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• March 07, 2010
• 16:21

  GhanaGTUG Holds First Meeting

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"I was privileged to be part of the very first meeting of a href="http://sites.google.com/a/gtugs.org/ghanagtug/"Ghana Google Technology Users Group (GhanaGTUG)/a held last Friday, 5th March, at the yet-to-be-inaugurated offices of Google Ghana. GhanaGTUG is a group of Ghanaian software developers and technology enthusiasts who actively use Google products. Present at the meet-up were the founding members of GhanaGTUG and staff of the new Google Ghana office. The programme lasted for approximately one hour and was excellent in terms of its educative and social value.br /br /The meeting was kick started by Jojoo Imbeah, organiser of the event, who informed the gathering that the idea of forming a a href="http://www.gtugs.org/"GTUG/a in Ghana was conceived during Google technology breakout sessions at a href="http://barcampghana.org/barcampghana09"BarCamp Ghana 2009/a. He also went on to mention the advantages of using Google technology, pointing out that Google technology helps developers and users to make and save money.br /br /Google Ghana's Office Lead, a href="http://thenextwomen.com/2008/08/25/female-heroes-interview-estelle-akofio/"Estelle Akofio-Sowah /awas the next to speak. In her submission Estelle said that Google's main goal in Sub-Saharan Africa, consistent with its mission of acquiring, reorganizing and presenting all of the world's information, is to get as many people as possible online. She explained further that the company intends to achieve its objective by ensuring the availability or relevant content, easy access to gadgets and the Internet and the development of a wide array of products that are useful in every facet of daily life and business. She stressed that the company does not have any immediate financial intention in relation to its operations in this part of the world. Estelle, who was very excited about the formation of GhanaGTUG, called for the formation of more GTUGs throughout the country and promised to work in close collaboration with the group and other stakeholders in Ghana's Internet industry. She stated that the Google Ghana office is open to ideas from GhanaGTUG, and other groups , and called for their support, feedback and ideas so that Google can deliver more to meet their technology needs.br /br /There were also a few demonstrations and technical presentations to round up activities for the day. A short video that explained what GTUGs do was shown. This was followed by a presentation on mobile development for the a href="http://www.android.com/"Android platform/a by a href="http://www.ushahidi.com/"Ushahidi/a developer a href="http://www.addhen.org/blog/"Henry Addo/a. Finally, a href="http://innovationsopen.com/?author=1"Richard Ngamita/a, a Googler originally from the Nairobi office, gave a detailed presentation on various Google products and developer resources such as a href="http://www.google.com/mapmaker"Map Maker/a, a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/"App Engine,/a a href="http://code.google.com/"API/a and a href="http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?gl=USamp;hl=en-US"Local Business Center/a (LBC). Richard emphasised the obvious advantages of these products to Africa as they are free or very affordable.br /br /After Richard's presentation, there were presentations of Google souvenirs to lucky attendees. This was followed by refreshment which was kindly sponsored by Google. Participants took the opportunity to meet new people, discuss projects they are working on and to generally interact among themselves.br /br /Overall, the event was a great success thanks to the efforts of the organising team , coordinated by the tireless Joojo Imbeah, all those who attended and Google Ghana. Please also check out a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ghanagtug"tweets/a from various attendees.br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-718172642342217549?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/cXlQVsVO4Go" height="1" width="1"/
• January 26, 2010
• 0:32

  Young Achievers to Share Ideas at TEDxYouthInspire

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/attend/"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 166px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/S1442HkT6oI/AAAAAAAAAR4/TyRSmA1difU/s320/tedx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430840703050836610" border="0" //aa href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" TEDxYouthInspire/span/a/spanspan style="font-size:100%;" has joined the rungs of the increasing number of African youth-focused development programmes to be hosted in Ghana. Other events recently hosted here that immediately come to mind are a href="http://barcampghana.org/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" BarCamp Ghana/span/a and a href="http://makerfaireafrica.com/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" Maker Faire Africa/span/a. The brilliant thing about TEDxYouthInspire, and other programmes like it, is that it is the initiative of private individuals and youth groups who are determined to inspire positive change on the African continent. In addition, local startups, corporate organisations and academic institutions have been quick to lend their support, resulting in tremendous success. Consequently, bloggers have been quick to give rave reviews. Find interesting articles a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-maker-faire-story-pictures-of.html"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" here/span/a, a href="http://www.davidajao.com/blog/2009/12/21/barcamp-ghana-2009-2/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" here/span/a, a href="http://afrch.blogspot.com/2009/12/notes-from-barcamp-ghana-2009.html"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" here/span/a and a href="http://ict4d.at/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-accra-friday-sessions-2nd-part/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" here/span/a. This event is for you if you're a young person between the ages of 14 and 25./spanbr //divspan xmlns="" style="font-size:100%;"p style="text-align: justify;"strongSo what is TEDxYouthInspire?/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"From the event's a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" website/span/a:br //p/spandiv style="text-align: justify;"span xmlns="" style="font-size:100%;"pTEDxYouthInspire is an open space for the continent's youngest visionaries to collaborate and reevaluate the possibilities of creating a better global community. A one-day, participatory event, TEDxYouthInspire will use the theme "strongA Good Head amp; A Good Heart/strong", taken from a quote by former South African President, Nelson Mandela, to exhibit how extraordinary youth leaders combine radical thought and integrity of spirit to set in motion unlimited possibilities for a brighter future./p/spanThe event takes inspiration from the a href="http://www.ted.com/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" TED conference/span/a.br //divspan xmlns="" style="font-size:100%;"p style="text-align: justify;"strongWho is behind this?/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"TEDxYouthInspire is being a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/about/team/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" put together/span/a by a href="http://raquelwilson.com/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" strongRaquel Wilson/strong/span/a (emEvent Curator), /emstrongSharon Brooks/strongem (Publicity Coordinator) and /emspan style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" a href="http://wsenyo.blogspot.com/"strongWorlali Senyo/strong/astrong/strong/span (emLocation Coordinator – Ghana). /emThe trio are supported by a team of a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/connect/"em/emspan style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" volunteers/span/aa href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/connect/"em/em/aa href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/connect/" /awho have offered their time and expertise to assist in various aspects of the organisation.a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/connect/volunteer/"br //a/pp style="text-align: justify;"strongWhere and when will it be held?br //strong/ppThe venue for TEDxYouthInspire is the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (a href="http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" AITI-KACE/span/a). It will be held on 10th April, 2010.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Why should I attend?/spanbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"strongem1. Listen, be inspired and get motivated/em/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"Event attendees will be listening to their colleagues, who have made significant impacts in various spheres, make the speech of their lives. By so doing they will be inspired and motivated to work towards their life goals. African youth will be shown that it is possible to make it in Africa.strong/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"strong2. emMeet and interact with like-minded young people/em/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"Attendees at the event will be meeting other young people who are passionate about Africa and are hungry to bring change to the continent through technology, entrepreneurship and leadership. At TEDxYouthInspire, you will have the opportunity to interact with people who are brimming with fresh ideas just like you. Who knows? You may just meet the person with whom you'll start your next project with!br //pp style="text-align: justify;"strong3. emGet challenged/em/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"At TEDxYouthInspire, attendees will be challenged to start working on ideas that they have just like the speakers have done. This will be the final push to get out of your comfort zone. The message to attendees is loud and clear: "the African renaissance is nigh, get on board!"br //pp style="text-align: justify;"strongWhat should I do next?/strongbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"Registration is opened for young Africans between the ages of 14 and 25. Go to the event's a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"span style="text-decoration: underline;color:blue;" website/span/a to learn more about TEDxYouthInspire. Register at the website before 31st January on which registration closes. Keep your fingers crossed and wait for your acceptance email. :).br //p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5608218492521414984?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/ezm1IPY_XUc" height="1" width="1"/
• January 25, 2010
• 10:19

  Young Achievers to Share Ideas at TEDxYouthInspire

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  span style="font-size:100%;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/S14t_p0ECHI/AAAAAAAAARw/qiOOHTjIMUI/s1600-h/tedx.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 166px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/S14t_p0ECHI/AAAAAAAAARw/qiOOHTjIMUI/s320/tedx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430828772234627186" border="0" //a/spanspan style="font-size:100%;" br //spandiv style="text-align: justify;"meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"link style="font-family: arial;" rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CRoseline%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"link style="font-family: arial;" rel="themeData" 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mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- /style p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"TEDxYouthInspire/a has joined the rungs of the increasing number of African youth-focused development programmes to be hosted in Ghana. Other events recently hosted here that immediately come to mind are a href="http://barcampghana.org/"BarCamp Ghana/a and a href="http://makerfaireafrica.com/"Maker Faire Africa/a. The brilliant thing about TEDxYouthInspire, and other programmes like it, is that it is the initiative of private individuals and youth groups who are determined to inspire positive change on the African continent. In addition, local startups, corporate organisations and academic institutions have been quick to lend their support, resulting in tremendous success. Consequently, bloggers have been quick to give rave reviews. Find interesting articles a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-maker-faire-story-pictures-of.html"here/a, a href="http://www.davidajao.com/blog/2009/12/21/barcamp-ghana-2009-2/"here/a, a href="http://afrch.blogspot.com/2009/12/notes-from-barcamp-ghana-2009.html"here/a and a href="http://ict4d.at/2009/08/14/maker-faire-africa-accra-friday-sessions-2nd-part/"here/a. This event is for you if you're a young person between the ages of 14 and 25.o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p /o:pbSo what is TEDxYouthInspire?/bo:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" From the event's a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"website/a:o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"span style="font-size:100%;"strong style="font-family:arial;"span style=";font-family:quot;;" blockquote/blockquotespan style="font-weight: normal;""/spanTEDxYouthInspire/span/strongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" is an open space for the continent’s youngest visionaries to collaborate and reevaluate the possibilities of creating a better global community. A one-day, participatory event, strongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" TEDxYouthInspire/span/strong will use the theme “strongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" A Good Head amp; A Good Heart/span/strong", taken from a quote by former South African President, Nelson Mandela, to exhibit how extraordinary youth leaders combine radical thought and integrity of spirit to set in motion unlimited possibilities for a brighter future."blockquote/blockquote The event takes inspiration from the a href="http://www.ted.com/"TED conference/a./span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"span style="font-size:100%;" br //spanspan style="font-size:100%;"span style=";font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"span style="font-size:100%;"bspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Who is behind this?/span/bspan style=";font-family:quot;;" br //span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style=";font-family:quot;;" TEDxYouthInspire is being a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/about/team/"put together/a by a href="http://raquelwilson.com/"strongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Raquel Wilson/span/strong/a (emspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Event Curator), /span/emstrongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Sharon Brooks/span/strong emspan style=";font-family:quot;;" (Publicity Coordinator) and /span/ema href="http://wsenyo.blogspot.com/"strongspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Worlali Senyo/span/strong/a (emspan style=";font-family:quot;;" Location Coordinator – Ghana). /span/em/span/spanspan style="font-size:130%;"span style="font-weight: normal;"The trio are supported by a team of/span/spanspan style="font-size:100%;"span style=";font-family:quot;;" emspan style=";font-family:quot;;" a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/connect/volunteer/"span style="font-style: normal;"volunteers/span/aspan style="font-style: italic;" /span/span/em/span/spanspan style="font-size:130%;"span style="font-weight: normal;"who have offered their time and expertise to assist in various aspects of the organisation /span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal; font-weight: bold;"span style="font-size:130%;"Where and when will it be held? span style="font-weight: normal;" /span br //span/pThe venue for TEDxYouthInspire is the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (a href="http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/"AITI-KACE/a). It will be held on 10th April, 2010. br /p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" Why should I attend?/spanspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"b style="font-style: italic;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" 1. Listen, be inspired and get motivated/span/bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" Event attendees will be listening to their colleagues, who have made significant impacts in various spheres, make the speech of their lives. By so doing they will be inspired and motivated to work towards their life goals. African youth will be shown that it is possible to make it in Africa.b /bo:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" 2. span style="font-style: italic;"Meet and interact with like-minded young people/span/span/bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" Attendees at the event will be meeting other young people who are passionate about Africa and are hungry to bring change to the continent through technology, entrepreneurship and leadership. At TEDxYouthInspire, you will have the opportunity to interact with people who are brimming with fresh ideas just like you. Who knows? You may just meet the person with whom you'll start your next project with!o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" 3. span style="font-style: italic;"Get challenged/span/span/bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" At TEDxYouthInspire, attendees will be challenged to start working on ideas that they have just like the speakers have done. This will be the final push to get out of your comfort zone. The message to attendees is loud and clear: "the African renaissance is nigh, get on board!"o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" What should I do next?/span/bspan style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" Registration is opened for young Africans between the ages of 14 and 25. Go to the event's a href="http://tedxyouthinspire.org/"website/a to learn more about TEDxYouthInspire. Register at the website before 31st January on which registration closes. Keep your fingers crossed and wait for your acceptance email. :).o:p/o:p/span/span/p p class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;" o:p /o:p/span/span/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-8718651398675015576?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/c8eiD-a3oAo" height="1" width="1"/
• January 20, 2010
• 14:05

  Nations Cup 2010: A Mixed Bag of Experiences

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/S1ZLshNyZFI/AAAAAAAAARg/XsTHhifEA3w/s1600-h/180px-Palanquincha.PNG"img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; text-align: justify; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 251px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/S1ZLshNyZFI/AAAAAAAAARg/XsTHhifEA3w/s320/180px-Palanquincha.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428609629044237394" border="0" //adiv style="text-align: justify;"The a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Africa_Cup_of_Nations"2010 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations/a, variously called CAN 2010 (by French speakers) and AFCON 2010 (by English speakers), is earnestly underway in Angola. The biennial tournament brings to the battlefield the powers that be in African football, resulting in the emergence of the continent's ultimate footballing power. While this fiesta has always been exciting, colourful and musical, entertaining global football enthusiasts, this year's tournament has carved for itself a special mix of drama, action, upsets and controversy that is worth observing./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divbdiv style="text-align: justify;"The Togolese team attack/div/bdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/piersedwards/2010/01/gun_attack_overshadows_africa.html"horrific attack on /aTogo's national team enroute to Cabinda from Congo, resulting in the death of two members of their contingent and injuries to others, left a sour taste in the mouths of many connoiseurs of the game. Further, it was disturbing that the a href="http://cafonline.com/"Confederation of African Football /a(CAF) and the a href="http://www.can-angola2010.com/index.htm?Language=en_EN"tournament organisers/a refused to postpone any of the matches to accommodate the Togolese predicament. The Togolese team has since, in a dramatic fashion, pulled out of the tournament on the prompting of their government. In the wake of this development, many commentators started to raise questions about a href="http://www.goal.com/en/news/596/exclusive/2010/01/09/1734778/african-cup-of-nations-exclusive-afcon-must-be-cancelled-for"security arrangements/a put in place for the tournament. They were particularly concerned with the safety of players, officials and fans participating in the games in Angola. Also doubts have been expressed in relation to Cabinda's suitability as a host venue. But all that seems to be fading away in memory as the tournament has picked up a fast pace ever since the first ball was kicked at the national stadium in Luanda./divdiv style="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;"The Rise of the Minnows Where are West African Giants?/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The tournament is registering many surprising results, reiterating the fact that there are no longer minnows in African football. Here some of the most shocking results from the games:/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bAngola 4 Mali 4/b i(Mali scored their 4 goals within the last 16 minutes of the game)/i/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bMalawi 3 Algeria 0/b i(Algeria have qualified for the World Cup while Malawi are playing their first Nations Cup tournament in over 20 years)/i/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bGabon 1 Cameroun 0/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"In addition to the above eye brow-raising scorelines, West African teams seem to be having a difficult time at the tourney. The only West African victory over Non-West African opposition so far has been Mali's win over Malawi in the last round of matches in Group A. This dip in form by the region's footballing giants may be of concern to football fans because no team from the West African Football Union (WAFU) has won the African Cup of Nations since Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria's back-to-back conquests in 1992 and 1994 respectively. This observation is really surprising against the back drop a large percentage of the continent's currentr world class football stars hail from sub-region./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bNo Clear Favourites/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"Prior to the tournament, many of Africa's leading football teams such as Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Egypt and hosts Angola were lining themselves to lift the trophy. However, the strong performances being put up by the so called soccer minnows means that this cannot be achieved on a silver platter. Already, star-studded Mali has been kicked out of the competition, and it is becoming increasingly likely that either Cameroon or Tunisia will not make it pass the first round. From the few matches that I've watched, it looks like Egypt and Cote d'Ivoire are slightly ahead of the other teams. The Egyptian camp is particularly confident as their coach suggests that there's a a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100118/sports/fbl_afr2010_gpc_egy_ben"dip in the competitive level /aof the tournament compared to the last two nations cup competitions./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bbr //b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bMore Action Ahead/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The Nations Cup competition will continue until 31st January and looks like there will be more fireworks on the field of play as the tournament progresses into the more competitive rounds. There's a lot at stake for the various teams and individual players, and this will generally increase the competitive nature of the tournament. The African football magic fabric will be woven in the loom of Angola's grassy pitches, amidst singing and drumming, producing rich entertainment for the global football audience. Good luck to all the teams! Viva African football!br /br /PS: Don't forget to share what your CAN experience has been so far. Which team do you think will win the tournament?br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6576561350552558125?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/TsZg5gGn0mw" height="1" width="1"/
• December 11, 2009
• 12:59

