The US is at war in Africa. It has been at war as an integral part of the Cold War. It has had practical experience in African wars. America has been fighting wars in Africa since the 1950s – in Angola, the DRC, Somalia, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Morocco, Libya, Djibouti to name but a few counties. In some countries they used US troops, but in most cases the US financed, armed and supervised the support of indigenous forces. In its support of the anti- MPLA forces in Angola, it sent arms and equipment to the UNITA opposition. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Larry Devlin of the CIA was an unofficial branch of Mobutu’s government; the US ran its own air force at WIGMO. US airmen supported the South African forces in Kwando, Fort Doppies and Encana bases in the Caprivi from WIGMO. At these bases one could also find soldiers from Southern Rhodesia (in their DC3s) and German, French, Portuguese and other NATO troops.

One of the largest of these bases was at Wheelus Field, in Libya… Wheelus Air Base was located on the Mediterranean coast, just east of Tripoli, Libya. With its 4,600 Americans, the US Ambassador to Libya once called it “a Little America. During the Korean War, Wheelus was used by the US Strategic Air Command, later becoming a primary training ground for NATO forces. Strategic Air Command bomber deployments to Wheelus began on 16 November 1950. SAC bombers conducted 45-day rotational deployments this staging areas for strikes against the Soviet Union. Wheelus became a vital link in SAC war plans for use as a bomber, tanker refuelling and recon-fighter base. The US left in 1970.

Another giant base was Kagnew Field in Asmara. The base was established in 1943 as an Army radio station, home to the U.S. Army’s 4th Detachment of the Second Signal Service Battalion. Kagnew Station became home for over 5,000 American citizens at a time during its peak years of operation during the 1960s. Kagnew Station operated until April 29, 1977, when the last Americans left Kagnew Station.

However, with the end of the Cold War, the US has found itself fighting a much more difficult and insidious war; the war with Al Qaida. This is much less of a war that involves military might and prowess. It is a war against the spread of drug dealing, illicit diamonds, illicit gold and the sheltering of Salafists (Islamic militants) who use these methods to acquire cash which has sustained the Al Qaida organisation throughout the world. The political dichotomy between the Muslim North in Africa and the Christian/Animist South is not only a religious conflict. It is a conflict between organised international crime and states seeking to maintain their legitimacy.

There are now several ‘narco-states’ in Africa. The first to fall was Guinea-Bissau where scores of Colombian Cartel leaders moved in to virtually take over the state. Every day an estimated one tonne of pure Colombian cocaine is thought to be transiting through the mainland’s mangrove swamps and the chain of islands that make up Guinea-Bissau, most of it en route to Europe. As reported by Johnathan Miller[i]

“Western narcotics and intelligence agencies believe that up to two small twin-engine aircraft carrying up to 800kg of cocaine are landing on airstrips in Guinea- Bissau every night, having crossed the Atlantic from South America. The street value of a tonne of cocaine on the streets of European capitals is roughly £50m.”

Guinea-Bissau’s Interior Minister, Major Baciro Dabo, and the head of the navy, Jose Americo Bubu Na Tchutu, are alleged to be key facilitators of the trade.

This was equally true of Guinea under President Lansana Conte whose wives (and her brother) were shown to be kingpins in the Guinean drug trade. Many in the National Army were compromised and active participants. This drug trade has spread to Senegal, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. There are very few jails anywhere in the world which are not home to West African ‘drug mules’ tried or awaiting trial or execution. This drug trade is spreading like wildfire in West Africa, offering remuneration to African leaders, generals or warlords well in excess of anything these Africans could hope to earn in normal commerce.

In countries like Nigeria there are several important businessmen, with many legitimate businesses and deep political attachments, who also deal as ‘druggies’ in this international exercise. The authorities know who they are but find it difficult to proceed against them. In West Africa, as in most area of the world, lots of money buys immunity and, often, impunity from the law. The ‘mules’ are picked up and punished but the ‘big men’ go free.

This burgeoning drug business was an offshoot of the political, economic and military connections which were made by Al Qaida in pursuit of their takeover of the “Blood Diamond” business in West Africa.

During the civil wars in Sierra Leone the Revolutionary United Front (‘RUF’) took over the diamond fields in the country; initially at Koon. The diamonds were mined by RUF rebels, who became infamous during Sierra Leone’s civil war for hacking off the arms and legs of civilians and abducting thousands of children and forcing them to fight as combatants. The country’s alluvial diamond fields, some of the richest in the world, were the principal prize in the civil war, and they have been under RUF control for the past four years.[ii] Small packets of diamonds, often wrapped in rags or plastic sheets, were taken by senior RUF commanders across the porous Liberian border to Monrovia, where they were exchanged for briefcases of cash brought by diamond dealers who flew several times a month from Belgium to Monrovia, returning to Pelikaanstraat in Antwerp.

The man in charge was by Ibrahim Bah, a Libyan-trained former Senegalese rebel and the RUF’s principal diamond dealer. After fighting with the Casamance separatist movement in Senegal in the 1970s, Bah trained in Libya under the protection of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. He spent several years in the early 1980s fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he participated in the creation of Al Qaida. He then left to fight alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon. He returned to West Africa, to Ouagadougou, where he is sheltered and protected by the President, Blaise Campaore. Campaore was already using Burkina Faso as a depot for arms to the RUF, Liberia and the rebels of the Ivory Coast. He took, and takes, his share of the blood diamond money whether they are sold to Al Qaida or Hezbollah.

The involvement of principal figures of Al Qaida in the blood diamond business is well documented.[iii] The Al Qaida and Hezbollah involvement in the illegal trade in diamonds, gold and other gemstones has tied in organised criminal activities with Islamic fundamentalism in the region, provoking a clash between the Islamists and the Christian/Animists. It has sparked civil unrest, as with Boku Haram in Nigeria and created a criminal enterprise which has taken over the Ivory Coast.

With the French-inspired and funded rebellion against the government of Gbagbo in 2001 the country was divided. The legitimate government of Gbagbo ruled in the South but the country was divided by a military line provided by the French Force Licorne and the United Nations peacekeepers. The North was free and protected to get on with its own businesses. It was run by tin pot warlords who drew their strength from their marauding bands of mercenaries, misfits and sociophobes who created little kingdoms of their own which they ran with rapacious style. They paid no taxes, they paid no rents; they paid no duties and they provided no social services. They stole everything they could find and shipped it out, usually via their home base in Burkina Faso.

