Sierra Leone is slowly getting over its long and brutal civil war. That’s what the World Bank statistics tell you anyway. In 2003, Sierra Leoneans, on average, could expect to live for a miserably short 42 years.  It’s now 48 years and rising. Gross National Income, or GNI, is also rising, up from $220  per year to $340. But, two-thirds of the population of six million still live below the poverty line.
In 2013, Sierra Leone finds itself in economic transition, no longer entirely dependent on external aid but still without a vibrant local economy. Although the war officially ended in 2002, it left a legacy of grinding poverty. Thousands of young people are homeless, mainly because of the poverty that high unemployment brings. Eleven years after the war ended, you still find orphans or war-damaged people who are unable to pick up their previous lives.
Hazel Chandler first visited Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia in 2005 to make a film about the Liberian child rights activist Kimmie Weeks. Chandler is an experienced filmmaker, with an interest in making documentary films about challenging topics.
“I still find there are pockets of young men, alienated and angry, ready to go back to war. As soldiers they had money, a purpose, camaraderie and power. On the streets or in the provinces they have nothing.”
Chandler began filming with a dangerous street gang in Kenema, a large regional city North-East of the capital Freetown. When she gave the gang leader, Yumyum or Bad Man, as he is known, a hand-held camera to document his own life on the streets, an extraordinary thing happened.
“I fully expected him to film for a couple of days and then sell the camera. Yet, even when Yumyum went to prison and endured the most difficult of circumstances, he chose not to sell it for bail money. The camera became an expression of his identity and self-worth. He held on to it at all costs.”
The filmmaker quickly realized she was on to something.
“‘Yumyum’, my film, focused on the lives of three young men. Yumyum had briefly been a combatant. A-Class had lost his parents in the war, and KKDog had run away from an abusive uncle. Teaching these young guys to film and edit their own films, to document their own lives, gave them a purpose and a self-worth, which had been missing.”
After two years of filming the soon-to-be released documentary, she did what filmmakers are never supposed to do. She kept filming but stepped into the story and started to help her characters find schooling, jobs and a place to live.
From there, Chandler began to train homeless and poor people of all ages to film and edit, initially working in the offices of other charities.
“I found Sierra Leoneans living on the streets to be a talented and determined bunch, with a hunger for knowledge. They are pulling themselves up with grit and modesty and are a delight to teach. They have been the making of me, not the other way round,” the filmmaker explains.
Four years ago, alongside her son, Michael, she took the plunge to set up WAYout Arts, a charity dedicated to working with the street youth of Sierra Leone. In 2012, the WAYout Arts Hub finally opened in the center of Freetown. A music studio formed part of the Hub.
However, in tough economic times, charities worldwide were not being funded and were closing down projects.
“I think it was a happy coincidence of timing. I wrote to Strummerville, the Joe Strummer Music Foundation, when they were looking to donate outside the UK. They gave us the funds, equipment and the services to set up a music studio and taught our guys to be sound engineers,” she says.
Today, WAYout are recording street artists such as the Black Street Family. Previously, the 200-strong group was known as the Black Street Gang— among the most feared criminals in Freetown. Now, they have released an album, utilizing one of the few professional recording studios in the country.
As Chandler explains: “We won two out of the five film and music awards at Sierra Leone’s recent Human Rights Festival, and our reputation is growing. Our recorded music is regularly played on the radio and we have trained 600 young people, some of whom now work in the mainstream media. I am privileged to be a small part of that.”
In a final twist worthy of Nigeria’s Nollywood, the former gang leader Yumyum, who inspired both a documentary and then the WAYout Arts project has become Chandler’s adopted son. Yumyum is now known by his real name Amara and is regarded as family by both Hazel and Michael.
“Amara was the inspiration for everything, and he has changed my life. In Sierra Leone I am known as Mama Hazel; I fought the age and motherhood thing at first, but now I have accepted the role and I have a real sense of belonging.
“WAYout is helping people’s lives change, not least of all my own. When I’m in Sierra Leone I like who I am, which is a really nice feeling and which isn’t always true when I’m back in Britain.”   FL

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THe brit in sierra leone  turning gangs into film crews

Contemporary artist Kudzanai Chiurai is no stranger to controversy. When he drew a picture of Robert Mugabe’s face in flames, after the contested results of the 2008 Zimbabwean elections, he received calls asking him everything from who he was to the meaning and message of his artwork. Chiurai is now in self-imposed exile, he hasn’t been home since 2003, when he was 22.