  Racing With Africa's Cheetahs at BarCampGhana 2009

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SyJlHYW1WKI/AAAAAAAAAPk/AcjtEPRsU6M/s1600-h/image003.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 85px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SyJlHYW1WKI/AAAAAAAAAPk/AcjtEPRsU6M/s320/image003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414000879524468898" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: justify;"I've been following events organised around the BarCamp concept since participating in Ghana's first BarCamp held at AITI-KACE last year. I shared my thoughts on the event a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/12/lessons-from-barcampghana-08.html"here/a. This year, BarCampGhana is coming up on 21st December. Below is a press release from the organisers.span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 17px;font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px;"br /br //spanspan style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 17px;font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"On December 22, 2008, over a hundred young Ghanaians met in Accra for /span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"a href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampghana08" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"BarCamp Ghana '08/a /span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"to exchange ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation and development for a rising Ghana. This summer, the conversations moved to Washington, DC on July 25, 2009 where /span/spana href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampdiaspora09" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"BarCamp Diaspora '09/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" brought together the African Diaspora to exchange ideas on doing business in Africa./span/spanp /pp style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"This December 21st in Accra, the BarCamp Ghana team, made up of passionate young Ghanaians, presents /span/spana href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampghana09" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"BarCamp Ghana '09/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", under the theme "Leadership for our times - cultivating change makers". The event will take place on December 21, 2009 from 8am - 6pm at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) campus at 20 Aluguntuguntu Street in East Legon, Accra./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering where attendees meet for discussions, demos and networking. Unlike a typical conference, at a BarCamp everyone is both a speaker and a participant. The content is provided by all attendees based on their interests, unified under the theme. This year, the focus is youth in leadership and how the youth can create and make change in various ways in various disciplines for the betterment of Ghana. The event would highlight different success stories involving change-making youth. Change makers and youth leaders are strongly encouraged to attend./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"BarCamp Ghana ’09 is a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. BarCamp Diaspora gave birth to a Ghana-focused healthcare NGO,/span/spana href="http://www.reachghana.org/" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"REACH-Ghana/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", which will be presenting its story since its inception in July. BarCamps all over the world have brought together individuals and organizations to collaborate on various projects and businesses./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Panelists and speakers will include Patrick Awuah of Ashesi University, Estelle Sowah of Google Ghana, George Minta of Empretec, Hajo Bilthemer of Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), amongst others. There will be sessions organized by Google representatives and as well as other breakout sessions on various topics and interests as put forth by the attendees. If you are creating or making change in your own small way in your community, consider sending the team a note about your project or business to /span/spana href="http://www.ghanathink.org/blog/2009/12/info@barcampghana.org" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"info at barcampghana dot org/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;". Some of these stories will be mentioned at the BarCamp and all the information will be on the BarCamp Ghana website./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"a href="http://www.barcampghana09.eventbrite.com/" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"Register/RSVP/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" today at the /span/spana href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampghana09/register" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"BarCamp Ghana website/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;". Help spread the word about BarCamp Ghana '09 by /span/spana href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampghana09/spread-word-about-barcamp-ghana-09" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"grabbing badges/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" and support by /span/spana href="http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampghana09/spread-word-about-barcamp-ghana-09" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"donating to help cover costs. You may also /span/span/span/aa href="http://www.ghanathink.org/blog/2009/12/barcamp-ghana-2009-leadership-our-times-cultivating-change-makers" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"contact/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" the BarCamp Ghana team through its website for sponsorship opportunities. If you are interested in /span/spana href="http://barcampghana.org/barcampdiaspora09/organizing-breakout" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"organizing a breakout session/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", let us know, especially if you have special needs./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"BarCamp Ghana 2009 is sponsored by the /span/spana href="http://www.ghanathink.org/" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"GhanaThink Foundation/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", /span/spana href="http://meltwater.org/" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; " target="_blank"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", amongst others./span/span/p p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.22em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"See you there!/span/span/p/spanbr /span style="font-size:100%;"span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"PS: I will be at BarCampGhana on the 21st, so give me a shout out when you see me there. :). /span/spanbr /span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 17px;font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px;"/span /divdiv style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px; text-align: justify;" class="zemanta-pixie"a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/7d36ce6a-f48c-4d50-a0ff-1640a10558b4/" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]"img style="border: medium none ; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7d36ce6a-f48c-4d50-a0ff-1640a10558b4" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" //aspan class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"/script/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6116983829838508902?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/9dcAMCzYlg8" height="1" width="1"/
• November 18, 2009
• 18:38

  Ghana's Facebook Picture

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SwRrquPWncI/AAAAAAAAAPE/LA_gg-vkOgY/s1600/n729066134_1557996_69.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SwRrquPWncI/AAAAAAAAAPE/LA_gg-vkOgY/s320/n729066134_1557996_69.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405563834462543298" border="0" //abr /Facebook use has caught on in Ghana over the past two years just as it has caught on in other parts of the world. There are many stories concerning how this social networking utility is used. CNN has a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/24/annoying.facebook.updaters/index.html"this interesting piece/a about the different types of people you're likely to run in on Facebook. Some Ghanaian bloggers have also taken a shot at the subject but Esi Cleland's hilarious piece on a href="http://maameous.blogspot.com/2009/10/wackiest-facebook-status-updates-coming.html#comments"Ghanaian Facebook status /aupdates is one of the best that i've encountered to date.br /br /a href="http://startupafrica.com/"Startup Africa/a last April wrote a piece on a href="http://www.startupafrica.com/2009/04/african-facebook-demographics/"African Facebook demographics/a based on data gleaned from Nick Gonzalez'sa href="http://www.checkfacebook.com/" checkfacebook application/a. From Startup Africa's analysis, Ghana ranks as Africa's 7th Facebook user country with just over 100,900 users. My last check shows this figure has risen to 277,600, i.e. within a space of 7 months, Facebook has grown at a percentage of over 175% in Ghana. Startup Africa also computed Ghana's Facebook penetration, the percentage of the country's online population using the social network, and arrived at 11.47% (my own calculations pegs the figure at 27.84%). This places Ghana third in Africa ahead of the likes of Nigeria, Kenya and Morrocco. The ranking is interesting against the backdrop that the aforementioned countries have higher Internet penetration than Ghana.br /br /The demographic details of Ghana's Facebook population is expected but surprising with regards to the huge gap in Facebook usage between the genders. A whopping 68.7% of Ghana-based facebookers are male. The 18-34 age range dominates the Ghanaian Facebook landscape, commanding 82%. The other significant Facebook usage age groups are 14-17 (7.5%) and 35-44 (6.3%).br /br /A few conclusions could be drawn from the above data. Firstly, Ghana's relatively high Facebook penetration shows how much Ghanaians want to keep up with conversations and information. This is buttressed by the country's a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200908110996.html"mobile penetration/a of almost 50%. Someone will say we are a country of talkatives and these stats point to that. Secondly, the information also shows the demography that should be targeted by businesses who want to employ the social media as an advertising tool. I will place my bet on males in the 18-34 age range for now.br /br /What do you make of these stats? Do they tell you something? What has been your experience with Facebook usage? Is there a way that we can employ this social networking utility to more effective use? The ball is in your court!br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SwRsGjeS9DI/AAAAAAAAAPM/O-NTz2W0a2M/s1600/n705962293_1094513_1604.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SwRsGjeS9DI/AAAAAAAAAPM/O-NTz2W0a2M/s320/n705962293_1094513_1604.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405564312608764978" border="0" //aspan style="font-size:85%;" An excited group at last year's Facebook Ghana developer garage/spanbr /br /br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6111757121724960144?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/kLvHgm7AJEY" height="1" width="1"/
• October 26, 2009
• 0:55

  My11: The New Twist to Fantasy Football League

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  Theydon International Limited recently released a new fantasy football league game called span style="color:black;"a href="http://my11.com/"My11/a/span. According to their a href="http://my11.com/help/about_us.asp"website/a, i"/ispan style="line-height: 24px;"iMy11.com is an exciting online fantasy football games community. We aim to enhance the way football is enjoyed by offering an extensive range of online fantasy football games; live football news and results; and a thrilling live football challenge./i/spani"/ibr /div style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;"br /They have this exciting video campaign, also reported by the a href="http://ketasandlanders.blogspot.com/"span style="color:black;"Keta Sandlanders FC blog/span/a, going on:br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br /br /object width="400" height="250"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8qKz6Zv2M5camp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8qKz6Zv2M5camp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="250"/embed/objectbr /br /span style="font-family:arial;"The My11 package features three free games: My African 11, My Premier 11 and My Champions 11. The unique thing about these manager-based games is their focus on African players based in Europe. The company also has My11 Football Challenge in the pipeline./spanbr //divdiv style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;"This is quite interesting considering the recent release of a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/10/leti-games-leads-africa-into-global.html"iWarrior, Africa's first iPhone game/a. There's also a facebook application called a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-ghanaian-name-is-kwaku-what-is-yours.html"My Ghanaian name/a. In general, it looks like the number of software applications made by Africans or targeted at Africans is increasing. The continent is becoming more and more tech savvy. I'd give this game a try, I hope you do too. Choose your 11 and lets get down to action!br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6429822227250099655?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/6sHnWb-jcX8" height="1" width="1"/
• October 15, 2009
• 11:10

  5 Voices on Climate Change

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify; font-family: arial;"span style="font-size:100%;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/StcY7B5scWI/AAAAAAAAAOM/iduhXspT-0Y/s1600-h/climate-change-a-libertarian-view.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 189px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/StcY7B5scWI/AAAAAAAAAOM/iduhXspT-0Y/s320/climate-change-a-libertarian-view.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392806481201230178" border="0" //abr /Today is a href="http://www.blogactionday.org/"blog action day/a, a day on which bloggers from all over the world discuss a key issue of global concern on their blogs. This year's topic is climate change. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change"Wikipedia/a defines climate change as "a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years."br /br //spanspan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" Controversial Science/spanspan style="font-size:100%;"br /The phenomenon of climate has engaged the world's attention over the past decade, provoking a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/13/bbc-blog-or-news-climate-change-denial"debates/a in science, politics, business and technology. Within the scientific community, there is no consensus on a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm"the extent of man's involvement in causing climate change/a, and its overall effect on the sustainability of our planet earth. It is gratifying that many concerned global citizens are taking steps to counter the possible ravaging effects that climate change could have on the world's future. Below is a summary of views on climate change from five global leaders.br /br /a href="http://www.laurentian.ca/Laurentian/Home/Research/Special+Projects/Climate+Change+Case+Study/Quotes/Quotes.htm?Laurentian_Lang=en-CA"span style="font-weight: bold;"Former US Vice-President Al Gore/span/a/spanspan id="_ctl0_ContentPlaceHolder1_Text_en" class="placeHolder" style="font-size:100%;"br /"Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming."/spanspan style="font-size:100%;"br /br /a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS199415+22-Sep-2008+BW20080922"span style="font-weight: bold;"Noble Laureate Wangari Maathai/span/abr /"The world's remaining tropical forests must be protected, because without them not only will the global climate not be stabilized, but the entire world will suffer." "This is particularly true for many in the global south, where protecting forests is not only about conservation but also about economic development. Forests are the source of livelihoods, water and energy, and in most places they host abundant biodiversity that attracts tourism income. Destruction of forests in many places has jeopardized key economic sectors."br /br /a href="http://www.finestquotes.com/select_quote-category-Global%20Warming-page-1.htm"span style="font-weight: bold;"US President Barrack Obama/span/abr //spanspan class="indquote_link" style="font-size:100%;" "The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe." /spanspan style="font-size:100%;"br /br /a href="http://www.environmental-expert.com/resulteachpressrelease.aspx?cid=35992amp;codi=71576"span style="font-weight: bold;"Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan/span/abr /"Climate change is the greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today. And it is a challenge that has a grave injustice at its heart. It is the major developed economies of the world which contribute the overwhelming majority of global greenhouse emissions. But it is the poorer and least developed nations that are hit hardest by its impact."br /br /a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/sep/24/barack-obama-fidel-castro-climate-change"span style="font-weight: bold;"Former Cuban President Fidel Castro/span/abr /"Consumer societies and the squandering of material resources are likewise incompatible with ideas of economic growth and a clean planet. The unlimited waste of non-renewable natural resources, particularly oil and gas, accumulated over hundreds of millions of years and which will be exhausted within barely two centuries at the current rate of consumption, have been the fundamental causes of climate change. Even if contaminating gases are reduced in the industrialized countries, which would be praiseworthy, it is no less certain that 5.200 billion inhabitants of the planet Earth are living in countries still to be developed to a greater or lesser degree, which are going to be demanding a huge consumption of coal, oil, natural gas and other non-renewable resources which, in line with consumer patterns created by the capitalist economy, are incompatible with the objective of saving the human species."br /br //spanspan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" The Debate Continues/spanspan style="font-size:100%;"br /What are your views on climate change? Is it for real? Is it a myth? In what ways do you think that the world can use its resources more sustainably? Can developing countries contribute to reversing climate change?br /br //spanspan style="font-size:100%;"span style="font-size:85%;"Picture credit: [www.toothpastefordinner.com] //span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5880438136832620263?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/lFBxBYKzRlA" height="1" width="1"/
• October 13, 2009
• 13:23