In Burkina Faso, under the aegis of Blaise Campaore, they were introduced to the buyers from Hezbollah and Al Qaida. Ivory Coast has diamond mines. Illicit diamond mining in the northern part of Ivory Coast still continues and provides a healthy stream of diamonds to Al Qaida, especially Al Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

There are four big mines – Bobi, Diarabala, Seguela and Tortiya. The US sent a CIA team in to discover what was happening, now that Ouattara is notionally President. They attempted to trace the origin of around 300,000 carats produced locally last year and which generated earnings of roughly USD 25 million. The business is mainly controlled by two warlords, Issiaka Ouattara AKA “Wattao” and Herve Toure AKA “Vetcho.” The diamonds are smuggled out mainly through Mali and Guinea before ending up on the international market in Tel Aviv. These warlords are the backbone of the new Ivory Coast Army and tied closely to the Prime Minister, Soro.[iv] With the support of Campaore and the needs of the new Army, it is very unlikely that Soro will heed the call of his feeble President to stop the sale of blood diamonds to Al Qaida or to stop paying Campaore.

This thievery was repeated in the cotton and timber businesses. It was the Lebanese of Hezbollah who provided the motor scooters which the rebel irregulars imported duty-free to the Ivory Coast. Outright theft, as in Ibrahim ‘IB’ Coulibaly, who broke into a warehouse belonging to the United States agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland on the northern outskirts of Abidjan last month and sent at least 3,000 tonnes of cocoa to Ghana, was not a unique event. President Ouattara’s troops killed Coulibaly.

This litany of crime, corruption and the funding of Al Qaida and Hezbollah by the rebels in the Ivory Coast north was well known to everyone. Now they are in charge. Blaise Campaore is still in business. The cause of Al Qaida has been promoted on the basis of a notional anti-Muslim bias by the Gbagbo government. The reach of AQIM is now further south as all of the Ivory Coast is added to its reach.

The question one is bound to ask is what imp of the perverse overtook the US Government to support such a program. The US actively intervened to push the UN to take an active role in the military offensive against Ivory Coast civilians. It encouraged the amoral weasels of France to attack and kill civilians. The US has been in Africa, dealing with Africans since 1945. Agencies like the DEA are fighting a brave fight in trying to suppress the drug trade and the selling of blood diamonds. What perverse instinct of self-destruction has created a US policy which rewards its deadliest enemies and punishes its most loyal allies?

Words cannot express the utter stupidity and self-destructiveness of US policy in allying itself to the rabble of Ouattara and his friends. What government in Africa will ever trust or deal openly with such a maniacal formulation of national interest on the part of the US. The US is at war in Africa. To win, or survive, requires helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. What imp of the perverse can have gotten things so wrong; and so often?

By Dr. Gary K. Busch

[i] Miller, Johnathan, “Drug barons turn Bissau into Africa’s first narco-state”, Independent 18/7/07
[ii] Farah, Douglas, “Al Qaeda Cash Tied to Diamond Trade” Washington Post 2/11/01
[iii] For a good, detailed account see “Global Witness “For a Few Dollar$ More: How al Qaeda moved into the diamond trade” April 2003.
[iv] Africa Miining Intelligence 31/5/11

Gary K. Busch is an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years, and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa.

President Blaise Compaoré

When most major international news networks finally caught up with the final climactic moments of the Tunisian revolution, it seemed as though, between racing to get last-minute flights to Tunis and playing catch-up with other news agencies that had been reporting on Tunisia since December, the world’s major media players made a collective ‘never again’ resolution to never or try not to ignore any developing story again. Having gotten over the failure to cover the fall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from day one, Algeria, Libya and Egypt all jostling to take centre stage in popular uprisings were brilliant opportunities for a media that had missed out to cover up. In the end, Egypt proved ripe for revolution and so for 18 days, in spite or in remembrance of 800 civilian casualties, the Egyptian people successfully toppled the Mubarak regime.

As hundreds of thousands gathered in communal points all over Egypt chanting down Mubarak, to a far lesser extent similar popular protests went down in Cameroon, Angola, Gabon and Burkina Faso. All of these received marginal coverage. Even Côte d’Ivoire was at one point was rightly dubbed ‘the forgotten war‘. It did not fit the media template of a sexy, tech-savvy, populist revolution, as that which had been constructed of Egypt. Instead Côte d’Ivoire had the uncomfortable but familiar look and feel of a Rwanda genocide-lite. It was a messy, bloody struggle for power between rebel and patriot factions in a country most educated people outside of Africa would struggle to find on a map. Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer and native home of soccer stars Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou and Yaya Touré has the misfortune of being a country with little global influence and of lesser strategic importance than Egypt or Libya to the (mostly anglophone) countries that have historically determined which international news stories are to be prioritised.

And now that the French troops have assisted Alassane Ouattara in deposing the resistant Laurent Gbagbo from the presidency, most of the TV crews and cameras have gone. Field correspondents and NGOs continue to file dispatches of fighting in the streets of Abidjan and ongoing atrocities committed in the forests in the western side of the country, but the world’s eyes have moved on. Not to Burkina Faso next door, but elsewhere, where more thrilling stories of revolution beckon.

But what makes Burkina Faso’s crisis so un-newsworthy that it is easily swept under the news pile?

The beginnings of the crisis in the little West African nation parallel events in tiny Tunisia where it took an individual catalyst in a small town to set things off. On 20 February, in an industrial town called Koudougo, bigger than Sidi Bouzid, a student named Justin Zongo was taken into police custody after an alleged dispute with a female classmate. A few days later, Zongo was pronounced dead and according to official police reports, the cause of death was meningitis. His family and friends rejected this and claimed Zongo’s death was due to police brutality. This led to a series of protests by students in four towns, Koudougo, Koupéla, Pouytenga and Po, and they were met with violence by the police. In an effort to contain the demonstrations, the government temporarily closed all schools and the national university. Although Compaoré pleaded for peace and national dialogue, a death toll of six protesters sent a different message to the student movement. The Africa Report states that the Association Nationale des Etudiants Burkinabé (ANEB)’s student representative, Mahamadou Fayama, the movement wanted to ‘denounce the climate of terror that the police have created’.

The student chants of ‘Blaise dégage’ and ‘Tunisia is in Koudougo‘, urging Compaoré to step down from 23-year rule, spread to junior army officers in the military barracks of Lamizana. On 22 March the courts ruled against five soldiers for assaulting a young designer whom they claimed had made sexual advances towards another soldier’s wife. Their disgruntled military colleagues took the streets of the capital, Ouagadougou, and went on a rampage. Although the government tried to assuage the gun-toting military men by pardoning and releasing their counterparts, by the end of March the spirit of mutiny had gone viral. Scores of junior soldiers demanded their salaries, which as yet had been unpaid by the government. The mayor’s home was vandalised; in some parts of the capital, market stalls and shops were looted and in the east of the country more soldiers joined the uprising as well as members of the Presidential Guard. Speaking to L’Evénement, a bi-weekly local paper, one soldier expressed a dejectedness at the heart of the mutiny which was likely felt by many soldiers:

‘I just returned from Darfur. Our contingent has been deployed since no other country wanted to go, that is to say, 7 km from the Chadian border. This is the corridor for many rebels in both countries. We are the Burkinabe who have managed to secure the area. We have built in less than six months roads, bridges and schools. Everyone congratulated us for that. When we go, people applaud us. The UN congratulated us. That we came home and we do not care about us. First, they are our superiors that cut money from our mission. Following is a mayor [of Ouagadugou] who tells traders deal with us as “military thieves.” You see that, it hurts.’

