so as to serve a larger number of Nigerians. The Fela! show recounts the stages of Fela's adult life, rende

As I currently work in information technology, I came across an article about IBM's activities in Angola. This made me curious to find out more about IBM's activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Not being on the ground, it was not easy to receive information. IBM's Growth Markets headquarters are based in Shanghai, China--a half-day of time zones away from New York, and where the staff appears to be incredibly busy and constantly globe-trotting. I reached out to Bruno Di Leo, General Manager, IBM Growth Markets, who put me in contact with Ms. Vera Rosauer. She provided me with the answers to my questions (listed below).  I would have liked to have more details, and something akin to personal stories, however, IBM is an enormous organization, and corporate communications are tightly controlled--understandable, viewing the fact that information is often twisted in the media, but the result is that this blog post ends up sounding rather commercial, but it is absolutely not a spo

Razia Said is currently on a US tour, "Wake Up Madagascar". Information can be found on her Facebook page. Next stop is Toronto on Tuesday, July 17, at  Lula Lounge   Toronto, C anada. The concert will be at Le Poisson Rouge in New York on Saturday, July 21. As always, the main goal is to raise awareness of illegal logging in Madagascar.  More information can be found at  http://www.wakeupmadagascar.com/ .