Dynamic Africa

Africans on TIME Magazines 2013 100 Most Influential People in the World List:

Joyce Banda, President of Malawi

Joyce Banda, Malawi’s first and Africa’s second female President, could not have come onto the stage at a better time, particularly since the African Union declared 2010 to 2020 African Women’s Decade. Together, she and I can talk about the situation in Africa and what can be done by all our countries, working together in strong partnership, to build bridges and democracies and get our institutions and economies strong again.

President Banda possesses the traits needed during this period of great challenges in Malawi’s, and Africa’s, history. Before her active career in politics, Joyce Banda established several nongovernmental and charitable foundations, all geared toward improving the lives of her compatriots, particularly women. Today Joyce and I have a collaborative program that focuses on improving the working conditions of market women. There have already been exchange visits between market women of our two countries.

President Banda is committed to using her position to improve the lives of women across the continent, not just in Malawi. She has great strength. I am delighted that I’m not alone in Africa anymore.

By Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Actor, singer, philanthropist

The world’s most productive English-language film industry is not Hollywood but Nollywood. The teeming Nigerian cinema grinds out some 2,500 movies a year, mostly direct-to-DVD quickies mixing melodrama, music and an evangelical Christian spin. (Think Bollywood via Tyler Perry.) Employing a million Nigerians, Nollywood enthralls millions more who come for the thrills, the uplift and the artful agitations of Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde — the Queen of Nollywood.

Called OmoSexy by her fans, she has made 300 or so features, from the 1996 Mortal Inheritance to the 2010 superproduction Ijé, shot partly on location in Los Angeles. Married to an airline pilot she wed on a flight from Lagos to Benin, Jalade-Ekeinde brings a juggler’s grace to her roles as actress, singer, reality-show star, mother of four and philanthropist (the Omotola Youth Empowerment Programme).

Success hasn’t spoiled Africa’s most renowned leading lady. Rather than going Hollywood, Omotola wants to stay Nollywood.

By Richard Corliss

Moncef Marzouki, President of Tunisia

His power stems not from what he is — his office is ceremonial — but from who and where he is: a leftist liberal President appointed by an Islamist-dominated assembly in the nation where the Arab Spring first flowered. All the countries that followed Tunisia’s lead now face identical challenges. Marzouki recognizes that there are two Tunisias: one religiously conservative and anxious for socioeconomic improvement, the other secular and progressive and terrified of losing its freedoms. Marzouki’s job, he says, is to reassure both that they can coexist, by writing a new constitution that enshrines human rights while respecting Islam and ensuring that both Tunisias have a voice in the political process.

The best reassurance may be Marzouki himself: if he thrives, it will demonstrate that the Arab Spring states can build a pluralistic political environment.

By Ayman Mohyeldin

My job is hard. I have to sift through pages of political- and media-themed satirical material from exceptional writers and figure out what amusing face I can make to accompany each jab. Then I must perform them, 22 minutes a day, four days a week, with only our caterer’s spread to sustain me. Bassem Youssef does my job in Egypt. The only real difference between him and me is that he performs his satire in a country still testing the limits of its hard-earned freedom, where those who speak out against the powerful still have much to fear. Yet even under these difficult circumstances, he manages to produce an incredible show: a hilarious blend of mimicry, confusion, outrage and bemusement, highlighting the absurdities and hypocrisies of his country’s rebirth, all wielded with the precision of a scalpel, which, by the way, he should know how to wield because he’s a former heart surgeon. Yeah. And his family is beautiful and he’s a kind and generous friend. I am an American satirist, and Bassem Youssef is my hero.

By Jon Stewart

NOTABLE AFRICANS: Reverend John Chilembwe

John Chilembwe was a Baptist educator and political leader who organized an uprising against British colonial rule in Nyasaland (today Malawi). Though details about Chilembwe’s early life are largely undocumented, it is believed that he was born in the Chiradzulu region of Nyasaland sometime around 1871 to a Yao father and a Mang’anja slave. The Mang’anja were the traditional ethnic group of the area but fell victim to enslavement by Arab and Yao slave traders; the Yao, originally from northern Mozambique, fled famine in their native country and served as middlemen for the Arab slave-raiders. Chilembwe, a mix of the two ethnic groups, embodied the plight of both. He grew up under the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity of the southern Nyasa regions. When the British colonized the area in 1891, naming it Nyasaland, they established newly organized governance and missions, and sought to control the indigenous people of the region.