  Leti Games Leads Africa into Global Games Market With iWarrior

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/StTVsRMjWxI/AAAAAAAAAOE/wx1aghwPgb0/s1600-h/7031_174185816755_524486755_3801003_5609352_n.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 247px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/StTVsRMjWxI/AAAAAAAAAOE/wx1aghwPgb0/s320/7031_174185816755_524486755_3801003_5609352_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392169610376338194" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: justify;"a href="http://appshopper.com/games/iwarrior"iWarrior/a, probably the first iPhone game coming out of Africa, made its grand entry into a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333224219amp;mt=8"Apple's App Store/a yesterday, signifying the potential of African gamers to make their mark on the international stage. The game was created by a href="http://letigames.com/"Leti Games/a, a team of ambitious, talented and motivated young Africans who are determined to make great games for gamers worldwide to enjoy. Leti first came into the limelight when they released a video for a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyAu_t5FTHE"bugzvilla/a, their demo game, on YouTube./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bThe Game/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"iWarrior is unique in many ways. The game simulates the challenges of life in an African safari setting. The goal of the player is to protect his village and farm from destruction against various wild animals. I've had a go at it and was impressed by its simplicity and intuitive game play. The game's sounds are great and a lot of effort has been put into making it as realistic as possible. a href="http://whiteafrican.com/2009/10/12/iwarrior-an-african-iphone-game/#comments"White African /aand a href="http://appshopper.com/games/iwarrior"AppShopper/a have more extensive reviews.br /br /You can download the game from itunes a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333224219amp;mt=8"here /aand try it for yourself.br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bTeam/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The brains behind Leti Games are a href="http://mightyafrican.blogspot.com/2009/05/leti-games-building-computer-games-in.html"Eyram Tawia/a of a href="http://pathghana.com/"Ghana /aand a href="http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/09/18/can-video-game-development-help-africa-develop"Wesley Kirinya/a of Kenya. Both Eyram and Wesley have experience in making computer games. /divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"They first worked together building a game for the CAN 2008 football tournament. Eyram and his pal Francis Dittoh, used their undergraduate final project, a href="http://ghanaconscious.ghanathink.org/node/331"The Sword of Sygos/a, to win Ghana Think Foundation's invitational programming contest in 2006. Wesley, on the other hand, was hailed in 2007 when he came out with a href="http://whiteafrican.com/2007/04/27/an-african-3d-adventure-game/"The Adventures of Nyangi/a. The two trailblazers probably got the idea to start a game company in 2008 when Wesley moved to Ghana to work for the biometric company, a href="http://genkeycorp.com/"Genkey Africa Corp/a, while Eyram served as a teaching fellow at a href="http://meltwater.org/"MEST/a, a fully funded hands-on training programme for young Ghanaian software entrepreneurs. What's striking about these two fellows is their unrelenting passion for technology and their quest to put Africa on the global gaming map. They are an inspiration for the numerous aspiring game makers and software entrepreneurs living in major cities across sub-Saharan Africa./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bThe way forward/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The folks at Leti Games are optimistic about the success of their foray into Apple's App Store and are mindful of what this means for other African iPhone developers. They've also just finished with a J2ME version of iWarrior for Java-enabled phones called Kijiji. Leti is exploring the possibility of reaching a deal with a phone manufacturer to get Kijiji out there. "There are more great games in the pipeline", Eyram tells me with a smile./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-3015272569166006317?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/lvo9jhC0HuI" height="1" width="1"/
• September 29, 2009
• 9:41

  World Wide Web Inventor Interacts With Ghana's Internet Community

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div align="justify"British Computer scientist, professor and inventor, a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/"Sir Tim Berners-Lee/a last Monday, 21st September, met and interacted with members of Ghana's Internet community at a href="http://aiti-kace.com.gh/"AITI-KACE/a, as part of his short visit to the country. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is famously credited for the invention of the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web"World Wide World /a(WWW) during his research at a href="http://public.web.cern.ch/public/"CERN/a in Geneva, Switzerland.br /br /Below, I share some insights I gathered from Sir Tim's short speech. This is particularly important as the Internet has reached it's 40th milestone and the world wide web is approaching its 20th year.br /br /strongThe need for a multi-disciplinary study of the web/strongbr /The evolution of the web over the years has resulted in a very complex system that is an interesting subject for academic study. Closely related to this are developments towards the realisation of a “a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web"semantic web/a.” In Sir Tim's view, a collaborative and multi-disciplinary web science, will enhance the full understanding of the technologies driving the web as well as how people use it. The point is that if whole fields are dedicated to studying systems such as the brain, why not do the same for the web?br /br /strongThe barriers must be brought down/strongbr /The web, by its very nature, has the capacity to make information freely accessible to everyone. Sadly, only about 20-25% of the word's population can be said to be on-line. The key challenge facing everyone is to get Internet connectivity to the doorsteps of the remaining 75-80% of the global population. Considering the enormous benefits that access to information through the web offers every sector of the economy, it is worthwhile to take bold steps to bridge the digital divide.br /br /strongWhy the web was made free/strongbr /The web was made free to ensure that there is only one dominant platform through which information is exchanged. Sir Tim envisaged the implication of commercialising the world wide web, that is other networks would have been invented, and this may affect the free-flow of information. So, imagine, if the WWW was commercialised, we may have other networks such as MMM (multi-media mash), QQQ and HHH.br /br /strongThe web is a two-edged sword/strongbr /Like any device, technology or piece of knowledge placed into the hands of man, the web has the potential to be used for good or for bad. And although, overwhelmingly, the WWW has served as a tool for technological, social, political and economic improvement, it has also been employed as a tool for criminal activities. The sad cases of cybercrime or “sakawa” and terrorism are but few examples of how the WWW has been misused.br /br //divp align="justify"At the gathering were various stakeholders in the Ghanaian technological sector including scientists, academics, business people, politicians and students. Some of the notable faces at the event were Ms. Dorothy Gordon, Director of AITI-KACE, Dr. Nii Narku Quaynor, the man credited for “bringing” the Internet to Ghana, Prof. Marian Ewurama Addy, Vice-Chancellor of Anglican University of Technology and Ghana's deputy minister of communication, Mr Gideon Quarcoo. There were also representatives of various groups such as ISOG, ghNOG, ghNIC, GISPA and GHARNET.br //pp align="justify"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SsHaHHdQCsI/AAAAAAAAAN0/3baaxf9lrkI/s320/IMG_0715.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386826445107497666" border="0" //pp align="justify"span style="font-size:85%;"Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Dr. Nii Narku-Quaynor interacting with young enthusiastic Ghanaian technologists after the programme./spanbr //pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6630132807001348094?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/Z7i2l1J7kFg" height="1" width="1"/
• September 23, 2009
• 19:53

  What Would be Nkrumah's Aspiration for Ghana and Africa Today?

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"Last Monday saw Ghana and some other parts of Africa celebrate Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's centenary. As expected, there were lots of discussions and debates surrounding the personality of Kwame Nkrumah and the contribution he has made to Ghana's progress and development. Mighty African made a round up of a href="http://mightyafrican.blogspot.com/2009/09/september-21-2009-kwame-nkrumahs.html"blog posts/a that discussed this all-important occasion last week. My approach to remembering Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is to attempt to answer the question: “if Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was alive today, what would have been his aspiration for Ghana and Africa?” Please share what you think he would do?br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Internet connection all over Ghana/spanbr /The Internet has boosted productivity in health, education, business, agriculture and almost all aspects of human endeavour. In addition, it has spawned a whole industry from which many people earn their livelihood. Kwame Nkrumah, identifying this great opportunity, would advocate for the Internet to be available in every Ghanaian, home, work place and school. After ensuring this he would then make a statement like: “Ghana's connectivity to the Internet would be meaningless unless it is linked up to the wiring up of the whole African continent.”br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Cheap and affordable energy/spanbr /Nkrumah's vision to develop a vibrant energy sector to power Ghana's industries was truly significant. The fact that he constructed Ghana's sole hydroelectric power plant and proposed the one that is currently under construction is prove of the above claim. Nkrumah today would be a voice for the development of nuclear energy to satisfy the electricity needs of Ghana and her neighbouring countries. In the wake of the recent oil discovery in Ghana, our first president would ensure that there is more Ghanaian involvement in the actual drilling and refinement of the oil. He would lead the effort to build more oil refineries to process the crude oil locally, so as to increase the value of the oil exports.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Permanent African seat on UN security council/spanbr /On the political front, Kwame Nkrumah, being a veritable voice for more African influence on the global stage, would definitely be one of the backbones for the current call for Africa to have a permanent seat on the UN security council. This is even more important in the face of the increasing complexity of the global political sphere as well as Africa's gradual emergence as a strategic piece in the global jigsaw.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Greater access to tertiary education/spanbr /Nkrumah's efforts in the past ensured that many Ghanaians had access to at least secondary education. The dynamic nature of today's global economy calls for not only a skilled workforce, but a very creative workforce. In this regard Kwame Nkrumah would take steps to ensure that the doors of higher education be opened to every Ghanaian citizen.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"African space exploration centre/spanbr /Space science and technology will play a crucial role in the development of our planet in the future. We're all witnesses to the important role that satellite technology, for example, has played in revolutionising communication. If Kwame Nkrumah was alive, I believe he would advocate for the setting up of a space exploration centre, at least at the continental level, in order to ensure that Africa benefits fully from the advantages therein.br /br /br /PS: Kwame Nkrumah is the common theme of the a href="http://ghanablogging.com"GhanaBlogging/a group for the month of September.br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-7066494156841019042?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/geXgVjhdQgM" height="1" width="1"/
• September 18, 2009
• 19:15

  We're a Year Old, Hurray!

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SrUpaamtYBI/AAAAAAAAANk/tOZrD23uL7k/s1600-h/dsc036611.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SrUpaamtYBI/AAAAAAAAANk/tOZrD23uL7k/s320/dsc036611.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383254463386312722" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: justify;"It's been one year since I wrote my a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/09/first-step.html"first post/a on this blog. It's amazing how quickly time flies. The adventure has been exciting so far and I want to take this opportunity to say "thank you, medasi, merci, gracias and akpe" for coming this way and being part of my world. Here's a short review of what's gone on over the past year./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bState of the blog/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"Today's post is the 21st on this blog. The Gamelian World curently has 16 followers and has had more than a thousand visits. At the last check, this blog was ranked by a href="http://afrigator.com/"afrigator /aas a href="http://afrigator.com/profile/?url=http://gamelmag.blogspot.com"17th/a in a href="http://pathghana.com/"Ghana/a and 938th in Africa. The best rank I've seen on Afrigator is 14th. The blog has a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/07/pathghana-promoting-ghanaian-tourism.html"featured /aone a href="http://tagoeblogger.blogspot.com/"guest blogger/a./span/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdivdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"The good side of things/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"Blogging has contributed positively to my life in a few ways. The quality of my writing has improved over the past year. Since the blog is open to the global audience, it's been crucial to keep the highest standards possible. Another great benefit I have derived from blogging is to be part of the online conversation that is going on, not only in Ghana, but in Africa and the world. The process of getting people to talk about important and not so important things have been very rewarding for me. A third, and probably the greatest, success has been the good fortune of meeting great people on the blogosphere as well as in real life. The exceptionally wonderful people of the a href="http://ghanablogging.com/"Ghanablogging /agroup immediately come to mind./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The blog has also enjoyed a few mentions on other websites and blogs. My a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/12/lessons-from-barcampghana-08.html"post /aon a href="http://www.barcampghana.org/"barcampghana/a'08 was cited a href="http://www.barcampghana.org/blog/2009/01/18/tweets-pictures-and-blog-entries-about-barcamp-ghana"here /awhile that of a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-in-ghana-retracing-steps-of.html"US president Obama's visit to Ghana/a, was also cited a href="http://ghanaconscious.ghanathink.org/blogs/abocco/2009/07/obama-ghana-round-blog-posts-ghanaian-bloggers"here /aand a href="http://blogs.america.gov/bythepeople/2009/07/12/african-online-communities-buzzing-about-ghana-visit-part-iii/"here/a. Although this cannot be claimed as a complete validation of the blog's quality, it's an indication that eyeballs are indeed watching what's going on in this space./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bThe not so good side of things and ways to improve/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"There have been fewer posts on the blog than expected. To address this, I am coming out with a strategy that would help me post content more regularly. Also, commenting has been on the low side. Moving forward, my aspiration is to make posts concise and engaging, so as to ignite debates around the subject matter. Hopefully, that would get you to comment more here. Finally, membership of our community is still small. If you have not joined yet, why don't you join now by clicking a href="http://http//www.google.com/friendconnect/settings/edit?smpl=trueamp;st=e%3DAOG8GaBBlF828O%252BY35uOkaM8s3YyDGyc%252B57Nav50YPLqZSGKAFwHLKbVw4WVIHzIRoKR0IhkUmbS5hjx4nQtXEkPCEvS6yHTqiKEo7sCbgoclUuMsmiodu7Fre7ExGmzYvbxDv9T1HeED0UiUtFIXRcoY%252F69O2zQ8Ohj2B258wleDXTsmkq7954jPx5Q5pvvwnDZewlMiO17elaPqYnL8xHvkwsbQ0O%252FQx4AShDkDb%252BWDVyzCRYZeqs%253D%26c%3Dpeoplesense"here/a, and invite others to do the same?/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bThe way forward/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The key thing that I've been thinking about is defining the postion of the blog. This has been a difficult exercise because this blog has always been more about the writing and perspectives than about core areas. As of now, I am proposing a three prong approach: technology, development and lifestyle. And this is naturally in an African context./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"bYour critical feedback please!/b/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"This blog would be nothing without you-it's readers. Please feel free to let me know what you think about what we've been trying to do over the past year. What is being done right? What can be improved upon? What focus do you think best fits this blog? Over to you!a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SrUpa-qwheI/AAAAAAAAANs/mN6lfdeq2rw/s1600-h/thank-you-typewriter.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SrUpa-qwheI/AAAAAAAAANs/mN6lfdeq2rw/s320/thank-you-typewriter.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383254473066972642" border="0" //a/divdivdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //div/div/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6126487567223335120?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/fhfYcN2WXNw" height="1" width="1"/
• September 13, 2009
• 18:31

  What the heck are you saying?