So far none of Compaoré’s pleas to restore order have worked and the mutiny’s snowball effect continues to grow. There are reports that, despite the soldiers’ lawlessness in some cities, the youths and some traders have united with revolting army officers. In Koudougo on 18 April, the youths are said to have set fire to the ruling party’s local offices, while by contrast in the capital, market traders burnt several government buildings in retaliation for acts of vandalism by state troops. On 23 April it was reported that the soldiers upped their game and seized the southern town of Po, which is home to a state military school where Compaoré himself trained.

In a more hardened response, Compaoré has reacted to the military-led dissent by imposing a nationwide night-time curfew and firing the whole government, including the army chief. Last week he appointed Burkina’s ambassador to France, Luc Adolphe Tiao, as prime minister, while he doubled as president and minister of defence. True to dictator form, Compaoré, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, has blamed foreign conspiratorial forces for the unrest and he has gotten rid of everyone else, except the problem, himself and his corrupt system. Appointing himself minister of defence when he is already supreme chief commander of the armed forces adds another fancy title to his name and gives the impression he’s a superhuman who can juggle three cabinet roles. But superhuman ability or not, a display of megalomaniac tendencies will not heal the rift between the army and the government, or quieten feelings of resentment among oppositional regiments. If Compaoré’s cosmetic changes and payouts to the soldiers prove unsatisfactory, now that the opposition and civil society have called for nationwide demonstrations on 30 April they would do well to join forces with the mutineers and instil some sense of order and discipline so that the ousting of Compaoré and not looting from civilians becomes every protester’s goal. Such a union would ensure the movement reaches the critical mass needed to topple the regime. But should Compaoré restore complete order, the eight weeks (and counting) of nationwide unrest will make it much harder for him to prevent his departure in the future should things escalate again. The continual playing out of mutiny and retaliation on state property signifies a loss of fear of repercussions for damaging state property and it also symbolises a loss of control and authority by the former army captain who has previously used the army to crush unrest like the food riots of 2008.

This dramatic story of Africa’s top cotton producer is deserving of more attention, especially in the context of unrest on the African continent as a whole. All of the protests, from Cape to Cairo, with their own distinct set of local conditions, are linked to food security, economic instability and political dispossession – be it by ballot or dictatorship. There is a widespread feeling of continental discontent, but international and national pundits are so busy putting out possible fires of revolt in ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ with their analyses that the Burkina uprising has gone by largely unnoticed, and yet in two months mutineering soldiers and youth have stirred up serious trouble for the Compaoré regime – and possibly regionally too. Should Compaoré fall, it will have a significant impact on the fledgling administration of his neighbouring ally, Alassane Ouattara in Côte d’Ivoire, which Compaoré played a key diplomatic role in ensuring.

In different ways, masses of people are mounting serious challenges to totalitarian hegemonies and the iniquity of global capital that may lead to a new political dispensation, in successful revolutions, and at the very least for all countries, uprisings, including unsuccessful ones, reshape the role of the citizen in a political landscape as an empowered figure. At the level of the collective citizen, mass protests enable people to realise that together they, not their brutal governments, have the potential to become agents and actors of the political and social change they desire. The wider the gap grows between the globe’s rich and poor due to increasing food prices or governments selling off land and water resources to Western corporates further impoverishing native people, the more likely popular unrest by an emboldened people will continue.

Some would be inclined to argue that Burkina Faso has been forgotten because the international media is biased towards representation of Africa south of the Sahara, and the ignoring or misrepresentation of the Rwanda genocide is the most cited example. But perhaps it is more complex than a simple Africa south of the Sahara bias; it’s a bias against or in favour of certain African countries that has been constructed through namely, a country’s geo-political and economic importance to the West and also through a history of colonial relations in which reader and viewer familiarity and association with former colonies is generated.

Even for alternative Western and non-Western newcomers to the game, there is pressure to compete with or take the lead over more established anglophone networks for essential and accurate coverage of one event over another. For example, because of its relation to America and France, the attempted return of a former leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, exiled in South Africa, to return to the Caribbean island of Haiti was more widely covered than the same attempt, a month before by another former leader, Marc Ravalomanana, exiled in South Africa to return to the tropical island of Madagascar, off the south-eastern coast of Africa.

Again, compare the near-instant coverage of the 12 April uprising in Swaziland with the delayed coverage of Burkina. With the headquarters of most major South African media in Johannesburg and the regional base of international media agencies like the BBC and CNN, coverage of Swaziland was guaranteed. Manzini, where the 12 April protests took place, is only four hours by road from Johannesburg. Swaziland is a former British colony and so there is a familiar narrative in the anglophone media of the British-educated King Mswati III, whose love of luxury cars, palaces and women is well-known. With a harem of 13 (soon to be 14) wives ‘Africa’s last absolute monarch’, as he’s often described, presides over a tiny landlocked kingdom where political opposition is harshly repressed and the traditional divine right of kings is revered. Perhaps if French-speaking Burkina Faso had bare-breasted, grass-skirted women walking around in traditional dress like in Swaziland, the cameras may have raced over from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. But seriously, if Ban Ki-moon, Jean Ping and Nicolas Sarkozy were genuinely interested in advancing humanitarian efforts towards peace and democracy in all of West Africa, they could have issued symbolically meaningful statements of condemnation to bring more attention to the protests in Burkina Faso while the struggle for Côte d’Ivoire raged on.

Similar to Swaziland, the slightest hint of a fallout between the opposition and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe is guaranteed widespread coverage and analysis, whereas the political musical chairs currently being played in Burkina by Compaoré in order to quell mutiny is of little interest to many major international media organisations, including South Africa. To their credit, AP, the BBC, Bloomberg, France 24 and Reuters have consistently filed reports on Compaoré’s crisis, but most of these are factual reports littered with the odd in-depth analysis or commentary from key figures or detailed first-hand accounts from ordinary citizens caught up in this political crisis. There are few photographs and little footage coming out of Burkina Faso, so it’s difficult for one to get a visual sense of what is happening on the ground.