Now, Chiurai lives in an inner-city loft apartment in east Johannesburg. It’s open-plan, except for the bedroom. His clothes are drying on top of tables and chairs, and vinyl music records are stacked up near the lit fireplace. Art and history books line the shelves.
The softly-spoken 32-year-old is reserved but his work speaks volumes. It caught the eye of British singer Elton John, who bought seven photographs from his Black President collection. But the quiet Chiurai doesn’t seem fazed by the hype that surrounded the purchase.
“It is cool. It’s not like I’ll ever meet Elton John. It’s nice that he bought photographs, but it’s nice that some of my friends bought my posters and have been collecting posters that I’ve made,” says Chiurai.
He was thrilled with the invitation to exhibit at the world-famous documenta exhibition in Germany last year.
“It’s an amazing invitation,” says Chiurai.
This was the 13th exhibition since 1955. It only takes place every five years and a mere 100 artists are invited from around the world. Chiurai was invited along with South Africa’s most celebrated artist William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and visual activist.
<div id="attachment_31128" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31128" class="size-medium wp-image-31128" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/369-123_1.jpg 683w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Artist Kudzanai Chiurai  </div>
“It’s huge… If you show at documenta you’re made as an artist,” says Londi Nzimande-Modiko from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.
Chiurai uses different media like posters, sculptures, short films, drawing and paintings in his work.
His latest work, Conflict Resolution, was shown at documenta as well as in Johannesburg. It was a collection that was easier to admire than to describe. It contained posters of his own identification document, another of a half-naked woman wearing nothing but her bra, and another of a log with Chiurai’s own face embedded in it with five machetes wedged into it. Yet another is a poster of him with a flaming tyre around his neck.
His supporters are twenty-somethings; you can spot them at the arty Thesis Social Jam sessions on Sunday afternoons or at exhibitions, music festivals and fashion shows. They wear clothes that your grandmother used to wear paired with anything from Dr. Martens boots to high heels. The men wear fedoras and many of the women have the sides of their heads shaved; there are turbans and pierced noses everywhere in a vibrant crowd that prefers to call the artist “Kudzi”.
It has been a long road for the first black student to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria. His love for art stemmed from primary school, and now he makes a living from it. His cheapest work sold was R200 ($20) and the most expensive went for R200,000 ($20,000).
“It’s sustainable if you work with a good gallery. There is a sense of independence within all institutions. The relationship between [you] and the broker you work with is not always a perfect relationship. We are all sort of part of some institution whether we like it or not,” says Chiurai.
Chiurai is very confident when he talks about his work. His latest achievement is having his short film Iyeza, an allegory of the Last Supper depicting the establishment of a new nation-state, exploring the African condition by juxtaposing the past and the present of a continent in the grip of violent civil wars. It was selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Multimedia is the name of the game and Chiurai is playing it. His previous exhibition, State of the Nation—of which Iyeza was part—received a lot attention. It referenced “child soldiers, African liberation movements, and civil wars. He tracks the similarities in the societal, political and ideological fabric of states in tumultuous times of transition,” according to the Goodman Gallery.
Aside from multimedia, Chiurai is always looking for a different way to tell stories. His first exhibition had a twist to it. He used multimedia and the viewing public.
“I made a couple of short films that I projected onto screens and I made four drawings and then I left them in people’s apartments… so they completed them. Then I collected all of them, [and] then the people who lived in those apartments came to the exhibition…  It was fun and interesting.”
“I was never trained in making film or photography… they were kind of like the leading mediums that grab our attention and it’s always interesting, how you can use them,” he says.
Soon he’ll be taking part in an exhibition that will tour the United States and Europe and end in Harare in 2016. So, it seems Chiurai’s art will be making noise in his mother country once again. It will be interesting to see what the authorities will think this time.   FL

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The Man Who Painted Flames On Mugabe’s Face

The seven members of music group Freshlyground are young, hip, charming, funny and, mostly, good looking, with band members hailing from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Even their musical style is a vibrant fusion of Afro-pop, indie, jazz and electronic.
Freshlyground is South Africa’s dream of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ personified. It’s a dream they now want to take overseas. In March, the band, for the first time, released an album in the United States, a major feat that they celebrated with a five-stop tour along the country’s east coast.