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sq05Psow0RI/AAAAAAAAANc/kCYbApG32HE/s1600-h/403_question+mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sq05Psow0RI/AAAAAAAAANc/kCYbApG32HE/s320/403_question+mark.jpg" width="214" border="0" height="198" //span/span/a/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"My love for words and expression is the main driver for my interest in writing and by extension blogging. The written word has the power to convey one's thoughts in a clear, crisp and concise way, one that, I dare say, is much more effective than even the spoken word. After all, when you're reading a text and you come across a "big word", you can quickly make reference to a resource and get along with your task. However, you cannot stop someone in the middle of a sentence to "break down" his/her vocabulary before proceeding with the conversation./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /Some time last week, I was laughing with a couple of friends over how some people complicate their conversations by using difficult words, or "vocabs" in Ghanaian secondary school parlance, when simpler words could do the trick. This led me to reminisce the days when I, completely enthralled by a writer's choice of words, would memorise whole sentences in the hope of using them when the occasion presents itself. Many of us, who watched the ultra-hilarious Pattington Papa Nii Papafio in the TV serial Taxi Driver, would easily recall moments of extreme excitement and fun that the profligate use of big words ignited among Ghanaian television viewers.br /br /br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"I recall with just a little trace of accuracy a tale my English teacher told our class in JSS 1, so i present it in an assorted cocktail with similar tales that i have picked up over the years. It was about a learned man whose obsession with big words was so great that he used them in everyday conversations. Instead of simply asking the small boy next door, "what's your name?", he would blurt out "what is the alphabetical construction of your human dignity?" or "what characterises your nomenclature?" If he wants to say "come quickly," he would opt for "proceed in my direction with alacrity." His equivalent of "i'm going to urinate" is "i'm proceeeding to evacuate my internal hydrosity", whatever that means.br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"More likely than ever, in philosophical situations, our gentleman does not spare his listeners the ordeal of deciphering, with difficulty, the meaning of every sentence of his. He would always prefer "super abundance of any performance is detrimental to the performer" to "too much of a thing is bad", and "A slight inclination of the cranium is as adequate as the spasmodic movement of one of the occular organs, to an equine quadruped devoid of its visionary capacity" to "a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse!" Soon his neighbours and aquaintances got fed up with his linguistic ways and avoided his company as much as possible.br /br /br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"One day he returned home only to find his beautiful home under fire. In complete hysteria, he began to shout his neighbours for help. Guess what he said? "Multitude!, multitude!, a great conflagration is consuming my magnificent domicile!" "The beautiful edifice that I erected is being razed to the ground by a ravaging inferno!" Passers by, who either did not understand a word of what he was saying or chose to ignore his verbose pleas left him to suffer his misfortune alone. In the end, he lost his home, which was an entire lifetime investment.br /br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sq05D0Z3JuI/AAAAAAAAANU/xsnrx7YnSU0/s1600-h/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sq05D0Z3JuI/AAAAAAAAANU/xsnrx7YnSU0/s320/images.jpeg" border="0" //span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"This story, i guess, is completely fictional. However, we all stand to pick a major lesson from it-to ensure that every time we speak, our choice of words fit the context. We should not get our listeners to the point of "what the heck is he saying?" After all, there is a bit of our friend in every one of us./span/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-58914324235061664?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/g1t98dHMzeA" height="1" width="1"/
• September 04, 2009
• 15:10

  My Maker Faire Story: Pictures of Exhibitions and People

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"Last time, I wrote about the first a href="http://www.makerfaireafrica.com/"Maker Faire Africa/a event that took place at a href="http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/"AITI-KACE/a. Today, I present photographs of some great people and exhibitions from the programme.br /br / /divdiv style="text-align: center;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqEw3SoCNdI/AAAAAAAAALM/7v5A9HOcxac/s1600-h/IMG_0417.JPG"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqEw3SoCNdI/AAAAAAAAALM/7v5A9HOcxac/s320/IMG_0417.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377633156507776466" border="0" //abr //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br /The stand of Liberian "analogue blogger" Alfred Sirleaf announces the programme line-up for the last day, Sunday 14th August. Mr. Sirleaf has received rave reviews from prestigious media organisations, such as the BBC, for the able manner in which he displays crucial information for poor and illiterate everyday folks in Monrovia, Liberia.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqEzolgDtnI/AAAAAAAAALU/x7gm1pUA2H0/s1600-h/IMG_0369.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqEzolgDtnI/AAAAAAAAALU/x7gm1pUA2H0/s320/IMG_0369.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377636202411439730" border="0" //aFormer Ghanaian finance minister, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, sandwiched by Francis Ayombil and yours truly. It was great meeting and interacting with him at the exhibition. It's heartwarming that some of the continent's thought leaders recognise technology as an important tool for its socio-economic transformation.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFH0UyCFYI/AAAAAAAAALc/iQMhRfFiVz4/s1600-h/IMG_0380.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFH0UyCFYI/AAAAAAAAALc/iQMhRfFiVz4/s320/IMG_0380.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377658394314413442" border="0" //abr /The Mozilla team, led by Benjamin Ephson Jnr., busy at their work station. There is an upsurge in the use of open source technologies on the African continent. MFA was an opportune moment for this crew to present the merits of the Mozilla browser to as many people as possible.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFKFh59EiI/AAAAAAAAALk/eqLRO7OV5zs/s1600-h/IMG_0408.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFKFh59EiI/AAAAAAAAALk/eqLRO7OV5zs/s320/IMG_0408.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377660888918331938" border="0" //aMadam Cora Taylor, "Miss Coco", smiles in this pose with her lovely, well-dressed and famous "African ladies". Miss Coco would not have her dolls called "African barbies". She is just one example of the positive things going on in her home country of Liberia right now.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPUjE5onI/AAAAAAAAAMU/0qYPAdyILgo/s1600-h/IMG_0394.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPUjE5onI/AAAAAAAAAMU/0qYPAdyILgo/s320/IMG_0394.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377666644488856178" border="0" //aMr. Tei Huagie, a tailor, artist and sculptor, based in Accra, Ghana has fashioned out an innovative approach to solving Ghana's waste problems. Behind him are vests, shorts and caps made with ice cream sachets. Would you try one of these on?br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPUGhfTYI/AAAAAAAAAMM/GPdk8KHkNVY/s1600-h/IMG_0410.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPUGhfTYI/AAAAAAAAAMM/GPdk8KHkNVY/s320/IMG_0410.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377666636824137090" border="0" //aThe fight against plastic waste continues. Here, my friend, Francis, relaxes comfortably in an armchair, whose framework is essentially made up of used plastic water bottles. This masterpiece is the handiwork of Johannes Thomas Arthur.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPT2sukCI/AAAAAAAAAME/wAT6Eha2-nk/s1600-h/IMG_0383.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPT2sukCI/AAAAAAAAAME/wAT6Eha2-nk/s320/IMG_0383.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377666632576307234" border="0" //aAsiwome of a href="http://kasahorow.org/"Kasahorow/a enthusiatically explains the organisation's on-line African language initiatives to these interested attendees.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPTVE7aQI/AAAAAAAAAL8/RARLHerkJKw/s1600-h/IMG_0386.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPTVE7aQI/AAAAAAAAAL8/RARLHerkJKw/s320/IMG_0386.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377666623551006978" border="0" //aMr. Paul Kakari offers a solution to the electricity shortage problem through his "electric cream". He mixes two different powders, some aluminium chippings and water to generate heat, through an exothermic reaction. This has many applications like heating water for tea, cooking meals and ironing clothes.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPS1AoQLI/AAAAAAAAAL0/pGiiOXf4Zds/s1600-h/IMG_0379.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFPS1AoQLI/AAAAAAAAAL0/pGiiOXf4Zds/s320/IMG_0379.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377666614943039666" border="0" //aThe prodigious a href="http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/"William Kakwamba/a offers to provide energy to different parts of Africa by founding an energy company after his education. He's already started by building a windmill from scrap materials to generate electricity in his home in Malawi. William is a student ofa href="http://www.africanleadershipacademy.org/site" African Leadership Academy/a (ALA) and co-author of the book, "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind". It was really inspiring to meet young Africans who are actually doing things to make a difference on the continent.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFOG4BR6vI/AAAAAAAAALs/AorRj35DxnE/s1600-h/IMG_0401.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFOG4BR6vI/AAAAAAAAALs/AorRj35DxnE/s320/IMG_0401.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377665310081018610" border="0" //aThis team from Accra Polytechnic completely fabricated all the parts used to make their radio station. Their solution is low cost and has potential to make information more widely available in poorer communities.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFhymihF_I/AAAAAAAAAMc/PbL7GheFq2M/s1600-h/IMG_0388.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SqFhymihF_I/AAAAAAAAAMc/PbL7GheFq2M/s320/IMG_0388.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377686952023758834" border="0" //aSimple implements to make the work of farmers in third world countries easier and more productive.br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-2814265269211435599?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/ErZtLeg7cXE" height="1" width="1"/
• August 21, 2009
• 15:34

  Innovation Galore at Maker Faire Africa(MFA)

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"/divdiv align="justify"a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRN0P2XU4I/AAAAAAAAAKs/oXIRoTV3390/s1600-h/IMG_0372.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374005815362933634" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRN0P2XU4I/AAAAAAAAAKs/oXIRoTV3390/s320/IMG_0372.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 158px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 302px;" //aspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br /br /br /br /br /br /br /br /br /It is undisputed that technology forms the bedrock of socio-economic development in any society. This is so because technology provides the means through which raw natural resources are transformed into objects of value that provide monetary benefits to the innovator. Increased economic gains, which are likely consequences of technological breakthroughs, directly promote investment in agriculture, education and health: key sectors of social progress in today's world. This is the reason why technology holds a special place in my heart and is a recurring theme for this blog. /span/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br //spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"In earlier blog posts, I wrote about /spana href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/10/does-open-source-software-hold-future.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"open source in Africa/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", /spana href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/10/africa-too-has-story-to-tell.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"African software entrepreneurs/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;",/spana href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2008/12/lessons-from-barcampghana-08.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" Barcamp Ghana/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", /spana href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/07/pathghana-promoting-ghanaian-tourism.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"PathGhana website/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" and /spana href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-ghanaian-name-is-kwaku-what-is-yours.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"My Ghanaian Name facebook application/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"./span/span/spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" Today's post summarises my observations on the first /spana href="http://makerfaireafrica.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Maker Faire Africa/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"(MFA), dubbed "a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention." The event was hosted by/spana href="http://www.blogger.com/www.aiti-kace.com.gh"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" AITI-KACE/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", which is fast becoming the venue of choice for technology conferences here in Accra, Ghana. Watching the exhibitions sent a few thoughts through my mind that I would like to share with you./span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"There is Ingenuity in Africa/span/span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spana href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRTb1xo7gI/AAAAAAAAAK8/aQrvAtNWtuU/s1600-h/IMG_0375.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374011993116700162" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRTb1xo7gI/AAAAAAAAAK8/aQrvAtNWtuU/s320/IMG_0375.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; height: 232px; width: 191px;" //span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br //spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"The numerous exhibitions at the fair portrayed the diversity of innovation that is going on the African continent. The solutions offered by the innovators also varied in complexity: from a simple/spana href="http://www.carbonsmart.com/carboncopy/2009/06/liberias-analogue-blogger.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" analogue blogging/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" solution, through a /spana href="http://http//makerfaireafrica.com/2009/07/25/william-kamkwamba-is-coming-to-maker-faire-africa/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"windmill/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" and a /spana href="http://www.afrigadget.com/2008/06/17/re-use-in-the-unofficial-kenyan-ironworks-industry/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"metal fabrication /span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"device to complicated /spana href="http://www.afrobotics.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"robotic devices/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;". The list is endless. What is really significant about all these displays is the relevance of the various inventions to various African communities. /spana href="http://williamkamkwamba.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"William Kamkwamba/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"'s windmill, made from scrap materials, for example, is solving a real need, in this case, lack of electricity in his home village in rural Malawi./span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Initiative Makes a Difference/span/span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspanspan style="font-family:quot;;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"There is no gainsaying that Africa's future socio-economic decelopment lies in the hands of the people of the continent themselves. Worldwide, countries that have scaled the developmental hurdle are those whose leaders and citizens "took the bull by the horns" and implemented systematic reforms to steer their national progress in the right direction. Immediate post-independence gains chalked by countries like Ghana were spearheaded by leaders who were ready to make a difference. This same make point was reitirated at the Maker Faire as the organisers are Africans (and people with strong African ties) who are determined to see a maker mentality take root on the African continent. Kudos to the organising team (made up of /spana href="http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Emeka Okafor/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", /spana href="http://whiteafrican.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Erik Hersman/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", /span/span/spanspanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Lars Hasselblad Torres, /spanb style="font-weight: normal;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Mark Grimes, /span/ba href="http://nubiancheetah.blogspot.com/"b style="font-weight: normal;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Nii Simmonds/span/b/ab style="font-weight: normal;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;", Emer Beamer and /span/bb style="font-weight: normal;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Henry Barnor/span/bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"), sponsors and all volunteers of the event. Their efforts are very important because Maker Faire has been a practical demonstration of technological accomplishments possible on the continent, though on a small scale./span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspan style=" font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"The Future Lies With The Young/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spana href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRUrM7D6JI/AAAAAAAAALE/VBg4T7G60sw/s1600-h/IMG_0384.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374013356539898002" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SpRUrM7D6JI/AAAAAAAAALE/VBg4T7G60sw/s320/IMG_0384.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; height: 240px; width: 320px;" //span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"This point has been made time and again. It really hit home again because there were quite a number of exhibitions from young people, brimming with excitement and energy. Also, most of the people I met at the fair were young people who are excited about technology and willing to pick up the necessary skills so as to ultimately bring about positive change to their African communities. The likes of William Kamkwamba (inventor of the electricity-generating windmill), Johannes Thomas Arthur (producer of furniture using plasitic water bottles) and the Accra Polytechnic Fm team are worthy role models for African youth to emulate. Their creative minds give hope to a continent often tagged as dark and backward. This resonates US president Barack Obama's message to African youth when he visited the continent./span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"br /br //spanspanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Overall, it was interesting watching the Maker Faire exhibitions and speaking with great people like /spana href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwesi_Botchwey"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Dr. Kwesi Botchwey/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" (yes, the former finance minister), /spana href="http://whiteafrican.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Erik Hersman/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" (White African and Afrigadget), /spana href="http://www.davidajao.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Oluniyi David Ajao/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" (Web4Africa), /spana href="http://http//subsaharska.maneno.org/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Miquel Hudin/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;" (Maneno), /spana href="http://wayan.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"Wayan Vota/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"(Inveneo), Louisa (Butterfly works) and all the awesome exhibitors. My only regret though is that i couldn't participate in the workshops because of my packed weekend. I have taken many pictures of the exhibitions and people I met there and would be posting them in the days to come./span/spanbr /span style="font-size:100%;"span style="Bitstream Vera Sans [bitstream]quot;;font-family:quot;;" /span/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-701055198004813102?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/bvoNdjsff-E" height="1" width="1"/
• August 16, 2009
• 11:24

  My Ghanaian name is Kwaku, what is yours?

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sof_cJKXblI/AAAAAAAAAKc/-hX5dQ1PNrQ/s1600-h/SSL25773.JPG"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Sof_cJKXblI/AAAAAAAAAKc/-hX5dQ1PNrQ/s320/SSL25773.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5370541939623423570" //adiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"Last Friday, 24th July, guest blogger a href="http://tagoeblogger.blogspot.com/"Edward Amartey-Tagoe/a made a post on PathGhana's new initiative, a href="http://pathghana.com/"PathGhana/a Friday, which is aimed at a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/07/pathghana-promoting-ghanaian-tourism.html"promoting tourism in Ghana to higher heights. /aThis development has been further boosted by the release of a facebook application by the PathGhana team. This facebook application, called "/span/spanbspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"a href="http://apps.facebook.com/my_ghanaian_name/"My Ghanaian Name/a/span/span/bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"", helps users to know their Ghanaian names based on the week day on which they've been born./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"The application is the brain child of PathGhana lead developer Christian Kojo Tamakloe. Christian studied facebook's popularity and infered that developing such an application on the facebook platform would attract many users and thus promote Ghanaian tourism./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"Ghana's unique naming system is widely used among the country's diverse ethnic groups. This special naming system gives special names to people based on the specific day of the week on which they are born and their gender. For example, I am a Wednesday born so the various variations of my name are Kwaku, Kweku and Korku. These names also have certain specific connotations. According to the application, "Wednesday borns are mischievous, vicarious, vigilant and daring. They are usually fully in control of every situation, do not want to be told what to do (some what know-it-alls), spontaneous, vibrant and cordial. Be sure not to cross their paths though". Visitors to Ghana are usually intrigued by these names and therefore adopt them for themselves. My a href="http://ghanablogging.com/"Ghanablogging /acolleague, a href="http://nonjeneregretterien.blogspot.com/2009/08/ghanaian-names-return-trend.html"Kajsa /ahas one such name. Foreigners, who do not know their week days would find this application very useful./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"So, go ahead click a href="http://apps.facebook.com/my_ghanaian_name/"here/a, give it a try and forward your feedback to the PathGhana team at admin@pathghana.com. Be sure to let all your folks know about this cool new app!/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"Picture: Yours truly with Christian Tamakloe/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-7656947585320617634?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/_5K1eyEPjwo" height="1" width="1"/
• August 04, 2009
• 8:52

