Andrew Heavens
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Andrew grew up in various parts of Africa — Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt — before moving back to England to start a career as a journalist. He covered village fêtes for Somerset's Chard & Ilminster News, crime and car crashes for Wolverhampton's Express & Star and technology for the Financial Times. He has since worked as a journalist in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Khartoum, Sudan. He blogs and posts pictures at Meskel Square.
Latest posts by Andrew Heavens
29 August 2006
Ethiopia
Tobian Thinktank asks why Ethiopia's army is bothering with its military manoeuvres in Somalia while foreign troops are having to come into Ethiopia to help flood victims. We've people and villages getting swept away, lives being taken and destroyed by the hundreds and what is the Ethiopian army doing?
South Africa
“The Amateur Gamers Association of South Africa (AGASA) has created the first official online national gamers' league,” reports Tectonic.
Sudan
The Concoction reports that Darfur women are still being raped three months after a key peace deal in Sudan. “Fetching fire wood or water often ends up in the women being raped. Just imagine running to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk and there is a very high possibility of you being raped.“
Kenya
“In Kenya corruption is such a way of life” writes Girl in the Meadow as she describes an encounter with a bribe-taking policeman.
Kenya
Mshairi had a dig at a new HIV/Aids fundraising campaign that uses posters of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow wearing face paint and beads next to the slogan “I am African”. “If she is African, I am Plutonian,” she commented.
Kenya
Whispering Inn joined other Kenyan bloggers welcoming the visit of Barack Obama, the USA's only black senator, to the country. “[Obama has been] chewing out president Kibaki for State-sanctioned corruption, encouraging folks to fight AIDS by getting tested, advocating media freedom at the Standard Newspapers, touring Kibera, and giving a lecture on good governance at the University of Nairobi,” he summarised.
Nigeria
Grandiose Parlor highlighted the 2006 Index of Economic Freedom report which claimed Nigeria's economy remained “repressed”. “The various economic programs and policies of President Obasanjo's administration seem to have not made any meaningful impact,” he said.
South Africa
A notorious South African Apartheid-era security minister hit the headlines after he washed the feet of an anti-Apartheid campaigner in an act of contrition. South Africa Logue dismissed the gesture saying: “[Adriaan] Vlok’s act - which strikes Your Correspondent as deeply offensive to many a South African’s sense of justice - has been roundly lambasted and scorned“.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has been on a spending spree, bulking out his motorcade with brand new outrider motorcycles and Mercedes saloons. “Now, in a country where there is no war, no threat to his life as he has such a tight control over everything, is it necessary to travel in such a fashion,” wonders The Bearded Man.
28 August 2006
Kenya
Barack Obama, the USA's only black senator, is visiting his father's Kenyan homeland. “Everyone, and everything, from the man on the street, to livestock, to stray cats and dogs, to insects and grubs, to pond scum all the way down the politicians fell over (it/them)selves to see and shake the hand of the Senator“, reported tHiNkEr'S rOoM.
Nice post Aparna. Good to see that Kolkata men and women are organizing against street...