NOT JUST BURKINA

The Guardian’s 2010 list of most tagged countries confirms to some extent that history of familiarity with a place guarantees coverage. Egypt, South Africa and Zimbabwe got tagged more times than the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Sudan. Possibly because of its hosting of the World Cup, South Africa had 547 tags, outranking earthquake-stricken Haiti, which had 436 tags. Egypt had 219, while Zimbabwe had 144 tags, and yet the DRC had a paltry 124 tags, Sudan had 122 and Somalia even less at 113. All three are among the most unstable African countries of 2010 and yet they ranked lower than the World Cup host South Africa. The war-stricken Congo is one of the world’s suppliers of raw materials for mobile and computer technology and ironically constitutes just over a fifth of the 604 articles on Apple. This is not a criticism of the Guardian as the paper does provide some of the best and insightful international news coverage, but these tags are unfortunately a skewed quantitative reflection of coverage patterns and the consumerist nature of public interest.

Saying this with all flippancy intended, the formula is simple. Reports of anti-British and homophobic comments by the African dictator everyone loves to hate, and shark attacks in Sharm el-Sheik make catchy headlines. Never-ending sagas of jungle wars and mass rapes, unless involving powerful countries, do not. Or unless they’re packaged as humanitarian causes fronted by celebrities and award-winning journalists like George Clooney and Nicholas Kristof. Their combined interest in the Save Darfur campaign, malaria awareness and referendum for north–south separation ensured Sudan received frequent coverage in the New York Times. Unfortunately, no similar twin-set of movie star and scribe of Clooney’s and Kristof’s stature have permanently adopted the DR Congo or Somalia as their primary cause. Although one of the aims of international news is to appeal to as broad a global audience as possible, how broad is our interest and genuine our humanity as people if we suffer war and compassion fatigue towards stories on the DRC, Somalia and Sudan?

But now with all these revolutions and uprisings going on, places like the DR Congo are a distant tragedy. Despite the exceedingly valuable coverage of the uprisings by some news networks, there is an underlying sense of competition within the media to see who can land the best, exclusive interview or provide the most comprehensive coverage. In the face of such fierce competition, taking a few moments in between protest broadcasts to ask the world to remember the 5.4 million (and rising) Congolese dead since 1998 or to take a serious look at Compaoré’s megalomanic scheming in Burkina Faso wouldn’t be a suicidal gamble with the ratings. Events in Africa and the Middle East shouldn’t be placed in competition with each other; what’s happening in Nigeria, Syria or Libya can share the spotlight with many other untold or under-reported stories. It’s a question of willingness to pluralise news stories and cover unfamiliar terrain.

Joy Dibenedetto, a broadcast executive and founder of alternative news site, Hum News, reports that in 2009 research conducted by Hum News found that there are 237 countries or territories in the world, and the world’s largest news organisations report from only 121 countries or territories. Out of 237 global locations, 116 are not covered. If true, that’s just under 50 per cent of the world’s stories potentially out of mainstream media focus – almost 50 per cent. Allow that to sink in.

While there are very good reasons to be excited about how social media is changing the face of the news, what about those who can’t tweet about a parallel rise in grain prices and local discontent in rural Kenya or text FrontlineSMS to say a 14 year old girl has been raped by a soldier in Poa, Burkina Faso, because such a platform for crisis mapping does not exist? And even if it did, would anybody take notice? As digital technology increasingly shapes the future of news, the non-mainstream stories from lesser-known countries off the social media network radar risk becoming further marginalised.

As necessary as it is to cover unfolding crises in this moment of popular uprisings, perhaps there is also a competition for dominance in coverage of the big revolution stories to present a more racy, more in-depth and more radical story than other media competitors. Perhaps also at this time, covering small protests elsewhere would disrupt and divert resources from the ‘Arab World’s 1848 moment’ narrative being manufactured in the studios and newsrooms of television stations and newspapers as more and more people in the Middle East and North Africa courageously rise up against brutal dictatorships.

Apart from the many valid and not so valid political and commercial reasons for preferential coverage of some stories over others, its true that ‘Africa needs an Al Jazeera of it is own’ to tell the continent’s forgotten stories. But in addition to that dream is a more crucial demand that can be sooner met, namely that existing international media genuinely commit itself to new ways of telling everyone’s stories, all the time, rather than competing to duplicate or better the popular stories.

By Tendai Marima

Tendai Marima is a blogger and doctoral scholar at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests include African literature, feminist theory and contemporary black presence in Europe.

President Blaise Compaoré. Assumed office Oct 15, 1987. Source: Wikipedia

Members of the Burkina Faso presidential guard mutinied in Ouagadougou late April 15 in an incident that has the hallmarks of a coup d’etat. Reportedly dozens of the elite unit members were shooting inside the presidential compound with light and heavy weaponry. Shootings have also been reported at the country’s state radio station as well as at the residence of the army chief of staff which has reportedly been ransacked. The whereabouts of President Blaise Compaore is not clear. AP cited an anonymous source saying Compaore is not in the presidential residence. However, the credibility of this source and the information is unverifiable.

The mutiny in Burkina Faso comes a couple of weeks after Compaore agreed to meet with dissident soldiers to try to resolve pay and other disputes that soldiers in different cities across the West African country have protested over. Clashes involving dissident soldiers have occurred on a sporadic basis throughout Burkina Faso since mid-February following the death of a university student while in police custody. As recently as March 23, shootings involving soldiers took place in Ouagadougou as the troops protested the perceived ill-treatment they believed was being meted out towards a fellow soldier accused of a sex scandal.

Beyond the local pay conditions of members of Burkina armed forces, a probable coup attempt is directly linked to recent events in neighboring Ivory Coast. Compaore has long been the leading external African backer of top members of the new Ivorian government, including the new President Alassane Ouattara as well as his Prime Minister and Defense Minister Guillaume Soro. These two successfully overthrew the regime of former President Laurent Gbagbo on April 11.

Ivory Coast’s new armed forces, the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast (FRCI), were previously known as the New Forces, loyal to Ouattara, until early March. FRCI are directed by Soro , who has long been harbored by the Compaore government. Soro, together with another top leader of the former New Forces Ibrahim Coulibaly, received training, equipment, and weapons from the Burkinabe government following their 1999 failed coup attempt against the Ivorian government of then President Henri Konan Bedie. As for Ouattara, he is half-Burkinabe (his father was born in Burkina Faso), and the legitimacy of the new Ivorian president’s citizenship has long been controversial. In the 1980s, Ouattara worked in international financial positions on a Burkinabe diplomatic passport. Compaore’s mediation of previous Ivorian crises included a peace deal in 2007 that saw Soro become Gbagbo’s prime minister, a position Soro held until the November 2010 election when he quit Gbagbo’s cabinet to join Ouattara. Clearly, Soro used his prime minister position in the Gbagbo government to gather extensive intelligence on the capabilities of Gbagbo’s armed forces. Coordinating his own campaign against his former boss following the controversial November election was the latest trigger to the current Ivorian crisis.

