Circumspecte

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the African Union - formerly the Organization for African Unity - and while much of the attention might have been on the Chinese-built AU headquarters in Addis Ababa where Africa's leaders gathered for the AU Summit, there was certainly a lot of coffee shop talk in Cyberville as well. One of the many discussions I participated in yesterday was the Africa on the Blog Chat (#AOTBChat) on Twitter which questioned the AU's relevance today. The AU also updated its Facebook page with a reference to a tweet by George Ayittey - the Ghanaian economist of Cheetahs vs. Hippos fame who is very outspoken regarding his opinion of Africa's leaders: "Name one crisis the African Union has been able to resolve in the past decade. Scratching your head? Always appealing to the int'l community" - George Ayittey's tweet from May 18.

The Vodafone Ghana Music Awards took place last night in Accra's International Conference Center. In prior years I've simply read social media updates on the event - many of which towed the lines of "a waste of money and time" - and never actually watched the event myself. You can imagine how excited I was to find out that the event was being live streamed via Vodafone's Facebook page by GTV and GhOne. The highlight for me was the fact that real talent and good conscientious (positive, inspirational) music was rewarded. For me, music is poetry in motion and so I really am a sucker for great lyrics that inspire. Here, I'm talking about Efya, Manifest, EL, Chase and R2Bees. Efya is simply phenomenal. Her voice is something else and her music pushes the edge (check out her cover of Duncan Mighty's "Obianuju"). That aside, she's really developing her brand as an afro/soul singer and I'm willing to place bets that she will do great on th...

So Ghana's Ministry of Trade and Industry and Google Ghana recently launched a new initiative called Innovation Ghana. Innovation Ghana is meant "to celebrate our homegrown innovators and discuss what is needed to bring Ghana to the fore of innovation and entrepreneurship." Today, the first batch of heroes were awarded: Ghana Decides (woopie - now I can update my capstone paper accordingly!), Ganyobi Naa , Dream Oval Ghana Limited , and LetiGames . I came across some videos of the awardees and was too inspired not to share. If ever someone tells you that Ghana or Africa has no hope, kindly refer them to this post. To our heroes, you do us proud. More vim!

It's the month of May! I should be working on my capstone paper, but I couldn't resist sharing two pieces of good news I came across. The first is energy-related and the second is maternal health related. If you read my "Living in Darkness" open letter to President Mahama you probably noticed a subtle plea that he become the courageous president to tackle Ghana's energy issues. Well, from what I hear there is still intermittent power supply BUT things are in the works. From all indications it seems President Mahama has made this a priority and I'm considering reserving the title "energy presido" for him IF he continues on this trajectory :) So, the first bit of good news? Ghana commissioned its first solar energy plant in Navrongo, Upper East region! Finally, we are putting our abundance of hot sun to use! Take a look at a photo of the solar plant below. The plant is expected to generate two megawatts worth of energy and expect...