Away from Africa

A few years ago, I wrote about Mboko Lagriffe's " Barbebuexpo " in Douala: a novel way of organizing an art fair. In the meantime, he has not been idle. He continued painting, organizing bi-annual Barbecuexpo art fairs, designing household items, but the big "coup" has been to win the competition for a new design on Royal Air Maroc (RAM) airplanes. In 2016, Royal Air Maroc organized a competition, Wings of African Art, to decorate the exterior fuselage of its airplanes. The jury president was Mehdi Qotbi, head of the National Foundation of Museums of the Moroccan Kingdom, and included artists and critics of renown. There were three winners: Mboko Lagriffe from Cameroon, the Franco-Moroccan Sara Ouhaddou, and Saidou Dicko from Burkina Faso. Mboko Lagriffe also won the public vote.  The "Love" Royal Air Maroc plane (photo: Dayot JC) The Love plane in the air (photo: Guillaume Février) Painting: Frontières Irréelles (Unreal border...

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...