  Ghana’s Former President Joins World Food Programme to Knock out Global Hunger

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  span style="font-size:85%;"Picture credit: WFP amp; Alessandro Recalcati/spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Snf_WtOe0pI/AAAAAAAAAKE/euNR_LDQG5Q/s1600-h/kufuor.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 151px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/Snf_WtOe0pI/AAAAAAAAAKE/euNR_LDQG5Q/s400/kufuor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366038246597776018" border="0" //abr /What does a former Ghanaian president have in common with a world class footballer, an elite long distance athlete, a famous actress or a former US senator?br /span xmlns=""p style="text-align: justify;"The answer to this question was unveiled to me when I received an email from the Online Marketing Coordinator of World Food Programme (WFP), Abby Ravera, requesting me to inform my readership about the a href="http://www.wfp.org/stories/fight-against-hunger-gets-new-champion"contribution/a of Ghana's immediate past President, Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor, to the global fight against hunger. Mr. Kufuor joins forces with Ricardo Kaka (former FIFA footballer of the year), Paul Tergat (Marathon champion), George McGovern (former US Senator) and Drew Barrymore (actress) to ask world leaders and other stakeholders to fill the "red cup" and put to rest the scourge of hunger among large swathes of the world's population.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"At the induction ceremony in London, the former president indicated his desire of eradicating hunger among school children. He said that "ensuring that every child has proper nutrition has to be the goal of every world leader; I hope to inspire them all to strive for this goal." This welcome development comes as no surprise to many since the former president was in Rome, Italy in 2008 when the WFP launched its "fill the cup campaign" to provide school meals for hungry school children. Back home, his administration rolled out the school feeding programme to provide free meals for pupils in deprived areas of Ghana./pp style="text-align: justify;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SngACDaISnI/AAAAAAAAAKM/BHlBc37RSuM/s1600-h/kufuorKaka.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 310px; height: 220px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SngACDaISnI/AAAAAAAAAKM/BHlBc37RSuM/s400/kufuorKaka.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366038991286585970" border="0" //a/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:85%;"Mr. J.A. Kufuor and some Ghanaian school kids at the launch of WFP's "fill the up" campaign in Rome Italy. Picure taken from the WFP website/spanbr //pp style="text-align: justify;"Mr. Kufuor received a lot of praise for his involvement. WFP Executive Director, Rosette Sheeran said that "John Kufuor not only talks the talk, but walks the walk; Ghana is a leader in nourishing its children and Ambassador Kufuor can be a leader in getting others to follow his good work."br //pp style="text-align: justify;"Former President Kufuor and WFP's fight against global hunger is justified by the knowledge that over 1 billion people are either suffering from harsh, raw hunger or malnutrition of some sort. Key facts about the WFP school feeding programme that I found a href="http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/john-kufuor-leads-effort-fight-global-hunger-among-schoolchildren"here/a suggest that the WFP is only able to feed about one-third of the 66 million hungry school children worldwide. This situation really requires urgent action.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"Governments of affected countries should take the initiative of rolling out or strengthening national programmes to complement the efforts of the WFP and alleviate the plight of their people. More lasting solutions to the hunger problem must be explored, like technological innovations that would allow farmers to grow crops during drought, or assistance to beneficiaries in the form of skill acquisition, rather than always giving out fish. What is the WFP doing about this? Individuals can also help by contributing to the WFP, volunteering on WFP programmes or spreading the word like I'm doing. span style="font-family:Wingdings;"J/span. Another cool way that I found to be helpful is to simply play a href="http://freerice.com/"this game/a. Imagine having fun, learning and doing charity work at the same time! That feels good, doesn't it?br //ppAyeeko to the Gentle Giant and the WFP!/p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-957402076398332829?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/se9fQqVAsZU" height="1" width="1"/
• July 27, 2009
• 9:21

  Jubilee 106.9 Fm: Deploying Information as a Transformational Tool

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  Jubilee radio came into emergence in the Keta district of the Volta region five years ago and has since not looked back on its mantra of "stronginformation for transformation/strong." Jubilee radio is the brainchild of Pastor Joseph Adika, a citizen of the area, who in 2004 acted on God's vision to engender rapid socio-economic and spiritual transformation in Keta and its environs. Pastor Adika identified dissemination of information to be key in this transformational process, hence the setting up of the station.br /span xmlns=""p style="text-align: justify;"The station, amid pomp and pageantry, stretching from June to July, marked their fifth anniversary under the appropriate theme: "strongthe media as a tool for rapid socio-economic and spiritual transformation/strong." Characteristic of such anniversary celebrations, the programme line-up included clean-up, blood donation and tree planting exercises, a musical concert and a gospel rock show. The anniversary was rounded up by a grand durbar held on 18th July 2009 and a football match between workers of the station and colleague journalists from the republic of Togo. In the football match, the lads of Jubilee, in typical Ghanaian fashion, drilled five goals into the Togolese net without any response. emJubilee Sports host Dzidodo Adzaho (The Big Aarony), who is my brother, told me he scored a 35-yard screamer as the opening goal! /emThe grand durbar was graced by dignitaries such as the Keta Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr. Sylvester Tornyeva, Volta Regional NADMO boss, Mr. Ametefee, the deputy Volta Regional minister, Col. (rtd) Cyril Neku and the deputy minister of information, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa. The anniversary celebration of Jubilee has presented the opportunity to explore the role that this station has played so far in the Keta community and its environs.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"To begin with, the station, as the first and only radio station in Keta district, has been a veritable vehicle for economic, social and religious transformation. Since the station came into being, it has provided employment opportunities for both seasoned journalists and aspiring presenters. The real transformation has been seen in the lives of the younger members of staff, some of whom have been assisted to go through training programmes in broadcast journalism, seminars and workshops organised by institutions such as Radio and Broadcast Development Foundation (RABODEF), the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Again, Jubilee radio has been an ardent supporter of social initiatives such as HIV/AIDS-awareness programmes. The station was one of the participants in Radio France International's (RFI) "kicking HIV out of the West African corridor" initiative. It has also been a strong voice in national political and governance matters. Finally, Jubilee has been instrumental in the organisation of prayer sessions in support of noble initiatives such as peace in Anloland, peaceful free and fair elections in Ghana and the call for spiritual renewal in the southern parts of the Volta Region.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"Jubilee has also enriched the lives of its target audience through its menu of educational, informational and entertaining programmes. The morning show hosted by Kodzotse Zoranu (Papa radiotor), Israel Abotsivia (Areeba) and Silas Aidam serves listeners with a digest of the latest happenings on the local, national and international scenes. The news is not only presented as is, but is analysed comprehensively so as to help listeners track the repercussions of events as they unfold. The educational side of things is complemented by talk shows on diverse topics ranging from current affairs, through sports, to culture. Agbotadua Kumassah's cultural talk show for example re-orients Anlo youth with elements of their culture in the face of the current wave of extreme westernisation. The dishes that Jubilee serves on its entertainment menu are equally palatable. Programmes such as Jubilee drive (hosted by Edem Nyasorgbor a.k.a DJ Ras Muta), Music stream (hosted by Dzidodo Adzaho), Mid-day breeze and Reggae Myelities readily come to mind. There are a host of others. Similarly, the station has organised numerous musical concerts to entertain the buzzing youth of the Keta area and to promote the work of various musicians across multiple musical genres. Artists who have participated in some of these concerts are Ayigbe Edem, 4x4, Praye, Woezepe from Togo, Agbeko and countless local musical hopefuls. It is quite clear that the station has been influential in almost all spheres of the lives of the people of Keta district.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"However, Jubilee radio has had its fair share of challenges in its short history. In the early years of its formation, the station was temporarily shut down by the National Communication Authority (NCA) for using the frequency previously allocated to Obonu Fm in the Greater Accra region. This turned out to be due to a mix up. Secondly, the station is often caught in the middle of conflict and competitive situations such as the Anlo chieftaincy dispute, the 2004 general elections and the 2008 general elections. Again, there seems to be a constant exodus of some of the station's best talents, disrupting some of the gains chalked over the years, and thus preventing the station from building on its great success. Finally, lack of funds has often derailed the station's ambition of acquiring the latest state of the art infrastructure that would enable it to broadcast its programmes seamlessly to its target audience. There have been times when the Jubilee radio could not broadcast during lights off (blackouts) either due to a malfunctioning electricity generation set or escalating fuel costs. This calls from massive financial and logistic support from all stakeholders.br //pp style="text-align: justify;"On the whole, in the face of these challenges, the achievements of Jubilee radio, over the course of the years, are quite remarkable. The station has been a good nurturing ground for many broadcast journalists who are now handling bigger responsibilities in various media organisations. Mention can be made of Agbeko Ben Cofie (ABC) of Joy Fm, Mary Ayim of Metro TV and Frank Foli (DJ Fresh) of Lorlornyo Fm in Hohoe. They have also recently launched a a href="http://http//www.myjubileeonline.com/"web-interface/a from which listeners from all over the world can follow their programmes live. From my observation, the critical success factors of the station during this journey are spotting and nurturing young talents, close collaboration and engagement with the local community, strategic alliances with media heavyweights such as Joy Fm and BBC and reliance on God for direction in its dealings. Big ups to all members of Team Jubilee especially Pastor Adika and Mr. Emmanuel Evortepe (Keta man)!/pp style="text-align: justify;"br //p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5714516516976249415?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/C_X9BXnLJq4" height="1" width="1"/
• July 24, 2009
• 17:03

  Path Ghana: Promoting Ghanaian Tourism Through Web 2.0

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  Path Ghana: Promoting Ghanaian Tourism Through Web 2.0
• 9:07

  PathGhana: Promoting Ghanaian Tourism Through Web 2.0

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  span xmlns=""p style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"strongBy Edward-Amartey Tagoebr //strong/span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"Ghana recently launched a special campaign dubbed the Tourism Marketing Campaign to help take Ghana Tourism to the next pedestal. Over 300,000 jobs have already been created by the Tourism Industry and more are expected to benefit from this boon come next few months. The Ghanaian youth have been advised to take advantage of the prospects in the tourism industry.br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"A team of software developers from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (a href="http://meltwater.org/"MEST/a) took it upon themselves to jump on the tourism bandwagon and contribute their quota to the Tourism campaign. They therefore built a very interactive website a href="http://pathghana.com/"www.pathghana.com/a, on Ghanaian tourism to showcase the treasures that Ghana has within.br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"PathGhana.com, since its launch in June, has attracted lots of interest from tourism enthusiasts from all over the world. It seeks to be the number one web portal, providing comprehensive information about Ghana and the people therein. PathGhana.com delves into the history of Ghana, facts and figures and other important information and details that all lovers of Ghanaian tourism need. Taking full advantage of advancements in web 2.0 and developments on the social media landscape, the pathghana.com team has developed a community around the site to encourage blogging for free.br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"In line with the Ministry of Tourism's awareness creation campaign, the PathGhana team will commence a very exciting monthly campaign called strongPathGhana Friday/strong. The campaign encourages all young Ghanaians, and other nationals who love Ghanaian tourism, to display links to a tourism webpage on any social network that one belongs to. These social networks include, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, MySpace, etc. They are also encouraged to display the banner of the website that started it all; PathGhana.com. PathGhana Friday is expected to be observed on the last Friday of every month starting from Friday July 31supst/sup this year. Many individuals are enthused by PathGhana and are bracing themselves for the commencement of PathGhana Friday. Already, the site has been tagged among the 100 most popular sites in Ghana by Alexa.br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"The Tourism Industry in Ghana is expected to see a major boost despite the global economic recession. President Obama's first visit to the sub-Saharan country of Ghana is also seen to be a major factor that will push tourism further. This year Ghana will celebrate Emancipation day, Panafest and the World Tourism Day. All these festivities are expected to draw in more traffic than ever before. Why don't you join the a href="http://pathghana.com/community"PathGhana community/a?br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"Gameli's notes: Edward Tagoe is the founder of Path Ghana and blogs regularly at a href="http://tagoeblogger.blogspot.com/"Tagoe blogger/a and a href="http://moonlightexpressions.blogspot.com/"moonlight expressions/a.br //span/p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-7910656105698367914?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/1atyMA6GT10" height="1" width="1"/
• July 11, 2009
• 17:23

  OBAMA in Ghana: Retracing the steps of history

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SljQoC8TVbI/AAAAAAAAAFo/JcUHTQz1iBk/s1600-h/obama+ghana.jpg"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 199px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SljQoC8TVbI/AAAAAAAAAFo/JcUHTQz1iBk/s320/obama+ghana.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357261143160346034" border="0" //a a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SljR3XpjlfI/AAAAAAAAAF4/4Avp1zaPSVU/s1600-h/obama_cloth.ghana_pic.gif"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 197px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SljR3XpjlfI/AAAAAAAAAF4/4Avp1zaPSVU/s320/obama_cloth.ghana_pic.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357262505928529394" border="0" //a br / br / br /div style="text-align: justify;"meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Ccafe%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C04%5Cclip_filelist.xml"o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"/o:smarttagtypeo:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"/o:smarttagtypeo:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"/o:smarttagtypeo:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"/o:smarttagtype!--[if gte mso 9]xml w:worddocument w:viewNormal/w:View w:zoom0/w:Zoom w:punctuationkerning/ w:validateagainstschemas/ w:saveifxmlinvalidfalse/w:SaveIfXMLInvalid w:ignoremixedcontentfalse/w:IgnoreMixedContent w:alwaysshowplaceholdertextfalse/w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText w:compatibility w:breakwrappedtables/ w:snaptogridincell/ w:wraptextwithpunct/ w:useasianbreakrules/ w:dontgrowautofit/ /w:Compatibility /w:WordDocument /xml![endif]--!--[if gte mso 9]xml w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156" /w:LatentStyles /xml![endif]--!--[if !mso]object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"/object style st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /style ![endif]--style !-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Calibri; mso-font-alt:"Century Gothic"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- /style!--[if gte mso 10] style /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} /style ![endif]-- /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"A large crowd gathers at st1:city st="on"st1:place st="on"Accra/st1:place/st1:city’s international airport in anticipation of the expected visitors. Music, fanfare and excitement fill the air. Among the expectant crowd are dignitaries from all walks of life, the top echelon of society. The president, his vice, their wives, ministers of state, members of parliament, members of the diplomatic corps and the media all wait in anticipation of what promises to be a turning point in the history of st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region and st1:place st="on"Africa/st1:place. Then, sometime after 21:00 hrs st1:place st="on"st1:city st="on"GMT/st1:city, st1:country-region st="on"US/st1:country-region/st1:place airforce 1 touches down on the tarmac, takes a short stride on the runway and makes a graceful stop. Emerging a few minutes later is the man that the whole st1:place st="on"Africa/st1:place and the world had been waiting for. He emerges from the aircraft, holding in hand a young girl of about 11, flashing his trademark style. Immediately on his heels, emerges a woman, taller than the man before her, who holds to another girl of about 8 years. They all walk down the flight of stairs to where the dignitaries await them. They exchange pleasantries amidst great fanfare, as if they were friends long lost. Next, the man walks over to a group of drummers and dancers, who are fuelling the evening’s excitement with intricate dancing steps and movements to rhythmic, melodious drum beats.span style="" /spanMany watch amused as the man begins to gesticulate as if he was doing their dance himself. That man is Barack Hussein Obama, the first black president of the st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"United States of America/st1:place/st1:country-region./pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"I’ve already done a a href="http://gamelmag.blogspot.com/2009/01/celebrating-obama.html"blog post /aabout Obama’s emergence as a global icon, but the a href="http://ghanablogging.com/"st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"Ghana/st1:place/st1:country-region blogging group/a, influenced by his visit to the country, decided to make Obama our common topic for July. Since Obama’s inauguration, all will agree with me that Obama has discharged himself excellently as the president of arguably the most powerful nation on the planet. Today’s blog post centres on the significance of Obama’s visit to st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"Ghana/st1:place/st1:country-region and the new direction of US-African relations. /pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"President Obama’s itinerary in st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region includes a breakfast meeting with the president and senior statesmen, an address to parliament and a short visit to one of st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region’s relics of slave trade and colonialism, the st1:place st="on"st1:placetype st="on"Cape/st1:placetype st1:placetype st="on"Coast/st1:placetype/st1:place castle. According to most commentators, Obama’s visit was to highlight the growing importance of st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region as a centre of democracy, good governance and rule of law, emphasizing its role as the beacon of hope and “shining star” of st1:place st="on"Africa/st1:place. Some cynics tag the visit as a reward for st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region being a “good boy” and an ardent follower the democratic creed as per st1:place st="on"st1:country-region st="on"America/st1:country-region/st1:place./pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"Whatever Obama’s visit means for you, the occasion gave him the opportunity to spell out st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"America/st1:place/st1:country-region’s new policy direction for the African continent. It is heartwarming to note that st1:country-region st="on"America/st1:country-region now identifies st1:place st="on"Africa/st1:place as a strategic partner in global affairs, rather than the continent being on the fringes of world history and constantly receiving foreign aid and handouts. In his usual engaging, smooth and charismatic style, Obama proposes a four-prong approach of tackling the development needs of deserving African countries: democracy, creation of opportunity, health and conflict resolution. What Africa needs to take from Obama’s speech is his admonition that African development lies in the hands of Africans and not any other group of people, and certainly not the st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"United States of America/st1:place/st1:country-region. We are again reminded that corruption, tribalism, religious intolerance and tyranny have no place in progressive 21supst/sup century societies. /pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"Also, the Obama family’s visit to st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region and the st1:place st="on"st1:placetype st="on"Cape/st1:placetype st1:placetype st="on"Coast/st1:placetype/st1:place castle in particular provided moments of reflection on racial interactions through the course of history. The fact that Obama’s father, a respected elder in his tribal community was just a houseboy in a British colonial officer’s house; the fact that the ancestors of Michelle Obama were slaves on America’s farms; the fact that a church was right on top of the male dungeon in the Cape Coast castle; and the fact that the African continent had been the playground post-world war II cold war powers; highlights the indignity that Africans and black people had suffered in the hands of history. When all those sad events are contrasted with the glory that has been achieved by man since then: Kwame Nkrumah’s successful independence struggle, Nelson Mandela’s demolition of apartheid, Kofi Anan’s span style="" /spanleadership of the UN and a black family in the white house, one can’t help but be grateful for the fulfillment of the messianic visions of black leaders like Marcus Garvey, M.L. King and Kwame Nkrumah. /pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"From all indications, the relationship between Africa and the st1:country-region st="on"st1:place st="on"United States/st1:place/st1:country-region would further be strengthened in years to come. What the continent’s leaders need to do is to strategically churn out homegrown solutions to the continents problems and take full advantage of programs put forth by the Obama leadership. Young people in Africa need to continually believe in the emergence of the African renaissance, and make patriotism, hard work, vision and imagination their watch words. Even Obama is watching what we are doing in st1:place st="on"Africa/st1:place. Did you catch him mention Anas Aremeyaw Anas, that daring investigative journalist in his speech?b style="" YES WE CAN! /bPlease don’t forget to keep your comments on Obama’s visit coming.span style="font-weight: bold;" br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal" br /span style="font-weight: bold;"/span/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"I hear there are Obama parties going on in st1:city st="on"Accra/st1:city, st1:placetype st="on"Cape/st1:placetype st1:placetype st="on"Coast/st1:placetype and cities all over st1:place st="on"st1:country-region st="on"Ghana/st1:country-region/st1:place, and the official song is sure to be this cracker from Blakk Rasta:/p object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/L85YF0pyPH0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L85YF0pyPH0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-2265405963544343361?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/Qrx1iiFJ0W8" height="1" width="1"/
• June 28, 2009
• 21:25