Blaise Compaoré & Soro Kigbafori Guillaume. Source: bowoulankro.com

Soro was in Ouagadougou as recently as early March to meet with top members of the Compaore government. Soro’s several day stay in Ouagadougou immediately preceded the launch of the FRCI’s military offensive that began in western Ivory Coast and culminated in the French and UN-backed assault on Gbagbo’s presidential compound in the Ivorian commercial capital of Abidjan on April 11 when Gbagbo was captured. The rapid assault by the FRCI on Abidjan, as well as the robust presence of Coulibaly’s “Invisible Forces” in Abidjan, together combined to form that ground forces that defeated the Gbagbo regime. Such successful operations were probably the result of extensive training, logistical assistance and material equipment provided to the New Forces by the Compaore government. Burkina Faso has waged a steady campaign of covert assistance ever since the Ivorian 2002-2003 civil war.

Having helped his proxies finally seize power in Abidjan after two failed attempts stretching back to 1999, Compaore will expect significant patronage towards his government by Ouattara, Soro and Coulibaly. However, Gbagbo’s forces probably have maintained covert agents of their own in Ouagadougou in an effort to repay in kind Compaore’s actions. It is known that Gbagbo’s regime cultivated intelligence agents in Ouagadougou to observe the activities of the New Forces there. Instigating a coup against Compaore would not be out of the question for Gbagbo who clearly viewed the actions against his regime in Abidjan as tantamount to war. Inciting a coup against his West African rival would be a revenge move but also an effort to undermine the rebel militia base that underwrote Ouattara’s overthrow of Gbagbo. The former Ivorian president could use Brukina Faso’s unrest to support his own recovery and return from house arrest.

With Gbagbo deposed from power and currently held in an undisclosed, secure location in northern Ivory Coast, sympathizers from his regime have probably tried to activate agents in Burkina Faso. Certainly pay conditions in the Burkinabe army would be meager but the shootings April 14-15 did not involve ordinary foot soldiers. Rather, the incident was led by members of the presidential guard, the best paid and equipped members of the country’s entire security apparatus. A likely coup attempt occurring in Ouagadougou is probably stirred up by Gbagbo elements in an attempt to overthrow the foreign backers that provided the means for Gbagbo’s own Ivorian political and military enemies to bring him down.

Source:Ocnus.net 2011

Click here to view the embedded video.

FIROZE MANJI: Well, I think what we’re seeing is two things. First of all, I think people are inspired by what has been happening in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya. It’s been quite extraordinary how there’s been a resonance. And what we have seen also, which is being underreported in the Western press, has been the events happening in places like Swaziland, in Gabon, in Cameroon, in Djibouti, where there have been massive uprises. Last week in Burkina Faso there were mass demonstrations of students and of workers there, and the universities have just been closed down. The reason why this is happening is that everyone shares that same experience as the Egyptians and the Tunisians. Yes, most of the focus has been on the dictators and getting rid of dictators. But the real, real thing is and real common thing that everyone faces has been 30 years of structural adjustment programs, 30 years where all social services have been privatized, 30 years where there has been massive accumulation by dispossession. You have the peasantry losing land. You have people migrating to the cities. You have a huge decline in income. And what we have most seriously is not just dispossession of land and of resources and services, but also a dispossession politically. Our governments today are more inclined to listen to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the international aid agencies than they are to citizenry. So in effect what’s happened is that our countries have become much less democratic, and we are unable to hold our governments to account. So I think there’s a sense of discontent which is percolating through the continent. It’s a phenomenon that we’ve not seen since the 1950s in the rise of the anticolonial revolution. So I think these are really interesting times. Obviously, in each of those countries, their specific situation will be different, and so it’ll be manifested in different ways.

JAY: So, Firoze, go through the different countries and talk about how the protests are manifesting themselves. And also, specifically, are people demanding downfall of a dictator, or like in many of the Northern African and Arab protests, calling for actually the downfall of whole regimes?

MANJI: I think it starts with a sort of focus on a dictator, but it very soon becomes a question of the regime as well. And I think we saw that in Egypt. In Gabon we have seen mass uprisings–and focusing on exactly the same thing. In Swaziland, where you’ve had a royal family ruling the country, you had mass protests over the years against the despotic behavior of the royal families. But now people are organizing. And it’s the same issues that are arising, it’s the same thing about decline in income, the same thing about the lack of democratic processes, the lack of accountability of the government through the demands of the masses. In Cameroon you’ve seen the beginnings of some of the protests, which have been rather brutally suppressed. In Djibouti we have seen also a massive uprising–and took everyone by surprise. And that has been very brutally suppressed. So you’re seeing these kind of things happening. And I think we will see in Nairobi, in Kenya, we will see similar things beginning to happen. In South Africa you’ve already had a number of protests beginning to arise in amongst shack dwellers, who have been marginalized, who’ve been promised housing, according to the Constitution, but who have never been provided with the housing. So you’re seeing protests arising around there.

JAY: President Obama and his administration have been trying to position themselves as being on the side of the peoples movements in Northern Africa and in the Arab world. What have they been saying about the struggles in southern Africa?

MANJI: No, I think there’s been more or less silence, at least in public. I’m sure that the US missions in each country are sufficiently anxious about what is going on. But, I mean, I think, you know, one has to be rather skeptical about the sort of military actions that have been taken recently through the UN under the pressure of the US government on Libya. I mean, one has to ask the question: why is it that last year, when Gaza was under siege, when people in Palestine were appealing for international support, that there was no attempt to impose a no-fly zone? So the question is: why is it now for Libya that they are imposing a no-fly zone? The same is happening in Bahrain. There has been huge protests in the streets there, and Saudi troops have moved in. Why has there been no response there? Why has there been no attempt to side with their democratic movement?

JAY: Has the US administration in some way said to countries like Gabon or Cameroon they should at least mitigate what they’re doing, not to be so brutal in their suppression? Have they spoken out at all about this?

MANJI: Well, I’m not so sure that that they have an interest in suppressing those or preventing the suppression. I think that the US has very substantial interests, especially amongst the oil-producing countries of Africa, and if they can make sure that these governments stay in power–it is, after all, the US who has been arming them, it is the US who’ve been backing them with the USAFRICOM forces–then they don’t really have a direct interest in seeing any change. But I think the African governments are all quaking, especially as a result of the no-fly zone and military intervention in Libya, because they all fear that the same thing might happen to them. So you can imagine that they, on the one hand, didn’t want to protest at Gaddafi to begin with, but now are protesting against the US and UN intervention.

