The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

The very first  +Barcamp Ghana  event of this year is  +Barcamp Tema  on Saturday, March 22. Come and learn how to get rid of mediocre habits and pick up excellent ones. Press release below. BarCamp Tema 2014 is a free networking forum bringing people together for a day of discussion, demos and dialogue on Tema, Ghana and beyond. It takes place on March 22, 2014 at the Rotary Centre (Club House) in Tema. The theme is “ Building People of Excellence ” . This Barcamp will be the 29th organized by the GhanaThink Foundation as it builds a network of young change makers, doers and entrepreneurs in Ghana. It's being organized in conjunction with the Rotaract Club of Tema. There will be a speed mentoring session where mentors will give insights and answers to questions from attendees. Confirmed speed mentors include +Victoria Okoye   (Relief International), +Edem Kumodzi  of QuickBets, +Kow Essuman (Lawyer), +MANASSEH AZURE Awuni (Joy FM), +sara nana...

The very first  Ghana National Youth Achievers Awards (NYAA)  were held under the auspices of President John Dramani Mahama on October 25 this year. Congratulations to all the winners, some of which I am proud to know personally. I already reacted to the whole NYAA, but let's dig into the winners proper. Because just giving you the list is boring. If you wanna learn some more, say #morevim! Sarkodie and Becca won for Music. BET Award wins, Channel O nominations, Museke Awards wins, they deserved it. Jackie Appiah won for Performing Arts, she's not the fairest Ghanaian, so she must be doing very well as an actress because of her acting skills :-p. She's still cute too, those IPMC billboards do her some good justice. Jackie's best ever casting was in The Perfect Picture , arguably one of Ghana's best ever movies. The director of that movie, Shirley Frimpong-Manso won for film.  The Fashion winner is surprising as it is refreshing, Fred Deegbe's Heel the...

The manner in which I first heard about the Ghana National Youth Achievers Awards (NYAA) were  some interesting circumstances. First, they was the notion that some of the organizers behind it should not have been behind it or should have been supporting something else that I support. And then my mother also called me about it saying my aunt was encouraging me to apply. The Awards were held recently and many deserving people that I know of won but I never ended up applying. But the latter part is not the point, the former - celebrating Ghanaian youth achievement is the point of this blog post. But I still have to tell you why I didn't apply. First, I wasn't excited by the involvement of CharterHouse (which organizes entertainment type awards shows, what would that mean for these awards?) and RLG (who as a tech company is not exactly supporting innovation in Ghana like it should, yeah I said it). And then you have the government angle, endorsed by the sitting president, Joh...

While busily following proceedings of a Champions League match in which Barcelona ended Arsenal's interest, a friend on Twitter @nnenna was at the Accra International Conference Center for Ghana Women of Excellence Awards on the occasion of the International Women's day. This first edition was a major success. Through her tweets, several of them which I retweeted @Abocco - I present you the awardees of the First ever Ghana Women of ExcellenceAwards . From the Facebook event - In Ghana, the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs has mandated that the Day should be commemorated with the Ghana Women of Excellence Awards Scheme. The theme for the Awards Scheme is “Empowering the Ghanaian Woman for National Development”, the primary objective of the Scheme is “to motivate Ghanaian women to strive for excellence in their various walks of life ...and to take their rightful places in the national development process”. The Awards Scheme will form part of the celebration in G...

Last week, my good friend Edward Tagoe was in the Bay Area attending the Launch conference along with other Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) graduates. I was looking for opportunities to meet him since he was going to be even busier than me and he was in San Francisco. He sent me an itinerary and I picked the perfect opportunity, The Africa Network (TAN) February 2011 Event: Showcasing Africa Software Entrepreneurs. Edward's Nandi Mobile , alongside Retail Tower and Streemio would be presenting about their business to members of the Bay Area African community and other interested folks at the Plug and Play tech center in Sunnyvale, California. I enjoyed the event and little did I know it was one highlight of a week that would end up with Nandi Mobile 's Gripeline winning best business at the Launch conference . Attending the TAN event gave me the chance to learn more about these start-ups. A lot of this info is being reproduced from my tweets. Samuel ...