  Here Comes The Rains

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SkgR8pOW5dI/AAAAAAAAAFA/cyQGTfaSKLw/s1600-h/floods+in+accra.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SkgR8pOW5dI/AAAAAAAAAFA/cyQGTfaSKLw/s320/floods+in+accra.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352547890685732306" border="0" //aPicture credit: [www.ghanaweb.biz] /br /div style="text-align: justify;"This year’s rainy season appears to be in a href="http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2237"full flight/a as the volume of rainfall recorded by the meteorological agency is estimated to be one of the highest in Accra's history. While many see the rains as a blessing, nurturing crops planted in the fields and reducing the sweltering ambient heat, others dread the opening of the heavens for a variety of reasons. Today's post focuses on the recurrent flooding situation in the western parts of Accra.br /br /One interesting fact is that Accra's floods has been in the news for a long time. It has been one of the major issues on various discussion boards ever since i became conscious of events going on around me in the mid-nineties. Reports from three months ago pointed to the possibility of major floods this year. On 19th June 2009, what has been touted as a href="http://www.peacefmonline.com/index.php?option=com_contentamp;task=viewamp;id=23593amp;Itemid=56"Accra's worst floods ever/a took away the lives of seven people in Kaneshie, Abosey Okai, Circle, Accra Central and surrounding areas. Although, concerned authorities are taking steps to handle the situation, their actions have not been helped with the information that a href="http://www.graphicghana.com/news/page.php?news=2237"the rains would fall even more/a, opening up possibilities of more destructive disasters. What is needed to avert future disasters of this kind is a combination of execution of currently proposed measures and some fresh thinking.br /br /Firstly, as suggested by many commentators, the local government must be steadfast in pulling down houses and other structures that block the water ways. I suggest that the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) meets with identified stakeholders to devise an appropriate strategy, through which this exercise would be carried out, so as to forestall the risk of hitting a dead end as seen in similar exercises of this nature. In order to minimise possible economic hardships that "victims" of this exercise might face, certain relief packages should be arranged for them.br /br /Secondly, city planning authorities must take a second look at how Accra has grown, its current architectural layout and growth indicators, and come out with an appropriate development framework within which future construction projects should be carried out. During this exercise, reference should be made to older documents and white papers that were issued to adress this problem in the past, so as to emerge with the most comprehensive solution possible. Once this is done, all emphasis should be placed on span style="font-weight: bold;"execution /spanso that Accra is rid of this headache once and for all.br /br /A third approach, which seems quite rudimentary when closely looked at, is the need deal with the city's sanitation issues. Among one of the major causes of the floods is the filth that clog the gutters on our streets. If span style="font-weight: bold;"individuals, /spanthe AMA and waste management companies tackle the numerous plastic bags, papers, fruit peels, ice-cream cups and "take-away" containers that perennially reside in the gutters of some of our streets and major markets, water falling into such gutters would flow freely into designated sinks, rather than rising and dominating the roads and finally finding its way into peoples homes and places of public gathering.br /br /Finally, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) should be more proactive with respect to events of this nature in the future. Considering the recurrent nature of the Accra floods and the availability of early warning signals from the meteorological agency, it is desirable that they get their acts together next time before hand in order to deal with any emergencies that may arise. Similarly, professional associations of architects, engineers and planners, as well as concerned members of the general public, should come together and deliberate on more modern and scientific approaches through which this problem could be tackled.br /br /To conclude, Accra's flood problem would continue to rear its head in a very devastating manner from year to year if it is not tackled with the execution of ideas that have been on the table for far too long. Let's get to work!br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-7752514318911462107?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/r3c4sy40pRs" height="1" width="1"/
• May 24, 2009
• 0:04

  Everyday Scenes in Ghana

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
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New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- /style!--[if gte mso 10] style /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} /style ![endif]--w:sdt xpath="/ns0:BlogPostInfo/ns0:PostTitle" docpart="85CDB7B4DF444EBA8C765C81C553E7A2" text="t" storeitemid="X_B67FA225-8A41-4375-B36F-9E738E9FDFD4" title="Post Title" id="89512082"/w:sdtI’ve been meaning to make an entry about interesting places and events in Ghana. However, I realised that instead of a long blog entry, pictures might tell the story better. So here are 11 randomly selected photographs that hopefully closely depict everyday scenes in Ghana. Please let me hear your feedback concerning what you think about the photos, what pictures you would like to see, and even if this whole idea of letting photos tell the story sometimes is cool. Enjoy! br //div br / br /w:sdt xpath="/ns0:BlogPostInfo/ns0:PostTitle" docpart="85CDB7B4DF444EBA8C765C81C553E7A2" text="t" storeitemid="X_B67FA225-8A41-4375-B36F-9E738E9FDFD4" title="Post Title" id="89512082"/w:sdt p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiPs5WeiqI/AAAAAAAAACY/nYw8ymys2tY/s1600-h/castle.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiPs5WeiqI/AAAAAAAAACY/nYw8ymys2tY/s320/castle.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339175359719836322" border="0" //a/pp class="MsoNormal" br //pp style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal"Relic of colonialism: one of the many castles that dot Ghana’s coast/pp class="MsoNormal" br //p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiP_Q7K1qI/AAAAAAAAACg/_v7Ww8Govho/s1600-h/aerial.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiP_Q7K1qI/AAAAAAAAACg/_v7Ww8Govho/s320/aerial.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339175675285395106" border="0" //a/pp class="MsoNormal" style=""History 101: Ghanaian high school students learn about the country’s past/pp class="MsoNormal" style="" br //pp class="MsoNormal" style=""a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiSfDTnH-I/AAAAAAAAACo/mP5o7u3I654/s1600-h/festival.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiSfDTnH-I/AAAAAAAAACo/mP5o7u3I654/s320/festival.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339178420408885218" border="0" //a/pp class="MsoNormal" style=""/pp class="MsoNormal" style=""Cultural extravaganza: One of Ghana’s many colourful traditional festivals/pp class="MsoNormal" style="" br //p p class="MsoNormal" style=""o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiTCXEJw1I/AAAAAAAAACw/CJLm5jFHnb8/s1600-h/football.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiTCXEJw1I/AAAAAAAAACw/CJLm5jFHnb8/s320/football.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339179027008176978" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal"Football fever: Accra stadium packed to capacity as Ghana plays Cameroun during CAN 2008/pp class="MsoNormal" br //p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiUFNgU87I/AAAAAAAAAC4/8FguQyvClLQ/s1600-h/waterfall.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiUFNgU87I/AAAAAAAAAC4/8FguQyvClLQ/s320/waterfall.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339180175493231538" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal"Ecotourism: Wli waterfalls offer both scenic beauty and refreshing coolness/pp class="MsoNormal" br //p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiUdgSMh0I/AAAAAAAAADA/4bXKgxfaaZI/s1600-h/bojo.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 185px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiUdgSMh0I/AAAAAAAAADA/4bXKgxfaaZI/s320/bojo.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339180592851093314" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal"Beach time: Revellers taking it cool at Bojo beach near Accra on a weekend/pp class="MsoNormal" br //pp class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiYWaiSiqI/AAAAAAAAAD4/ee2pO5TFJcs/s1600-h/nzulezo.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiYWaiSiqI/AAAAAAAAAD4/ee2pO5TFJcs/s320/nzulezo.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339184869095410338" border="0" //a/pp class="MsoNormal"Living on the water side of life: Nzulezo, the vlllage with buildings on stilts br //pp class="MsoNormal" br //pp class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiV1P_R1hI/AAAAAAAAADg/FUhUgUGXTzo/s1600-h/drumming.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiV1P_R1hI/AAAAAAAAADg/FUhUgUGXTzo/s320/drumming.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339182100305270290" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"span style=""!--[if gte vml 1]v:shape id="Picture_x0020_9" spid="_x0000_i1028" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:362.25pt;" v:imagedata src="file:///C:DOCUME~1mestLOCALS~1Tempmsohtmlclip11clip_image013.jpg" title="drumming" /v:shape![endif]--/spanNight life: Cultural performance at Labadi beach in Accra on a Wednesday night/pp class="MsoNormal" br //p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiU_YKtYjI/AAAAAAAAADI/Xs7DlphI24k/s1600-h/trotro.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiU_YKtYjI/AAAAAAAAADI/Xs7DlphI24k/s320/trotro.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339181174787760690" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal"Transport: Food for thought on the ubiquitous trotro/pp class="MsoNormal" br //p p class="MsoNormal" style=""a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiV1U8Y3RI/AAAAAAAAADo/eYa004H_7VM/s1600-h/dogs.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiV1U8Y3RI/AAAAAAAAADo/eYa004H_7VM/s320/dogs.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339182101635325202" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal" style=""Pets: Three beautiful dogs in a Ghanaian home/pp class="MsoNormal" style="" br //p p class="MsoNormal" style=""o:p /o:p/p p class="MsoNormal" style=""a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiXvL0tTTI/AAAAAAAAADw/JWO6-XD1H8w/s1600-h/funny.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/ShiXvL0tTTI/AAAAAAAAADw/JWO6-XD1H8w/s320/funny.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339184195131231538" border="0" //a/p p class="MsoNormal" style=""Caught in the act: Two dogs on the streets at Korle-Gonno/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-8641416999665617674?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/HyKEPpBUBEo" height="1" width="1"/
• May 09, 2009
• 1:08

  Ayigbe Edem: Hiplife’s New Poster Boy

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  span xmlns=""p style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"Hiplife has attracted many dedicated followers ever since it emerged as an authentic music genre in Ghana in the early 1990s. For starters, hiplife is a type of Ghanaian music that incorporates some elements of hiphop (particularly rap) into the more popular and traditional highlife music. Due to its high marketability, the the hiplife industry is growing tremendously and consequently experiences a high turnover of musicians and performers. In most people's books, Reggie Rockstone, Obour, Obrafour, Tic-Tac, VIP, Samini, Praye and Sidney would go down as true hiplife greats. Lately, concern has been raised over the quality of hiplife music on offer. A number of music critics contend that there is a low degree of originality emanating from the Ghanaian hiplife scene. Aa href="http://http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiplife" new breed of Ghanaian hiplife artist/aa href="http://http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiplife"s/a are exerting their lyrical and rhythmic muscles to reverse this trend. Prominent among them are Kwaw Kesse (Abodam!), Asem, Richie and Ayigbe Edem. Ayigbe Edem's uniqueness is three-fold: language (he is the most notable Ewe rapper today), rhythmic quality and depth of lyrics. He also comes across as a humble and unassuming chap. In separate interviews with ghanamusic.com, Edem emphasises a href="http://edition.ghanamusic.com/news/top-stories/319-i-dont-rap-like-lil-wayne-ayigbe-edem"his originality/a and the a href="http://edition.ghanamusic.com/news/top-stories/486-when-the-music-is-sweet-the-language-does-not-matterq-ayigbe-edem"irrelevance of language in communicating through music./a In a short, concise and direct manner, Edem shares his passions, motivations and dreams with us.br /br //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"Q: Why do you sing/ what influences your unique style?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="font-style: italic;color:black;"A: I sing because that's my passion. Basically good music influences my style, and what happens in our part of the world also does. Every human being is unique -once you find yourself and what you stand for, you will find your style. From there, it takes you constant practice. /spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"br /Q: Why do you rap in Ewe and not in Twi or English? How easy is it (rapping in Ewe) to accomplish?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"A: Cos I don't have to rap in Twi or English...what I have to do to make it is to understand rap as an art form. Nothing is easy to accomplish. span style="font-weight: bold;"PERSEVERANCE/span is the word /spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"br /Q: Who are some of the music stars you look up to?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="font-style: italic;color:black;"A: Eminem, Mase, Bob Marley and Wyclef. /spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"br //pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"Q: How big would Ayigbe Edem be in 10 years?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"span style="font-style: italic;"A: Soo big... I aim to have my own record label, to be a guru in the industry and also export my music/spanbr /br /Q: How well is the Ghanaian music industry doing? Why is Ghanaian music failing to sell outside Ghana, compared to Nigerian, South African and Congolese music?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="color:black;"span style="font-style: italic;"A: Cos there is no formal structure in place.../spanbr /br /Q: What are some of the interesting aspects of your life that you want to share with your fans beside music?/spanbr //span/pp style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-family:Arial;"span style="font-style: italic;color:black;"A: I love education...I am shy and I don't drink or smoke...I am also single/span/span/pp style="text-align: justify;"br //pp style="text-align: justify;"I'd take my leave now, allowing Edem to strut his musical stuff on The Gamelian World.br //ppobject width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_hSPVC2fW04amp;hl=enamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_hSPVC2fW04amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/object/pp/p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5779096927867571185?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/hdLR2LMjInM" height="1" width="1"/
• May 01, 2009
• 1:02