JAY: And what about China? China has major investments in Africa. Have they said anything about the suppression of the protests?

MANJI: Well, unfortunately, China abstained on the UN intervention into Libya, but they have not really said anything at all. I think they still play their role of noninterference in the internal affairs of countries. But I think, you know, we have to get this point clear. The US has far greater foreign direct investments, far greater interests in oil than does China. China, if you look, for example, in Nigeria, it has less than 5 percent of the oil fields there. In Sudan it has quite substantial interest there, but that was because the US government prohibited Excom and others from mining oil there. In Angola, they got a foot in mainly because the IMF refused to give any loans to Angola around their oil infrastructure, and China moved in and said, yes, we’ll provide it. So I think while a lot of attention is paid to China’s huge interests in Africa, it is small, it is–compared to the US, compared to the UK, compared to France, compared to Germany, it is very small. India is larger in Africa than is China. Why are we not complaining about India?

JAY: Has India said anything about the protests?

MANJI: No. Indeed, they have been rather silent. But I think we can understand their silence as well, because in their own territories, there are now considerable resurgence of–and some of it’s turned into armed struggle. But there have been massive protests in India. The Naxalite movement has, you know, resuscitated after many years of being more or less disappeared. And so you are seeing mass uprisings happening there. And I think what we are seeing is that across the global south, people who have suffered the same indignities of the structural adjustment programs, the same indignities of privatization of health care, privatization of education, you know, it’s the kind of response that you are seeing in Ohio and in the US. I think, you know, it’s beginning to happen here, too. And I think it’s very interesting how in some of the demonstrations recently they’ve been talking about turning their squares into Tahrir Square. So I think what we’re seeing is something, a discontent that’s happening on a very wide scale. I think that at this stage we’re talking, really, mainly about Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. But I think we are beginning to see the stirrings. We’ve had massive repression of the uprisings in Djibouti, and we don’t know exactly what the next phase is. The same thing has happened in Gabon. I think Burkina Faso this last week has had such enormous eruptions, and there is a continuity of something that began in about 2008, 2009. We’ve had a series of strikes and demonstrations. Actually, the parallels with Egypt are quite remarkable, because in Egypt also for the last two years–again not very well reported, but over the last two years you’ve seen wildcat strikes up and down the country, you’ve seen students come out on strikes and workers coming out in solidarity with them and vice versa. So, you know, people forget that actually what happened in Egypt appeared to have happened overnight, but actually was a buildup of discontent that had been happening over many, many years.

JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Firoze.

MANJI: Thank you for having me on your show.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Manifestation de vendredi 7 août à Libreville, Gabon by Bruno Ben Moubamba

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

Family business of Uganda cartoon by Stano (Stanislous Olonde). Source BBC UK.

In Uganda the opposition has claimed that President Yoweri Museveni is grooming his eldest son Lieutenant Colonel Kaneirugaba Muhoozi, 36, to succeed him.

Museveni has already placed his presidential guard under the Special Forces, an elite army unit commanded by Colonel Muhoozi.

The Special Forces is tasked with, among other duties, guarding the Lake Albert oil fields. In its ranks include commando, infantry, artillery and air force units.

“Already there has been an outcry from Ugandans about the president’s habit of putting his relatives in strategic positions,” opposition defense spokesman Hussein Kyanjo told Newswatch magazine.

“What President Museveni has done confirms Ugandans’ worst fears. He is making the Ugandan presidency monarchical and is clearly anointing his son to succeed him”.

But Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayigye has defended Muhoozi by saying:

“He has equal right like you and I and he didn’t chose to be born to a person who was later to become president of Uganda. He’s an individual Ugandan with rights, including contesting for the presidency if he wants”.

After the Presidential Brigade Guard was placed under his charge, the UK and US trained Lt Col Muhoozi is now said to have the sweeping powers of any commander-in-chief.

However this elevation did not come as a surprise since in recent years the Ugandan head of state seems to have developed a penchant for appointing his kinsmen to high office.

The president’s stepbrother General Caleb Akandwanaho (Salim Saleh) is the senior presidential advisor on defense, brother-in-law Sam Kutesa is the foreign affairs minister, daughter Natasha Karugire is the private secretary to the president and the first lady’s nephew Justus Karuhanga is the president’s private secretary for legal affairs.

First Lady Janet Museveni is the minister for Karamoja region while her relative Hope Nyakairu is the finance under-secretary at Ugandan State House.

But President Museveni is not alone in the game. Although Swaziland, Lesotho and Morocco are the only de facto monarchies in Africa, the culture of dynastic political succession is breeding a class of “republican kingdoms”.

“Rulers prefer sons over alternative figures more inclined to hasten the succession through assassination or coup attempts.

Concern about assassination by son is less in a hereditary successional arrangement than if the designated successor is a high ranking official of the existing regime,” writes Jason Brownlee, a political scientist.

Hereditary succession is common in autocratic regimes whose long-serving rulers have cultivated strong personality cults by eliminating rivals and hoarding power around themselves and a clique of elites.

With no institutionalised power structures outside the leader, the state security machinery is used to whip the masses into accepting the preferred successor.

Africa has seen four sons of former heads of states ascend to power in the past 10 years, three of them inheriting leadership directly from their fathers.

Ali Bongo's caricature by Franco-Burkinabese cartoonist Damien Glez.

Ali Bongo of Gabon and Faure Gnassingbe of Togo succeeded their long serving fathers in bloody and hugely discredited elections.

In DRC, Joseph Kabila was appointed at the tender age of 28 by the military to replace his father who was assassinated in 2001.

In Botswana President Ian Seretse Khama, son of the country’s founding father, came to power after the former head of state abdicated before the end of his term.

The street protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are said to have been triggered by, among other things, the prospect of his three-decade rule being extended through his son Gamal.

The fact that Mubarak was grooming his son to succeed was so obvious that some quarters in the west and the donor community were already warming up to his presidency.

“To the IMF and the World Bank, a few European capitals and even certain sectors of Washington Gamal looks like the future of the Arab World,” wrote The Weekly Standard, an American opinion and analytical magazine.

But with 60 per cent of Egyptians living on less than $2 a day, Gamal’s economic wizardry was far from evident. Now a Mubarak presidency is history following a successful uprising.

Inspired by the fall of Mubarak at the hands of unarmed citizens, Libyans have risen against Col Muammar Gadaffi. Despite the dictator’s vow to crush the revolt and die “a martyr” in his home soil, protesters are in control of eastern regions of Libya.

Although not officially endorsed for several years, it has been rumoured that Gadaffi’s son Saif l-Islam is the strongman’s most preferred successor.