Releasing an album in the United States in CD format, not only digitally, is a huge career move for any musician, giving access to 315 million potential listeners.
“Of course, a break into the American market is the top prize for every band. But it’s also a notoriously difficult market to penetrate, one that is largely controlled by giant record labels,” says bassist Josh Hawks.
There is one hitch, though: the support of a major record label is exactly what Freshlyground doesn’t have, since it parted ways with Sony a couple of years ago. Sony BMG Africa had signed the seven-piece-band in 2004 after coming across the catchy, feel-good lyrics of their song ‘Doo Be Doo’. Sony released Freshlyground’s album Nomvula later that year, which sold 400,000 units and achieved double platinum status in South Africa.
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In 2005, Freshlyground was nominated for three South African Music Awards (SAMAs) for Nomvula, although they didn’t win any. A year later, MTV Europe honored them as Best African Act and in 2008 the band won the Best Group SAMA as well as Album of the Year for their third album ‘Ma’ Cheri’, and Best English Adult Contemporary Album.
But it has been difficult to keep up the initial success. Ma’ Cheri sold 87,000 units and in 2010 album number four, Radio Africa, was purchased by a mere 27,000 listeners.
Then came a major stroke of luck. International football association FIFA selected ‘Waka Waka’, a song produced by Freshlyground in collaboration with international pop icon Shakira, as the official anthem for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
“We were in New York to mix our album Radio Africa, when our producer [Fabrice Dupont] ran into Shakira’s producer and heard she was looking to collaborate with an African band for the World Cup song,” says lead singer Zolani Mahola.
‘Waka Waka’ became a worldwide hit and with more than four million copies—the best-selling World Cup anthem in the digital age. Nonetheless, outside of South Africa, ‘Waka Waka’ has mainly only been associated with the Colombian pop icon. Freshlyground’s CD sales remained sluggish.
To those in the industry it was little surprise that when Freshlyground’s contract with Sony came to an end, it was not renewed.
“We were tired of the traditional model where the record company takes a big slice of the pie for little work,” says violinist and backing vocalist Kyla-Rose Smith.
Since their departure from Sony, the band produced their fifth album, Take me to the Dance, out of their own pockets, enlisting Grammy award-winning producer Steve Berlin.
“This time we wanted to retain as many rights as possible,” says Smith.
They struck a deal with retailer Pick ’n Pay to distribute the CD to its stores nationwide. But after putting out the first 5,000 units in this way and managing the back-end of the distribution themselves, the band quickly understood that they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Freshlyground enlisted Johannesburg-based media entertainment company Electromode to get Take me to the Dance into music stores. The move helped sales somewhat but a good four months after being released in South Africa, it had only sold a meager 10,000 units.
On the upside, drummer Peter Cohen says that going independent has opened up opportunities to negotiate releases on the international market, removing a lot of red tape, since distributors won’t have to negotiate with Sony.
“When we still were with Sony, we tried to
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break into the US market several times, but for various different reasons, it never worked out. So we tried to re-position ourselves and identify new platforms for sales,” says Simon Attwell, the band’s flautist.
Freshlyground signed with Word of Mouth Music (Wommusic), a small Scandinavian “boutique label”, which managed to take Take Me to the Dance to the United States and Canada within a short space of time. There was also interest for a European distribution deal, says Smith.
It all comes down to the old question of whether you prefer to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond. Indie labels, such as Wommusic, have far less money to fund records, airplay and tours but give artists a lot more attention than a behemoth like Sony. But in the end, only major labels have the means to turn a band into an international success.
Freshlyground definitely have one thing going for them. When they landed their—at least for now—only major hit ‘Doo Be Doo’ and their album went double platinum, they didn’t get carried away or lead a wild, expensive rock star life. The band decided to remain financially prudent and agreed to pay each member a fixed, monthly salary.
“Running the band like a business has contributed to our longevity. Having a salary at the end of every month means we can work as musicians, with [financial] security,” says Attwell.
And that has worked for them for more than a decade.   FL

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The Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

Takun J and his entourage weave their way between the unfinished concrete buildings, through the sandy alleyways of Monrovia’s largest slum, West Point.
“That not small star,” a young man says, as Takun, aka the ‘King of Hipco,’ Liberia’s unique take on hip-hop, passes.
Market women, teenage girls, men, young and old, and gaggles of children trail behind the tall rapper. Wearing a cap flipped backwards and punctuated with a ‘T’ and a black tank top, bracketed by his muscular arms tattooed with the word, Hipco, and a crucifix, Takun J walks into a throng of people cheering his name.