  Poetry

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  span xmlns=""pI'm really excited to be back to the blogosphere after a long break. To mark my return i present two poems: The Return and Why are you so weak? Looking forward to get lots of reactions!span style="font-size:12;"br //span/ppbr /span style="font-size:12;" /span/ppspan style="font-size:14;"strongThe Returnbr //strong/span/ppI know I have erred my darlingbr //ppFor all the days that I was gone without noticebr //ppThe journey was long and tiringbr //ppAnd I fell into a holebr //ppWithout you there were no sweet dialoguesbr //ppThere were only_____________monologues!br /br //ppSo let the celebration of love and expressionbr //ppHerald the return of our long lost unionbr //ppAs we wave the dreary, weary, cold nights goodbye.br /span style="font-weight: bold;"/span/ppbr /span style="font-weight: bold;"/span/ppspan style="font-size:14;"strongWhy are you so weak?br //strong/span/ppThis question you posed to mebr //ppWhen we revelled under the mango treebr //ppIn the centre of the village squarebr //ppProved a handful for I racked my brainsbr //ppSo hard and long yet…no answer was in sight!br /br / /ppThen you sounded so worriedbr //ppAnd cried for a thousand minutesbr //ppIn my arms where you found temporary solacebr //ppThe redness of your eyes told a talebr //ppOf the anxiety that pervaded your entire beingbr //ppYes, that night when I returned homebr //ppClothes drenched with your tearsbr //ppRemains firmly etched on my mindbr //ppbr //ppI recall with astonishing detail your very wordsbr //ppThat encapsulated the feelings of the momentbr //ppFor I share in your joys and sorrowsbr //ppAnd that was what I always wanted you to knowbr //ppRemember our rendezvous at the village dance?br //ppbr //ppYet you left when it countedbr //ppWhen you could have shown the world you really caredbr //ppWith the merchant's son, you left to the big citybr //ppPretending you could get used to its glitz and glamourbr //ppI know what you thought then, that money was it allbr //ppNo wonder you failed to detectbr //ppThe subtle deceptions of your "lover"br //ppWho was about to defectbr //ppbr //ppNow you know t'was a big illusionbr //ppTruth is life is worth more than a couple of bucksbr //ppAnd true joy lies in simplicity-of friendship, honesty and loyaltybr //ppYour red tomato eyes tells it all: that pain dominates your soulbr //ppThus you spend all days and all nights mulling overbr //ppThe consequences of your actionbr //pp /ppSo why are you so weak?br //ppYou are weak because you are moved by sightbr //ppOf things that hold no permanent valuebr //ppIn fact, you are blind!br //p/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-1479857829093585981?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/Dpe_RR5xREY" height="1" width="1"/
• January 30, 2009
• 18:45

  Celebrating Obama

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"For a minute on Tuesday, 20th January, it seemed as if the whole world was enchanted. Every one's attention was arrested by one event-the swearing in of America's new president Barack Hussein Obama. The occasion invoked great feelings of accomplishment, relief, happiness, joy and definitely hope in people all over the world. Many commentators have effectively deliberated on the subject and its implications for the world's future. But i would like to add my own voice to the discussions making the rounds.br /br /Obama's elevation to that position of great honour is a product of sacrifice, hard work, dedication, faith, and a great deal of perseverance, relentlessness and optimism unseen in leaders around the world. In addition, the occasion aroused strong emotional feelings among the African American and minority communities in the US. This feeling has been shared by black people everywhere-in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. The emotional arousement that the Obama inauguration ignited, especially among black folks, is due to the unpleasant experiences of slave trade, colonialism, segregation and apartheid that the race was subjected to in the world's sinful past. The trials of those old bad days, though they have been long gone, had left a feeling of unequalness, timidity, hopelessness, and lack of self expression and identity in an entire race of people.br /br /Thus, for many blacks in the US, President Obama's emergence has been a great awakening, renaissance and appropriately a liberation; it is a primer preceding the final step of the journey to equality. Back home in Africa, the joyous reception given to the news is ample proof that we on the mother continent share in the joys, anxieties and expectations of our kith and kin in the diaspora. For many on the continent, the Obama inauguration has also raised hopes of Africa increasing its share of the American development aid, an unlikely event in the advent of the global financial crisis. Followers and fans of great African and black leaders of yore would also rightly rate Obama in the lofty group of the Marcus Garveys, Kwame Nkrumahs, Julius Nyereres, Martin Luther King Jrs. and Nelson Mandelas.br /br /But Obama is a phenomenon that transcends race. It is testimony to how dreams, positivity and passion can transform the life of a person. It is an indication of the triumph of his message of hope over fear and misdirected aggression. It is also an exhibition of how one determined person is set on a path to change the history of the USA and effectively the world. He carries on his shoulders the dreams of men and women, blacks and whites, literates and illiterates, Christians and Muslims, the world over. Obama, as indicated by many analysts, also reflects a new way in which America relates to the rest of the world, which would hopefully tone down the rising wave of anti-Americanism.br /br /Fianlly, Obama's decison to focus on domestic issues may just be what America needs to come out of its current economic doldrums. His economic stimulus package, and focus on developing sustainable energy sources, is a step in the right direction and would go a long way to reignite the global economic engine and promote environmental conservation.br /br /In summary, Barack Obama is being celebrated the world over for his illustous achievement, and elevating the image of America in the world. His presidency is an indication of greater things to come for the entire world. The world is watching closely how things unfold in America in the next few years. Yes we can!/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-3494950713383648306?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/KR_WLxqzMYU" height="1" width="1"/
• January 21, 2009
• 16:32

  Smile The Beloved Country, Smile at The Storm

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SZIHIyeBtII/AAAAAAAAACA/MC9mPtNkuFQ/s1600-h/Mills.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 281px; height: 286px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SZIHIyeBtII/AAAAAAAAACA/MC9mPtNkuFQ/s320/Mills.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301307558936556674" border="0" //abr /br /When South Africa's Alan Paton wrote Cry The Beloved Country in 1948, it was to protest against the injustices that pervaded South African society at the time. Paton's book sought to highlight fear, sabotage, racial segregation and looming entropy infiltrating South Africa in those days, in order to force the world's attention to his country's direction. Paton aptly demonstrated that the restrictive governance system, in which South Africa was operating in yester years, was inimical to both whites and blacks and when left unchecked, could ultimately lead to the destruction of the country. The book however ended on a positive note, indicating that all was not lost for South Africa, and that after all there was light at the end of the dark tunnel. That dark tunnel turned out to be the oppressive system of apartheid. Cry The Beloved Country has been rightly adjudged to be one of South Africa's greatest literary successes, attracting in its wake rave reviews, movies, plays and other inspired work.br /div style="text-align: justify;"br /The current Ghanaian situation is no where near what pertained in the South Africa of those days. On the political level, Ghana has just emerged out of a very close elections, scoring full marks (or nearly full marks) in the process. Never mind the hegemony and cross-party accusations that characterised the days leading to the final declaration of results. Socially, there is relative peace in the country with largely equal opportunity for all irrespective of ethnic, religious, gender or political leaning.br /However, the critical hurdle that the country has to climb comes in the form of development and social progress. Fifty-two years into the post-independence period, Ghana is still struggling to come to terms with basic developmental landmarks such as education, health, agriculture and now ICT. Poverty still stares the masses closely in the face. It is as if the life of chronic deprivation, want and squalor have hugged our people so tightly, the way super glue sticks to stuff, that they cannot disentangle themselves. Here in lies our shortfall as a nation.br /br /In a related development, the World Bank has waved red flags at the current state of the Ghanaian macro economy. Recently, the World Bank country director warned in a January report that despite recent growth, both the fiscal and balance of payments deficits of the country were "unsustainable." Additionally, we are currently enjoying a respite due to the rapid decline of the price of crude oil on the international market. But i ask myself the question: "if this trend should continue, what are the implications for the country in mid 2010 when we start exporting oil?" I am no economist, so i leave this to those who are more qualified to answer. But my lay mind tells me that things are going to be quite tough within the next couple of years and we must brace ourselves for it. Also we should lower our expectations with regards to the potential revenue we would get from crude oil sales.br /br /But all is not lost. The resilient Ghanaian personality has been through some pretty rough times and come out strong. We have been through colonialism, many coup d'etats, famine and we are still moving on. What is required now is a concerted broad-based social initiative to lift the country out of the quagmire of poverty and underdevelopment, and to pull the chestnut out of the raging flames. That positive Ghanaian attitude that refuses to waver in the face of the storm, the tendency to smile calmly, irrespective of the situation at hand, must be called into action.br /br /To wind up, struggle, politically, socially and economically, threaten the development efforts of many countries. Ghana's current situation should not be a disincentive to the country's known hallmarks of hardwork and excellence. I therefore exort every Ghanaian to put their hand to the wheel and do service to the motherland. Yes we can! Smile the beloved country, smile at the storm!br /br /br /br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-3233459159024152784?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/IBgsVjmN5po" height="1" width="1"/
• January 14, 2009
• 15:27

  Celebrating The Beauty of Ghanaian Democracy

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"So on January 3, the dust settled and the new president in the person of Prof. J.E.A. Mills was declared by Uncle Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. There was rapturous cheer from the 50.23% of the Ghanaian electorate who endorsed the NDC in the second round of the 2008 presidential elections. Understandably, most of the remaining 49.77%, who voted for the NPP in the second round, heaved a sigh of relief that all was over. Bottomline-About 95% of Ghanaians were happy about the way the elections went and how the democratic process dictated the choice of the country's leadership for the next four years.br /br /Ghana's solid democratic credentials were further enhanced on January 7th, when the new parliament and head of the executive were sworn into office. The icing on the cake was the unanimous election of the Rt Hon Justice Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo as the first Ghanaian female speaker of parliament. This was ample demonstration that Ghanaians are comfortable with having female leaders in senior positions, as two of the arms of government are now being run by women. I await the day that a worthy daughter of Ghana takes up the presidency of this republic.br /br /Then the inauguration ceremony proper gave us many reasons to celebrate. All the key actors on our political stage were there to grace the occasion, indicating that the new president enjoyed goodwill across the political spectrum. Again the acceptance speech of President Mills was very heartwarming. His friendly overtures to the losing contenders, especially Nana Akufo-Addo, and his promise to build a just, secure, prosperous and better Ghana is an exhibition that he has what it takes to be a good president. We expectantly await the actual implementation of all the lofty ideals beautifully encapsulated in his speechbr /br /Following on the heals of all these great achievements, considered by many connoiseurs as trailblazing by third-world standards, Ghana has been receiving great applause by her peers in international circles. Congratulatory messages keep pouring in from far and near, and the country's general goodwill in international circle is increasing daily. From Togo, through Nigeria, Libya, UK to Canada, Ghana is once again being celebrated as the darling of the international community and her accomplishments touted to be worth copying by those countries who are still wallowing in the scourge of dictatorships. Never mind the fact that some of these countries are also struggling with their own systems of government!br /br /What the Mills presidency has to do is to take advantage of this goodwill and continue chalking ground-breaking developmental landmarks, like President J.A. Kufuor before them, in order to further the development agenda of Ghana. One other major task of President Mills is for Ghana to be more vociferous with regards to her traditional foreign policy initiatives which has been aimed at exploring the possibility of African unity as envisioned by the country's founding fathers.br /br /In summary, Ghanaian democracy is definitely on the rise taking into account all the exciting developments of the past few weeks. We look forward to all the parties involved in the governance of the country working together that it moves forward. The successes of Ghanaian democracy are definitely worth celebrating!br /br /br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-8332483933795699143?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/3dDEpVvhAtk" height="1" width="1"/
• December 31, 2008
• 16:16

  Lessons From BarCampGhana '08

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"I know that by now my avid readers would be on the verge of dying from thirst due to the fact that, over the past two months, there have been no new entries on The Gamelian World. I am extremely sorry for this apparent desertion but let it be on record that, over the course of the past few months, i had to attend to other equally pressing engagements. Today's entry, as appropriately titled, is a tribute to youthful initiative and how such endeavours would inevitable spur the development agenda of Ghana and Africa.br /br /On 22nd December 2008, i was part the group that participated in a href="http://www.barcampghana.org/"BarCampGhana/a. For starters, a barcamp is an unstructured gathering of people, an un-conference where people share ideas on topical issues. This is markedly different from a regular conference where experts hold sway on all issues under discussion. The organisers of the event envisaged it to be a gathering of like minded people in science, technology and business to discuss and interact in a fun environment. One theme that run throughout the deliberations was Ghana's place in the global scheme of things. The programme largely met its objectives and hold significant learning points for all aspiring future leaders.br /br /Firstly that young people with the required initiative and drive can achieve whatever they put their mind to. The programme itself was put together by young Ghanaians who had the vision of advancing the use of technology in various spheres of Ghanaian life, in order to bring about the development we've all been yearning for. Similarly, some of the great innovations put on the table were from home-based young technology entrepreneurs-another pointer that the realisation of the dreams of young people is a possibility in this country.br /br /Another key learning point from BarCampGhana is the need for the adoption of a progressive approach to doing things. Typical conferences have been criticised for not producing the requisite results because of disengagement of the audience at certain points of the event. One feature of BarCampGhana were the break out sessions. These sessions featured diverse discussions points that allowed participants to join any discussion of their choice. This ultimately promoted an atmosphere of engagement, contribution, learning and idea-generation. The point i want to make is that in the future, event organisers should not only stick to the way things are known to be done but to involve some level of flexibility and versatility.br /br /A final learning point from BarCampGhana was the manner in which time was respected. This broke the perennial jinx of poor time management that plague most Ghanaian events. The event started on time and most of the key note speakers turned up. This only goes to show that Ghanaians' disrespect for time is something that we can easily overcome if we continue to demand of ourselves the highest standards when it comes to time management.br /br /The only slight hitch of course was that the "big men and women" themselves did not show up at the time they were supposed to, begging consideration due to the pressure that mounts on them when the close of the year approaches. The negative consequence of the above is that their experienced perspectives were missing during most of the break out sessions. The organisers could make it a point to "be on them" and get them to come at the right time next year.br /br /Putting the above together, BarCampGhana has been a shiny example of how youth initiative is on the verge of spurring massive development through technology in Africa, there are many lessons to be learnt from such proactivity, and the elderly generation must lend a hand to these efforts in order to support the young ones.br /br /In praising the developments that took place at BarCampGhana, let me put on record that the exciting ideas that were brought to the fore at the event should not end on the floors of the venue as we have seen time and time again in Ghana. We must all make the effort of ensuring that these dreams are brought to life. Again, we must also take the message of BarCampGhana, as wished by the organisers, to the various communities in Ghana. This is to ensure that science technology and business are appropriately seen and utilised as the drivers of wealth and development in modern society. /divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5245151502820798288?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/i_Wy_DHMIRQ" height="1" width="1"/
• October 31, 2008
• 19:08

  Does open source software hold the future?