When protests broke out two weeks ago, Saif came out strongly declaring the regime will “fight to the last bullet” to stop the uprising.

Appointed by his father to the highly visible role of negotiating with the West and heading a number of key organisations in Libya, the 39 year-old London School of Economics graduate is so influential in Libyan politics that analysts believe he played a critical role in persuading Gadaffi to abandon the ambitious nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Described by many in his homeland as confident, charismatic, outspoken but sometimes naïve, Saif is also known for tinkering with liberal political concepts alien to his father’s Jamahiriya system like creating a constitution, instituting political freedoms and free-market reforms.

To defend his deviant philosophies, most of which have rattled the older generation of the ruling elite, Saif used to explain that he was he was merely expressing the hopes of ordinary Libyans.

However when a revolt broke out a fortnight ago, Saif’s democratic pretensions disappeared. He is now leading an onslaught against rebels in eastern Libya.

But with people driven revolution reportedly less than 100 kilometres from the capital Tripoli it’s very unlikely that the “King of Kings of Africa” will have the opportunity and time to impose the scion on Libyans.

Cartoon portraing Abdoulaye Wade and his son Karim. Source Damien Glez/RNW, Netherlands

In Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade has similar plans. His son, Karim, “already holds the Senegalese government’s most senior position, as what the Dakar press calls ‘Super-minister’ in charge of International Cooperation, Air Transport and Infrastructure.

But on 4 October, he added yet another string to his bow by taking over the most strategically vital – and potentially most lucrative – portfolio to become Energy Minister,” writes Africa Confidential.

Kenya-based Mwaura Samora is a writer for Nation Media Group (NMG). His activities include consulting and mentoring. He is also a poetry enthusiast interested in intellectual discourses and author of the Sagepage Uncolonized blog located here.

Well, let’s say for starters that this is a list that contain CDs that I have received this past year. Needless to say, I have not received or reviewed every CD release of African music in the past 12 months. CD sales are down and it harder than ever to get some record labels to send music to radio stations.

Some good CDs I didn’t even bother to pursue because it’s like pulling teeth to get them from certain labels. It can get embarrassing to constantly e-mail them to beg for a CD that you will be doing the artist a favour by airing and publicizing. On the other hand, one gets barrels full of unsolicited rubbish weekly.

Many of these, accompanied by press releases touting the amazing ability of the recording to be cutting edge, hip “world music” that is electronica, jazz, soul, pop, reggae with a touch of traditional Maori elements, all simultaneously.

Desperate and nondescript nonsense that is best used as a frisbee or shiny Christmas tree ornament. Of course, even if one uses objective criteria to judge music, one still ends up with a list on one’s likes.

It’s no different with me and there is only one CD on this list that I don’t own as I don’t really care for it but inclusion is acknowledgment that it is really good. So, with that long caveat, here is the First World Music Top Ten African CDs for 2010.

1] CARLOU D.— MUZIKR. WORLD VILLAGE

Amid all the dross of unsolicited promotional CDs that littered my mailbox this year, I found a nugget of purest gold. “Muzikr” by Carlou D. is the best CD of the year. Conceptualised to bring the zikr out of its esoteric strictures by the addition of contemporary Senegalese instruments and melodies, it was perfectly executed. Carlou D’s singing is muscular, confident, nuanced, simultaneously youthful and mature. The album exudes joy for life, love, dance, song and spiritual peace within its cohesive structure. So refreshing to hear contemporary modern Senegalese music without an preponderance of claviers hogging the melody lines. A worthy gold medal winner.

2] KHAIRA ARBY—TOUMBOUTOU TARAB. CLARMONT

I’ve been listening to Koroboro music for decades. I own two cassettes and one CD by this woman before this last recording but this is the first time most world beaters and afro poppers had ever heard of her. Inevitably, there was a lot of press and cyberspace column inches devoted to this “new” talent, most burdened by stupidity and hyperbole. One “African music expert” likened her to Aretha Franklin in his review. [sic] The album is indeed exciting and the live performances by the band during their American tour, electrifying. Thanks to the dazzling wizardry of her 21-year old Abdrahamane Touré on electric guitar, American listeners thought they heard rock influences and sensibilities in his melodic architecture, making it easy to “get with it”. But songs like “Khaira” and “Goumou” are irresistible for the complete elemental input. Handclaps, sokou, background singing. Indeed, the virtuoso playing of Ebalaw Yattara on n’goni was as impressive to me as Touré’s guitar playing. Unfortunately, Carlou D. gets the edge and “Timbuktu Tarab” gets silver.

3] KONONO N°1—ASSUME CRASH POSITION. CRAMMED

This Congolese outfit came back in 2010 bolder than ever with this album. Featuring the same rough-hewn compositions on electrified likembé and recycled scrap metal percussion and amplifiers. Complex, insistent and constantly shifting melodies and rhythm, all contrive to showcase a testament to African resilience, ingenuity and creativity in less than optimal living conditions in Congo 2010. This music will invade your mind and body like a phantasmagoric body snatcher. Bronze.

4] ALI FARKA TOURÉ & TOUMANI DIABATÉ—ALI & TOUMANI. NONESUCH

Just like there will be no true Beatles reunion, there will not be another Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté album. Death made sure of that. This follow up to the Grammy award winning “In the heart of the moon” is more of the same, superior, contemplative music that people of quality and taste can appreciate. The young people have their own. We mature people of a certain vintage and temperament have ours. I prefer ours. With only guitar and kora, they set the mood. Percussion, contrabass and occasionally, Ali Farka’s vocals [Toumani doesn't sing] adds variety. A masterpiece.

5] SOUMAORO IDRISSA—DJITOUMOU. LUSAFRICA

This follow up album to “Kotè” is full of originality and experimentation. It’s a risk that pays handsome dividends. No recycled songs here. I did recognise the familiar refrain on “Yèrè Djaté” but that doesn’t count and besides, I don’t expect the non-Malian listener to recognise it. The only jarring note musically to my ears was a harmonica that sounded like a clucking hen in places but after a while almost didn’t hear it. There are also two songs with an Eastern European feeling. All I can say is, interesting. Anyway, “Djitoumou” reveals Soumaoro to be an artist with a singular vision. It displays a varied sonic palette which incorporates elements of classic [not neo] blues, soul and country. It’s as modern and more original than anything a young African rap imitator can muster. Highly recommended.