Today, his fans have opened a chapter of Code 146, a small club the Hipco star recently set up in downtown Monrovia. Takun’s club is a place for musicians to meet, jam and perform, a rarity in a country where live music is only just emerging, a decade after the civil war.
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Back in West Point, the stage is set: a slab of concrete covered with a silver tarpaulin, a crowd barrier made of a thin piece of rope strung between two sticks and an amplifier that is heavy and scratchy. While TakunJ has established himself as Liberia’s leading rapper and now plays at small nightclubs, entertainment centers and NGO gigs, he started his career performing on makeshift stages in places like this. The people who live here, Monrovia’s masses—the ‘living-on-less-than-a-dollar-a-day’ Liberians—are whom he makes his music for and identifies with most.
“I speak to the youth: the street guys, gronna boys, thugs,” he tells me, back at the small wooden bar inside his club that is painted in Liberian colors—red, white and blue.
In Liberian English, gronna is a pejorative term meaning a person who was raised on the street and leads a life of drug abuse and crime. But TakunJ has reappropriated the word and used it to reflect the everyday hustle of young Liberians, many of who are unemployed and with uncertain futures.
“It’s the same thug life that we all go through. You suffer like a gronna person when you don’t have money, when you don’t have the support of your mother and father, that’s a thug life, that’s a gronna life,” he says.
Hipco is a mixture of rap and Liberian English—also known as colloqui—and has been around since the 1990s, but has only taken off in recent years. Colloqui is incomprehensible to outsiders, but it is a patois, a leveling language spoken across Liberia’s tribes and classes. While most sound systems across the country blast out Ghanaian and Nigerian music, Hipco has steadily been making its way across the nation’s airwaves, onto dance floors and drinking spots and the little boom boxes of motor taxis or pehn-pehn boys.
The rapper was born with the name Jonathan Koffa but dubbed himself Takun J because he sees himself as one of the founding fathers, or pioneers of this music form.
“It’s not the T-Y-C-O-O-N, no it’s not that business tycoon Takun in our own vernacular means big brother, a giant, a strong person who been into something for a long time,” he says.
Hipco is political in nature and often critical of Liberia’s ruling establishment. Takun arrived on the Liberian music scene back in 2005, with a tune attacking the transitional government of Gyude Bryant that was accused of graft. The song titled ‘We’ll Spay You,’ meaning ‘we will expose all of your dirty deeds,’ echoed throughout the streets of a shell-shocked Monrovia. ‘Police Man,’ which spoke about police corruption and brutality, was his next big hit and landed him a beating at the hands of the Liberian National Police before a gig. Most recently he became Liberia’s anti-rape ambassador. During his performances he splices in songs condemning violence against women.
One of his biggest hits, ‘The Pot Boiling Remix’, a song about hardship and scarcity that uses a Liberian saying—‘my pot can’t boil’—has become an anthem throughout the city.
Everybody pot boiling, my pot can’t boil.
The only time my pot can boil when a car kill the dog.
The government breaking, so the youth is still jerking.
School fees got me sent from school cuz my pot not boiling.
Corruption in the city got me kicking some dust cuz my pot not boiling.
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Tita Nagbe, a 20-year-old fruit seller, with a pretty round face, stands barefoot on a grave in the middle of the yard with a group of women and listens to the performance.
“I like his singing, he is active. His music is fair; everything he says is true,” she claims.
For Jacob Weah, a 25-year-old tailor, the appeal of Takun J’s music is its themes and messages.
“He delivers a lot of messages and says that we should believe in ourselves,” Weah tells me as he leans up against a wall dressed in flip-flops and a Real Madrid soccer kit. “He sings about oppression we suffer in our society; we are not receiving our basic needs.”
The lack of an established music industry in Liberia makes it difficult for artists to make money, says Takun J’s manager Nora Rahimian. Unlike neighboring Ghana or Nigeria, there are no production teams, just small studios or spaces where artists can record their tracks on old equipment and collaborate with engineers. With slow internet speeds, Hipco artists have limited possibilities for expanding their audiences beyond Liberia’s borders. As a consequence, Takun J’s music has had limited play outside of the country, and can be heard in a few clubs in neighboring Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Music piracy and lack of legal protection poses the greatest challenge for Liberian musicians, making it difficult even for artists as well known as Takun J to make money. But for now Rahimian says piracy is a positive thing.