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  Over the past few years, the open source movement has made sturdy progress on the global stage as a strong contender to traditional proprietary software. Characteristic of this trend has been the rise of the Mozilla Firefox browser and the apache server software.br /br /As an active participant in the global scheme of things, Africa has not been left out of the open source party. There are many indications to prove the above assertion. Firstly, it is on record that the West African nation of Mali is completely inundated with the Linux operating system. Secondly, there are not only African consumers, but also content providers. The name of Mark Shuttleworth, originator of the Linux-based Ubuntu project readily comes to mind. Finally, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (a href="http://www.fossfa.net/"FOSSFA/a) leads a pack of local advocacy who are continually spreading the gospel of the open source movement. I was at one of such fora last wednesday 22nd October at thea href="http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/" AITI-KACE/a here in Accra. The proceedings at that gathering put some few thoughts into my mind and is the inspiration for this entry.br /br /I realised, first and foremost as an aspiring developer, the enormous tools that open source software has put at my disposal. The mere availability of the source code and the community behind the entire movement are metaphoric of petals and nectar in flowers, thus drawing many to accept the open source gospel. Pro-open source people think that their choice of software is a right and that they must be allowed to enjoy those rights just as any other right. They therefore see restrictions put on proprietary software as violations of their rights.br /br /In addition, open source software gives aspiring young business people free or inexpensive software to run their business operations without running the risk of using cracked software. Issues have also been raised with small size of documents saved in the .odt format(openoffice writer) as against .doc format (microsoft word). br /br /However, what has been seen as the key advantage of open source software as advanced by their evangelists, is the comparative low cost that they offer. This means that if African governments and business organisations should adopt open source, they would save scarce financial resources that can be expended on other pressing needs.br /br /Contrary to the above arguments, pundits who argue for proprietary software also have strong reasons for which this switch will not happen overnight. Firstly, they argue that the quality of open source software does not stand up to that of proprietary software. Secondly, they say that the overall cost of open source, in terms of waste of time and inconvenience, is more than that of proprietary. What has been their trump card is the fact that people are so used to their software that they would not wish to change. Remember shifting to a new type of software will mean retraining all staff which has serious cost implications.br /br /Both sides have strong arguments, which means that any future government and organisational-level decisions in this direction must be well thought through.br /br /In summary, i have touched on the strides of the open source movement, especially in Africa, their quest for widespread adoption of their software, and the response of the proprietary software world. The debate continues......div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-5357717641257635114?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/PMoijL49Th4" height="1" width="1"/
• October 17, 2008
• 16:01

  Africa Too Has a Story to Tell

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  div style="text-align: justify;"In many fields of human endeavour, African names are missing on the list of top achievers. This often creates the impression that the African has nothing, or at best very little, to offer to the world. The above misconception has continually been perpetuated such that anything that is good must necessarily be of western or eastern origin -or at least so they say. In the world of software development, on the global landscape, hardly are African names mentioned as active participants.br /br /Does this mean that there are no African participants in this industry? Answer, span style="font-weight: bold;"NO!/span Although there are relatively few African players at the global level, there is a significant number of them out there worth mentioning. These people are playing key trendsetting roles and therefore demonstrating to aspiring African software industry players that indeed their dream is a feasible one.br /br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"There are three reasons why the stories of successful African software entrepreneurs do not catch fire. One is the fact that the very nature of most African cultures has restrained them from projecting their images in the public domain, lest they appear to be showing off. Secondly, the level of technology on the mother continent is so low that there are few African praise singers who will bring the stories of these heroes of ours to the fore. The third reason, which is the one that holds more weight, is that global media organisations are so preoccupied with reporting killings, wars, diseases and poverty in Africa that the speedy pace of technological advancements on the continent has been left uncommented on.br /br /During the last few weeks I and my colleagues at a href="http://www.meltwater.org/"MEST/aspan style="text-decoration: underline;" /spanwere tasked to investigate the success stories of successful African software entrepreneurs. The many names that came up were amazing and most revealing to me. This is because i had no idea that there were so many Africans making giant strides in the global software space. These were no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but they were Vinny Lingham, Joe Jackson, Harriet Somuah and Mark Shuttleworth in their own rights. I and my former group mates, Edward and Nii Nai, had a date with Mr Joe Jackson, CEO of theSOFTtribe, Nigeria, and this was really exciting.br /br /My encounter with Mr Jackson was not only educative, as it allowed me to learn first hand the goings on of an industry in which i intend to become an active player, but also very deep in the sense that it afforded me the opportunity to reflect on the realities of the global software industry. I discovered that the internet was far more powerful than i thought and that to become successful in the web industry one must aim global.br /br /But what was more intriguing about our interaction was the span style="font-weight: bold;"story /spanMr Jackson had to tell. The story was about how he and his partner, Mr Chinery-Hesse, started theSOFTtribe from a bedroom. It was about how the organisation grew to become a leader in West Africa and to have about 30% penetration into Ghana Club 100(group of 100 most successful Ghanaian companies). His story painted a vivid picture of the ingenuity of SOFT as they tasked themselves with the duty of providing African businesses with "tropically tolerant" software. Through the interaction we also discovered the difficulties SOFT is facing in the advent of the globalised world and the strategies that they are employing to overcome these challenges. Specifically, the company had to change its business model because the cascading effects of globalisation ensured that the world became a smaller place. Therefore major business decisions that were hitherto localised, such as decision to purchase software, were now shifted to USA, Europe or South Africa. The end result is that local software companies started losing out on business because the mother branches of most multinational firms were calling the shots. This situation was aggravated by the fact that Ghanaian companies that had foreign partners sarted shunning SOFT's products, even though they agree that they were of superior quality in the Ghanaian environment.br /br /So the company had to give up its long term vision of building Enterprise Resource Planning Applications (ERPs) for West-African businesses. Instead they entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft, where the software giant allowed them access to the source code of their Dynamics NAV software(formerly known as navision). This way the company brought knowledge of the local terrain to the table while microsoft brought international credibility. This ground-breaking deal turned out to be a win-win situation for both parties. The good news is that this has gone a long way to boost the business standing of theSOFTtribe.br /br /To put everything together, there is massive evidence that Africans are active participants in the global order, specifically the software industry. The story of Mr Joe Jackson and theSOFTtribe is testimony that African companies experience the same forces that shape the business of organsations worldwide. It is also very important for young Africans to draw inspiration from these trailblazers and take a massive shot at their destinies by engaging in entrepreneurial pursuits. Finally, we can all acknowledge that indeed span style="font-weight: bold;"the african too has a story to tell!/spanbr /br //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-2981612790527484259?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamelmag/~4/1LrrNjcFvGc" height="1" width="1"/
• September 29, 2008
• 19:11

  Ghanaian Youth and Old Skuulism

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SOznXwtbynI/AAAAAAAAABU/M5orChLc8GA/s1600-h/SSL26370.JPG"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SOznXwtbynI/AAAAAAAAABU/M5orChLc8GA/s320/SSL26370.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254829260633000562" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: justify;"I have surely realised by now that the life of a blogger is not an easy one. This is because, against my best wishes, i've been unable to update my blog in good time. The only excuse for this desertion is increased workload at work/school. I have since been plagued by bouts of guilty conscience. All the same, i apologise profusely to my few cherished avid readers, and promise to do a better job henceforth. So help me God!br /br /Last Saturday, 27th September, i had the opportunity of partaking in the "Old Skuulz Reunion" organised by Accra-based radio station, Joy Fmspanspan. /span/spanMy observations of proceedings at this event has inspired me to come out with this blog entry.br /br /For starters, the programme presents the platform for graduates of Ghana's secondary, now called senior high, school system to meet and reminisce their school experiences. The programme also sets the stage for a wide array of entertainment activities. Because of its hip nature, it predictably draws a lot of youthful audience. This year's event was held at the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre, La-Accra.br /br /I attended this programme for a variety of reasons, but i guess the main ones were the sheer curiosity of observing first-hand the goings-on of this highly-publicised event, the need to meet up with my high school mates, some of whom i've not seen in ages, and to gain some respite after continuous hours of workspan /spanduring the past few weeks.spanspan /span/spanMy goals for representing at the old skuulz reunion were largely met.br /br //divspanTypical of a gathering of young people, the ambiance was an interesting mix of colour, style and vibrancy of Ghanaian youth. A cursory glance at the sights and sounds of the Trade Fair Centre on Saturday lays credence to the above assertion./spanspan /spanFor, revellers at the centre zealously potrayed their alma maters in dress, jama songs and active participation in various competitions that were put together by the organisers. You could see me at the Keta Secondary School Stand singing and dancing to sweet unquenching borborbor songs, alongside folks from other schools in the Volta region. I must at this point appreciate the creative zest of Joy Fm for making all these happen.br /div style="text-align: justify;"br /spanAlthough this may not be the intent of the organisers, this event has degenerated into an expose of deviant and socially-dangerous behaviour, which in the long run will not augur well for the future development of Ghana and Africa./spanspan /spanspanMy observations of events at the Trade Fair Centre has led me to this conclusion./spanbr /br /spanPersonally, i have nothing against the /spanspancomical nature in which some people choose to dress because i think it all adds fun to an event of this nature. However in attempt to appear interesting and trendy, some of my fellow young Ghanaians went wide off the mark. Some of the dress forms on parade spanned from/spanspan the much-bashed micro skirty "apuskeleke" of some ladies to eye sore of young men shamelessly clad themselves in ladies' wigs and underwears! These daring young people have obviously chosen to avoid the option of relegating these socially-unacceptable behaviours to aour universities where they are now prevalent./spanbr /br /spanDress was not the only cause for concern at Old Skuulz Reunion last Saturday. The excessive and vulgar intake of alcohol, cigarettes and i bet... hard drugs was pervasive. I had the displeasure of observing a group of jama singers drench in alcohol that was poured on them by a couple of happy-go-lucky drunk adventurers. That incident is not the best a/spandvertisement for one of the foremost entertainment events on the Ghanaian scene.br /br /In addition, there was suprisingly a high number of kids, who were obviously under 18 years at the event. Considering the kind of activities that were unfolding before my very eyes at the programme, i think this development is most unfortunate. Joy Fm should have mapped out a strategy to discourage this youngsters from attending, or sacking them outright if need be.br /br /Another happenning at the Old Skuulz Reunion, worthy of note, was the general disorganised nature of the environment. The streets in the immediate vicinity of the trade fair centre were jammed with people and vehicles. Also noticeable was the completely uncoordianted and directionless movement of human traffic within the event grounds. I believe that the organisers can do a lot to improve this situation by insisting on where people can go and cannot go during during the course of the event.br /br /But it does not only take the initiative of the event organisers to solve these problems. It is equally the duty of the patrons of this event to refrain from vice at this event. It also behoves on parents to prevent their young children from attending gatherings of this nature. That way, there would be no danger of polluting their innocent minds. The police can also come in in their numbers n order to maintain general law and order.br /br /In summary, although the Joy Fm Old Skuulz Reunion is an unmistakable major entertainment fixture on the Ghanaian calender, it is becoming the cooking pot for social entropy. It is the duty of the organisers and other stakeholders to bring the event back on cue.br /br /I would like to end here by encouraging the organisers to take these and other steps in order to consolidate the event's standing in the Ghanaian entertainment list. Peace out!br /br / a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SOzoP22yw2I/AAAAAAAAABk/DxdYyFefuyU/s1600-h/SSL26414.JPG"img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SOzoP22yw2I/AAAAAAAAABk/DxdYyFefuyU/s320/SSL26414.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254830224355541858" border="0" //abr /br /br /br /br /br /br //divspan style="font-weight: bold;"/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-6436539409302470524?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com'//div
• September 19, 2008
• 15:07

  The First Step

   » ‎ The Gamelian World
  a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SNPS0-v8UXI/AAAAAAAAAAo/DSAAPJi3kxs/s1600-h/ghanaflag.gif"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SNPS0-v8UXI/AAAAAAAAAAo/DSAAPJi3kxs/s320/ghanaflag.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247769798455873906" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: center;"span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 102);font-size:180%;"uWOEZOR, /u/spanspan style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);font-size:180%;"span style="font-weight: bold;"uWELCOME, BIENVENUE/u/span/spanbr //divbr /div style="text-align: justify;"If the ancient Chinese saying that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with the very first step" is anything to go by, i surmise that you're going to be a regular visitor to my blog world since you've taken the first step of visiting this blog spot. So welcome everybody to what i call span style="font-weight: bold;"The Gamelian World/span.br /br /I intend to use this blog as a platform to introduce myself to the world, share my perspectives on life and any topical issue associated with it and get to know other people's views. So i hope you keep your comments coming. I will also try, in spite of my busy schedule, to update regularly so that we all have an enjoyable experience. Since this is our first step i am going to share with you some knowledge of my country, so that you can appreciate the angle i am coming from.br /br /I'm a citizen of the African nation of Ghana, which is located in the very centre of the earth (the Greenwich meridian and the equator intersect near a town called Tema). Ghana is the first country south of the Sahara to gain political independence. At the dawn of independence the country's founding president, the luminary African statesman Kwame Nkrumah, stated that "the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of the entire African continent. " Ghana's passion and drive towards establishing itself as a frontrunner in the comity of nations as well as a worthy model of black and African achievement was great in those early years. In Kwame Nkrumah's words he wanted to prove to the whole world that "after all the black man was capable of managing his own affairs." Unfortunately Kwame Nkrumah's lofty dreams could not be achieved because the country, like most third-world countries of the time, bore the brunt of the cold war exchanges between USA and USSR. In short, he was overthrown through Western influences. This sent the development direction of the country on a downward spiral, preventing the country from reaching its goals. The above development was fertilised by mismangement, corruption,... and frequent coups. With the country re-emerging from the lows of the 70s and 80s to a high of stable democratic governanace since 1992, the country is set for reinstating itself as the "beacon of Africa"' as symbolised by the black star that is so prominent on our flag. Over the last 16 years significant gains have been chalked in infrastructural development, education, agriculture and good governance. With the current breed of determined and motivated leaders on all sides of the political divide the future s certainly bright for Ghana.br /br /You must forgive me, if you do like history or politics much, but i assure you that these things set the framework for how we perceive the world. To appease you, let's talk about a more interesting subject, tourism.br /br /Over the last couple of years, Ghana has established itself as a destination of choice for most tourists visiting the west coast of Africa. The country has abundant tourist destinations in all its ten regions, spanning from the historical Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and Dubois centre in the heart of Accra, former slave castles principally in the central region, slave routes dotting from north to south and awe-inspiring ecological sites in the volta region. Every region is unique with regards to what it has on offer and every you go you are bound to have a time of your life. So come visit Ghana!, the land of golden sunshine and warm people. Oh it, did i let it out? What makes the visit to Ghana worthwhile, however is not only the finery that the environment has in store. Rather it is the warm hearted, affectionate and always-smiling people that hold foreign visitors spellbound. Many of them "fall in love" with the country such that it is always a difficult task leaving when time is due. Suddenly, the curtailment of the Ghanaian oddyssey stares them in the face and most of them.......cry. The advantage that proceeds from this development is some sort of imaginary umbilical chord that ensures that Ghanaians who travel to any other part of the world have friends everywhere they go. Which is good for everybody. So visit Ghana and see you soon when you come(the tourist board does not pay me for this, i just love my country, lol).br /br /There are certain characteristics that is typical of the Ghanaian people. Almost every Ghanaian is religious, socially conservative, we love football with a passion. The final thing is that we love our country and we are always willing to do what it takes to see her at the very top.br /br /Thanks a bunch for visiting here and hope to see you around. Peace!br /br /div style="text-align: right;"Gamelibr //div/divbr /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SNPdGLgkk5I/AAAAAAAAAAw/__wxiTc2x18/s1600-h/nkrumah.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s23ZjJyWfx0/SNPdGLgkk5I/AAAAAAAAAAw/__wxiTc2x18/s320/nkrumah.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247781089055118226" border="0" //adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1420032523300492067-3126738680847948781?l=gamelmag.blogspot.com'//div