6] KEÏTA SALIF—LA DIFFÉRENCE. UNIVERSAL MUSIC FRANCE

He may be wary of touring Europe and North America to make money but his creative expression on record sounds far from tired. In fact, Keïta has never sounded more emotional and expressive in his singing. Many of the songs sound introspective but it is only the title track that can be said to actually be so. On “La Différence”, Keïta sings for the first time in his career about the condition with which he was born; albinism. And if you find something familiar about the rest of the songs, you are not wrong. They were released earlier on previous albums. These re-workings are different enough to make a qualitative distinction. Not better. Just different. Produced with the highest quality production. The addition of oud, piano, accordion and cello enhance this moving and evocative collection.

7] KEÏTA ALY—FARAFINKO. CONTRE JOUR

Not only is Aly Keïta a balafola of the first order but he also builds his own magnificent instruments. The sonority of the bala on his sophomore album [Farafinko] is without peer. Keïta’s fluid playing produces mellifluous roulades like a waterfall. This album is great and should not be overlooked simply because it lacks Auto-Tuned vocals, synthesised music, derivative rap and other rubbish. All the better to focus on Keïta’s playing. There’s not a big enough oeuvre of solo, instrumental recordings of African instruments. Keïta’s “Farafinko” ups the number.

8] DÉMÉ VICTOR—DÉLI. CHAPA BLUES

At number eight is another sophomore effort. I’m so glad that Démé is getting some commercial success now after a long struggle in Côte d’Ivoire before returning to his native Burkina Faso. This album picks up where his debut solo opus left off; a collection of soulful ballads based in Manding tradition and a few up-tempo numbers. Guitar, bass, kora, accordion harmonise to create the soundscape. There’s also violin, a little to sweet and intrusive in places but not repellent enough to be objectionable. I was glad to see him live in Central Park, NYC this past summer. Backed by his core band and stripped of the European studio arrangements, the elemental quality of the compositions worked very well. And Démé’s voice, simultaneously plaintive and soulful, imbued the crowd with warmth and good feeling.

9] ASMARA ALL STARS…ERITREA’S GOT SOUL. OUT HERE

This was a pleasant surprise. It is rare to get music from Eritrea. This album came together courtesy of a white French producer. Many of the participants did not see his vision initially which was to assemble the best musicians in the country for an all star band to record an album of modern Eritrean music and sung in all the languages of Eritrea. But after a few auditions and rehearsals, others quickly came aboard. The album is a bit uneven but the sound is fresh and there are some gems. The surprise was how much reggae has influenced contemporary Eritrean musical sensibilities. That I did not expect. The opening track, sung by Faytinga, exemplifies this very well. The jaunty reggae melody is book-ended by traditional drums. An interesting aural treat. If only to have Eritrea represented in your African music collection, you must get this.

10] MARIEM HASSAN—SHOUKA. NUBENEGRA

The voice of Mariem Hassan is hard, gritty, rough and stark as the life of any Sahraoui refugee must be. And the music matches. The Sahraoui people are really Imazighen originally but now identify as Arabs. Their music resembles that of the Maures of Mauritania. They’ve kept some of the modal qualities but they cleave less tenaciously to the classical formality of musical presentation. Indeed, tidnit and ardin both seem to have been universally jettisoned for the electric guitar. Tbal and handclaps are constant though and the arrangements are augmented with clarinet and ney. There could have been more driving, propulsive numbers like “Maatal-la” and “Ragsat naama” for my taste and at 16 tracks, the album is too long. Still, this is a great document of contemporary Saharoui music and merits its place in the top ten.

BEST COMPILATION OR REISSUE OF 2010.

LURA…BEST OF LURA CD & DVD. LUSAFRICA

She only has four CDs on the international market and it might seem presumptuous of her record label to think that she was so good that after such a scant output, a “Best of” compilation was warranted. Actually, it was thoroughly merited. A very good decision.Lura’s best asset is her ability to sing many genres equally well. Morna, coladera, funaná, batuku, kontradansa all fare well with her interpretation. With Toi Vieira at the helm of arrangements, she’s in solid hands. Hardly a misstep anywhere. And the bonus DVD show of her dancing and personality very well from the stage.

BEST LIVE RECORDING OF 2010.

THANDISWA…LIVE IN CONCERT. GALLO

The competition wasn’t too thick this year but this one was the best. “On Air”, the posthumously released live recording of Cheikha Rimitti didn’t have the variety as Thandiswa Mazai’s. A very, very good live recording.

BEST LIVE CONCERT OF 2010.

ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO @ TOWN HALL NYC ON MARCH 26TH.

She is the best communicator from the stage. She rules and commands and the audience obeys. Blink, and you’ll miss something. I can’t imagine people tweeting from her show but there are extreme narcissists out there. This was a great show. She had the audience eating out of her hands.

WORST CD OF 2010. AVOID THIS ONE LIKE THE LATEST DISEASE.

VARIOUS ARTISTS…SHANGAAN ELECTRO. HONEST JON’S

In the past I’ve criticised white Europeans in America and Europe for producing African artists while not understanding African music. Some of these aim to destroy African music in the first place with narcissistic, forced hybridisation resulting in pure, unadulterated rubbish. This piece of drivel is entirely home grown in South Africa and would have stayed there except for some couch potato in Brooklyn looking at a You-Tube clip and thinking this was good music worthy to be put on CD and distributed from the US to the world. NOT! This repetitive, unsophisticated, synthetic crap sped up to 100 MPH will induce schizophrenia in anyone who listens to it. You will hear voices in your head telling you to kill people.

RECORD LABEL OF THE YEAR: LUSAFRICA

Great music. They respect African music. Their output doesn’t take the music far from its roots. Nice people to work with too. They are very responsive to deejay requests for promos. Good job Lusafrica! I look forward to working with you in 2011.

Written and presented by Akenataa Hammagaadji.

Akenaata Hammagaadji is an African music expert and cultural critic. He is the radio host of First World Music; an African music programme broadcast from WVKR. His insightful music reviews, which goes beyond music into cultural dissections, can be found in his weekly First World Music Newsletter, now a blog on afrobeatradio.net.

Fabulously charismatic singer from Burkina Faso, Mai Lingani shares her Vibes, Energy, and the Spirit of Rhythms and Songs from Burkina Faso on AfrobeatRadio on WBAI 99.5 FM NY on Jan 23, 2010 . She sings live in the Studio accompanied by Mawuena Kodjovi on guitar.

Mai Lingani on AfrobeatRadio from AfrobeatRadio on Vimeo.

MAI LINGANI and the TANGARE with is performing Saturday January 30, 2010 from 9PM TO 10PM  at:

SHRINE BAR RESTAURANT-WORLD MUSIC VENUE

2269 Adam clayton Powell JNR. BLVD at 7th Ave

Between 133 and 134th street, New york, N.Y 10030

Admission is free.

For more Information:

shrinenyc.com or contact 212-690-0699, 917-513-1185, boulgoukdg@gmail.com www.myspace.com/mailingani