News broke Friday of NandiMobile , a Ghana-made start-up from the MEST Incubator winning a“Best Business” award at the LAUNCH conference in San Francisco. I was so excited about this, especially from my friends Edward Tagoe Twitter: @ttaaggooee , Anne Amuzu and Kwame Pocho. Edward had told me he was coming for a conference in San Francisco earlier this month, turns out it was a conference aligned with a competition of almost 100 Silicon Valley start-ups! For a Ghanaian-made product to win this international award in the Bay Area of all places, it is a monumental achievement. Mind you, this is not Ghanaians living the US or Ghanaian-Americans, these are Ghanaians who've been schooled in Ghana, worked and learnt in Ghana and built their products/software in Ghana. Like Jorn Lyseggen (CEO of the Meltwater Group) said, "software can be made ANYWHERE!" Congrats to @Nandimobile group. I have already blogged about the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) ...

While I was in Ghana over the Christmas break, I thought of my blog. I had missed blogging. I was browsing mostly on my HTC Aria phone powered by Android using Vodafone's mobile internet. Power to you, Vodafone. My laptop decided not to turn on once I got to Ghana so I was computerless. I couldn't get to use my brother or sister's pcs, because they were on it a lot. It didn't really occur to me to blog using my phone. Too much to type. That brought up another idea. Who said blogs should be 6 paragraphs? No one. If someone did, I'm not buying it. Blogging should be fun. Why so serious? Anyway, Why so serious was the title of my blog when I started it. It was chosen because this blog would be a place for me to speak my mind, promote people and projects, air out opinions, publicize things, etc. And I was going to do it my way, in a witty and funny way cos there is no reason why we can't talk about serious things in an 'unserious' way. But, this Christmas, ...

I found some exciting news from @TerryPheto's twitter yesterday. She tweeted on October 6th - Great News... HOPEVILLE has been nominated for an EMMY AWARD. Best TV Movie/Mini-Series. I had already blogged about the HOPEVILLE movie , which was released in South African theatres September 3rd. I am waiting patiently for it to be on DVD, which will take a while. The movie's trailer speaks volumes and am personally not surprised that the television show has been nominated for an International Emmy in the TV Movie/Mini-Series category. I have never heard of any African television show being nominated for an International Emmy. This is big! Local is lekker! Hopeville has already won an international award, it won for best drama and mini-series at the Rose d’Or Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland on 22 September, where it beat 85 other TV dramas. In the International Emmy competition Hopeville is competing against three other nominees: Germany’s The Author of Himself, the UK’s Small Isl...

I first learnt about Canoe Magazine while in Ghana over the Christmas holidays in 2008. I had gone to visit an aunt and she showed me their first issue. She had one mostly because her grand-daughter (one of my cousins I had never met and still haven't met) Efua Odunton was featured in it. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the magazine and the content. It oozed African excellence. They featured rising stars like Efua Odunton , stories about Africa, and other interesting things. If you find a copy of the Canoe Magazine in one of these stores , you should buy it. The magazine aims to celebrate the best of Africa. It's such a high class magazine that to advertise in it costs $1,500 to $10,000. It's circulated in Accra, Abuja, Lagos and Johannesburg through various outlets. CANOE magazine will be distributed in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, Liberia, Egypt, Gambia and Sierra Leone in Africa; the United Kingdom; and New York, Atlanta, Califor...

A while back I heard about From A Whisper, a Kenyan movie by Wanuri Kahui which commemorated the 10th anniversary of August 7th terrorist bombing in Kenya in 1998. The trailer was super and I've wanted to watch the movie so badly. I tell everyone I know who's visiting Kenya to get me the movie but no one has found it for me yet. Well, Wanuri Kahui is in the news again. Her short film, Pumzi, has just won the Best Short Film award at the Cannes Festival, one of the most revered film festivals in the world. The time is arriving, when African movies are challenging others around the world in terms of world-class quality. To Wanuri and her crew, I say Hongera! Pumzi website: www.pumzimovie.com . Film synopsis from Pumzi website: Sc-Fi film about futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III --The Water War. Nature is extinct. The outside is dead. Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the m...

When a female soldier in a Ghanaian movie (Scorned) was shot in the line of duty and taken to hospital, she wasn't taken to Korle Bu. She was taken to Lister Hospital , a modern healthcare facility in Accra, not very far from the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange. Lister's website says the Lister Hospital and Fertility Centre is the most technologically advanced private hospital in West Africa. From the movie and the susequent scenes in and around the hospital, it looks modern, clean and high-class. Basically, the healthcare costs there will be high. I wonder if the National Health Insurance Scheme would suffice for costs there. In the era, where countless government personalities have to fly abroad to get excellent medical care, it's refreshing to know about institutions like Lister Hospital, however small they are. There should be more Listers and the public health system should catch up with the needed state investment. How many world-class hospitals are in Ghana? Last time, ...