Browsing videos over at Current TV recently, we came across an interesting series of reports about political activism among Senegal’s youth. Senegal is a very young country, with a median age of just 19. Ahead of the 2007 presidential elections in February, young people in the capital Dakar were using rap music to express their frustration over the state of their country and its leadership. Senegal is the only African country not to have experienced a coup since independence, and it achieved a peaceful transfer of power in 2000 from the 40-year rule of the Socialist Party to current President [...]
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — If there’s one thing Nigerians can agree on it’s their affinity for the “Crocodile Hunter.” Everywhere I went in the country televisions were tuned to the Animal Planet channel, which more often than not aired reruns of the late Steve Irwin. During my weeks-long assignment in the poverty-stricken and often violent West African country, I watched Nigerians marvel as Irwin handled a venomous snake from the African bush, inspected the toes of an aged land tortoise in the Galapagos Islands, and of course, wrestled a crocodile from his native Australia. Good drama, for sure, though why [...]
GLASGOW, Scotland – The British government has recently been accused by a parliamentary report of deliberately making asylum seekers destitute in an effort to push them out of the country or prevent them from entering in the first place. The March report by British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights called the government’s treatment of asylum seekers inhumane and degrading. The government’s policies of refusing asylum seekers permission to work, coupled with an overly complex support system, mean vulnerable people are ended up on Britain’s streets with no income and completely reliant on charity, according to the report, made public [...]