In the autumn of 1892 Chilembwe met the Baptist missionary Joseph Booth, who had recently established the Zembesi Industrial Mission as an alternative to the older Scottish Presbyterian missions that exploited the indigenous population. Though Chilembwe initially applied to be Booth’s cook, he quickly became a close friend and ally of Booth and took care of Booth’s daughter. The missionary educated Chilembwe on his egalitarian philosophy and baptized him on July 17, 1893.

The pair traveled to the United States in 1897 to fundraise for the Mission. There, Chilembwe was plunged into a milieu that was highly critical of whites. He met and was influenced by the radical Zulu missionary John L. Dube from South Africa, Dr. Lewis Garnett Jordan of the Negro National Baptist Convention and many other African American preachers and radicals. Staying behind in the United States as Booth returned to Nyasaland, Chilembwe attended Virginia Theological Seminary and College at Lynchburg, Virginia in 1898 and 1899. In the United States, Chilembwe gained an increasingly global perspective on the struggle of people of African descent against injustice and white supremacy. He took these newly acquired political ideas back to Nyasaland in 1900, returning as an ordained Baptist minister.

Once returned, Chilembwe founded the Providence Industrial Mission with aid from the American National Baptist Convention. By 1912, he had established a chain of independent African schools, constructed a brick church and planted crops of cotton, tea, and coffee. His attempts to uplift the local population, however, were undercut by continuing exploitation of Africans by the British. Triggered by British mistreatment of famine refugees from Mozambique as well as the conscription of natives to fight the Germans in Tanzania during World War I, Chilembwe invoked the name of the American abolitionist John Brown and organized a rebellion against the British.

He and 200 followers staged an uprising on January 23, 1915 with the aim to kill all male Europeans. The revolutionaries killed three British subjects, including a particularly corrupt plantation owner named William J. Livingston, a descendant of failed Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who they beheaded in front of his wife and daughter.

When the uprising failed to gain local support, Chilembwe fled to Mozambique, where he was killed by African soldiers on February 3, 1915. Though his rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, Malawi, which gained independence in 1964, celebrates John Chilembwe Day on January 15th as his uprising is viewed as the beginning of the Malawi independence struggle. 

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African musicians featured on the cover of the FADER magazine.

The life and story of Malawian author Legson Didimu Kayira (1942 - 2012)

Born Didimu Kayira, c. May 10, 1942, in Mpale, Nyasaland (now Malawi), Kayira was one of the few surviving children of Timothy Kayira and Ziya Nyakawonga.

The Kayira family lived in abject poverty and Kayira would later write that he came from “one of the poorest families that God ever created since the beginning of time.” However, despite this, his family were determined that Legson Kayira would receive an education. After months of savings, the family were able to send him to a Scottish missionary school three miles away from where they lived.

However, the school had no paper, pencils, or books. In addition to the tuition, the students were expected to bring the teachers food and work in their gardens. For a time they spent most their school days building a road. Most of the village boys preferred to tend cattle, rather than go to school. Kayira wanted to quit as well, but his parents made him stay since they had paid the year’s fees.

It was while attending this missionary school that Kayira decided that he wanted an English-sounding name and thus coined the name ‘Legson’, becoming Legson Didimu Kayira.

After finishing secondary school, Kayira decided to attend college in America after he attended a rally in support of his country’s independence where he heard Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda speak. Kayira wrote in his autobiography:

“I saw the land of Lincoln as the place where one literally went to get the freedom and independence that one thought and knew was due him. One day I would also go there, I would also go to school there, and I would also return home to do my share in the fight against colonialism.”

Later Kayira told Time magazine, “We have 3,000,000 people in Nyasaland and only 22 university graduates. Nobody has ever earned a degree from an American college. I want to be the first.” He also told Reader’s Digest, “Young men grow up with no schooling, no work, and they become thieves and damage the country. I wanted to do better.”

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The MOBO Best African Act nominees for 2012 are:

• Amadou & Mariam (Mali)
  
• Camp Mulla (Kenya)
  
• Cabo Snoop (Angola)
  
• Sarkodie Duncwills (Ghana)
  
• Fally Ipupa (DR Congo)
  
• D’Banj (Nigeria)
  
• Spoek Mathambo (South Africa)
  
• P Square (Nigeria)
  
• The Very Best (Malawi)
  
• Fatoumata Diawara (Mali)
  

Read more about them and vote here!