The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

This piece of news today made me really excited to blog. Amy Smith, a professor of mine at MIT who wrote a recommendation for me for grad school, has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. It's funny because I was just talking about her International Design and Development Summit with a friend (Nii Simmonds), one that she had organized at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology the past two summers. I am really proud of her, she's an awesome and smart individual and I hope she garners more publicity for her efforts to bring development all around the world. Coupling my passion for Africa with my interests in engineering, I became really interested in engineering solutions to various problems in Africa. Being at MIT helped shape this interest and knowledge as I got to learn about various technologies being built with developing country conditions. I enrolled in a popular class called D-Lab, taught by Amy Smith in my first ...

The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa (Mzansi Mundial) song has a new remix an the video premiered today, Thursday April 29 on MTV. The third single from K'Naan sophomore album Troubadour, "Wavin' Flag" was chosen as the Coca-Cola's promotional anthem for the Mzansi Mundial in June this year. The Waving Flag Coca Cola celebration mix is the theme song for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa and part of EA Sports FIFA 2010 World Cup soundtrack . Shakira and Freshlyground's Time for Africa seems to be the official World Cup anthem, a song which samples a very popular track from Cameroun called Zangelewa . See the lyrics for the World Cup song here and that of the original Wavin' Flag here . Versions of the single have been recorded in English, Spanish and Chinese. In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, the song also became a charity single featuring 50 other Canadian artists under the group banner Young Artists for Haiti. Looking t...

I simply can't wait for the World Cup. See this promo that I saw on ESPN earlier in the week. Simply the best advertisement for anything ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW4TEevZysA The theme song for the World Cup in South Africa has been released and a video montage is available as well. The Mzansi Mundial anthem features South African group/band Freshlyground and Colombian singer, Shakira. The video for 'Time for Africa' shows some footage of the 2009 World Cup in Germany. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whi3lVsxmp8 Kelly Rowland is also in the World Cup song act and this new track, Everywhere you go, features a host of African musicians. Am loving this new track! It features 2Face Idibia of Nigeria, Awadi of Senegal, Chameleone of Uganda, Samini, Cameroun's Krotal, Lebanon's Rola, Jozi, Kwesta, Slikour and Zuluboy of South Africa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg8BK9-GRFg Here is K'Naan's Waving Flag Coca Cola celebration mix http://www.youtube.com/w...

The 2010 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) winners have been announced. I got to know about the winners through the AMAA's Facebook page while discussing it with another friend. How cute? Social networking all the way! Ghanaian movies did quite well but I think the Nigerian movie, Figurine, stole the show. Someone please get me that movie. You know I'll write a good review :-) Ghanaian movies did well. Perfect Picture picked up a bunch of awards as well as I Sing Of a Well (ISOAW) which took home two. " A Sting In a Tale" (ASIAT) also won one. Here is the full list of winners; and in bold is who I predicted would/should win since I haven't seen all the movies. BEST DOCUMENTARY - 3. Bariga Boys(Nigeria) Not sure what this is about but it's a must see. BEST SHORT FILM - 2. The Abbys Boys -(South Africa) I guess this makes up for the few South African nominations. Lekker. BEST ANIMATION - 1. Hanayns Shoe (Egypt) It's nice to see an Egyptian movie win some...

:-) The Mighty African likes to do some things differently every once in a while. So I started leaving a comment on Abena Serwaa's blog and realised my comment was more like a blog post. So here is one. To get the idea behind this post, you have to read this blog post about the Ghana Music Awards by Abena (Chardonas) of Ramblings of a Procrastinator in Accra . So, it's a direct response to Abena but I feel it's great reading for us all. So if anything is confusing, all you need to do is click here . 1. As for the 70% of the audience at the Ghana Music Awards being females in their 20's - your theories are probably true. the tickets cost a lot, and they probably got them for free. On the other hand, attend things like BarCamps or TEDx and you'll see the crowd is mostly men in their 20's. I won't give any analysis for that one. Hmm, so Ghanaian women are spending a lot of money on weave-ons eh? Is that why there's this whole hair debate? Never knew what th...

Wande Coal , Lizha James , Barbara Kanam , AY , HHP , Bracket , Blu3 , Radio & Weasel , Alikiba , Black Coffee , and Cheb Khaled lead the nominees for the Museke Online Africa Music Awards . The MOAMAs will award the best of African music over the last year and put the winners in the spotlight as Africa prepares to host the globe at the World Cup in South Africa. The awards are being organized by Museke.com, home of the African music fan which seeks to unify Africa through its music. The nominees were selected over a 3 month period by an academy made up of African music enthusiasts and fans. Voting will take place on http://awards.museke.com (http://moamas.com) until 15 May, with winners being announced on 1 June. Users can vote once everyday. Below is the full list of nominees (arranged by song/album, name & country) African song of the year Bumper to bumper – Wande Coal – Nigeria Juju - Black Coffee - South Africa Meme pas fatigue – Magic System/Cheb Khaled –...

Online African music bible to honour African artists FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: help@museke.com Diaspora: +1 617 818 3102 Southern Africa: +277 9468 1310 East Africa: +254 722407717 West Africa: +233 21 230276 MUSEKE.COM LAUNCHES ANNUAL MUSEKE ONLINE AFRICA MUSIC AWARDS (MOAMAs) Online African music bible to honour African artists After three-and-a-half years developing the online portal for information on African music, Museke.com is honoured to announce the launch of the annual Museke Online Music Awards (MOAMA’s). Museke.com started out in 2006 with the aim of becoming a one-stop-shop for everything related to African music in every genre. Since then, the website has grown from strength to strength, featuring lyrics, interviews, biographies, new music and videos of multitudes of African artists from the continent and the Diaspora across the board. With the 2010 FIFA World Cup putting the entire African continent on the international map, it is only fitting that the continent’s ...

(Photo - Kobby & Justin at BarCamp Ghana 08 ) Today was the birthday of a very good friend of mine, Nana Kwabena Owusu. I had been meaning to do a post on him and his work on 233Tech, and this seems like an opportune time to do it. Kobby, as we know him, works on 233Tech with Justin Dakorah, another good friend of mine and we all grew up in the same KNUST campus neighbourhood. 233tech is primed to become the premier Ghanaian technology oriented content website for news, feature articles and blogs. Recently, I was having a discussion with a friend who was battling getting Tech news related and relevant for Ghana, and when I decided to check out the work of Kobby and Justin at 233Tech, I was pleasantly surprised. The twosome set out to build a technology company. Their main desire was to prove web solutions tech start ups can suceed in Ghana. Suceed here is defined not as barely surviving but flourishing. There are many web startups in Ghana but not many of them have flourished and...