Global Voices Online

Emerson Santiago [pt] writes at Patafurdia Magazine about akonting, the musical instrument found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. “The Portuguese colonizers and the North American slaves owners began to call the instrument “Banjo”, coming from the Quimbundo word “m'banza” (language of the second largest ethnic group in Angola), which means “home”, “city”, likely a reference to the “banzo” that black slaves felt when supporting their lament on the instrument's strings.

Posted by Paula Góes

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Recent Links also in Sub-Saharan Africa

Can eating leeks help your singing voice? Intrigued? well The Ethical co-op blog ponders this, the need to flouridate water, eggs and a new net-metering law in South Africa.

A week after the 10 hostages (including 8 foreign nationals) kidnapped by the Bakassi Freedom Fighters were exchanged for the release of 13 prisoners, Cameroonian blogger Le blog du Prési wonders what a hostage is worth. ”I don't mean ‘what does a hostage cost?'”, he writes. “Even though these would be the worst criminals, are their lives so futile that they can be exchanged for those of other human beings? At the very least, on this path, Cameroon is redefining the rule of clemency, liberating prisoners under duress, and at the same time exposing the victims of these prisoners to their terrorizers.”

From the Kabissa Newletter, a project is profiled: The organization aims to plant trees in thirteen Village communities of Ngoketunjia Division, as a means to fight climate change in Cameroon and the world at large.