“At this point, piracy is great. We will encourage the gronna boys—take the song and pirate the song because there is no other way to distribute the song. Let music reach the people. It’s not about being exclusive… If you can afford to pay for it pay for it.”
Despite the challenges, thousands showed up to the first Hipco music festival held last October, with another to be held this December. Takun J will be touring West Africa and then the United States.
Back at Code 146 on Carey Street, we talk about the future of his career and the future of Hipco in Liberia. The bar is set in a sand pit under a zinc roof, with a pool table, mixing deck and flat-screen TV mounted in the corner. In front of the small concrete stage is a weight bench alongside a bar with heavy metal axels attached on either side. It is rainy season and the stage is slicked wet, but come summer, Takun J expects the place to be packed.
While being a musician in Liberia is a hustle, Takun J is optimistic about the future. ‘God Sent’ is tattooed across his chest.
“I believe that I was sent to carry on this mission and I believe that God sent me to accomplish this mission.”
The mission: to take Hipco to audiences outside of Liberia.
“We are fighting a revolution now. Hipco will take the world,” Takun declares.   FL

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The Face of the Revolution

It’s 4AM and another golden dawn breaks over California. Mark Tonderai is already awake typing up a script in his home office. He is surrounded by film: his favorite film scores fill the air, to his right is a poster of the movie that brought him a taste of success, House at the End of the Street, and scrawled on three whiteboards are writing assignments, ideas and production schedules for his next projects.
When inspiration is lacking, Tonderai doesn’t have to look far. He simply turns and glances out the window. There, on Mount Lee, stands a symbol that can taunt as the years wear on: HOLLYWOOD.
Tonderai was born to a British father and a Zimbabwean mother, in Hammersmith, London. His parents sent him to Zimbabwe where he completed his education at Peterhouse, arguably one of the most prestigious schools in the country, located near Marondera. After high school he headed back England where he studied architecture, but he knew there was something missing in his life.
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“[Growing up] I was always drawing or typing on my father’s type writer. Looking back, I guess I’ve always been creative.”
Back in England, Tonderai applied for numerous jobs in the entertainment industry and landed a trainee-presenter job at the BBC. Three months later, he had his own radio show, The Mark Tonderai Show. It played a variety of music—hip-hop, R&amp;B, classic soul and reggae—to a fairly conservative British audience in the early 90s.
Tonderai wanted more and went into TV. One of his proud acting credits was a role in the highly-acclaimed 2002 action drama, The Four Feathers, starring the late Heath Ledger, Djimon Hounsou and Kate Hudson. Tonderai played an Egyptian orderly.
It didn’t get any easier behind the camera. A frustrated Tonderai felt he was fighting a losing battle and began making plans to go to Hong Kong where he would teach English, earn a solid income and figure out what to do with his life. Overnight, his luck changed.
“My wife picked up one of my pitches, read it and sent it to a competition… before I knew it, I was in production.”
In 2005, Tonderai’s film Dog Eat Dog brought him back to his mother’s land for the Zimbabwe Film Festival. His light skin and British accent puzzled many.
“Many people questioned whether or not I was really Zimbabwean because of the way I look. I had to defend myself… it was quite amusing.”
His road-film-thriller, Hush, which he wrote and directed, came three years later. The film did not do well at the box office but Tonderai was not discouraged. He worked harder, burning the midnight oil, to churn out what was to be his big break, House at the End of the Street. The film starred 23-year-old Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and grossed over $44 million.
“It was really good for us… Suddenly so many things changed. The film was shown on over 3,000 screens in America and I had to pinch myself.”
Tonderai may be settled in the United States but he dreams of making films in Africa.
“I want to do a film set in Cape Town, based on Roger Smith’s book, Wake Up Dead… It’s is a film I was born to do. I would really like to kick it off early [next year],” says Tonderai.
For the man born in England, raised in Zimbabwe and living in the States he still considers Africa home.
“I always tell people I’m from Zimbabwe, even though I haven’t been there in a long time.”
One of the most important lessons Tonderai has learned on his journey is to leave no room for regret.
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“Life is short, you have to get up and attack it. You have to make things happen because very soon you’ll realize that half your life is gone, then three quarters or your life is gone and then it’ll be too late. You’ll think back and remember all the things you wish you had done but never did.”
Things could’ve turned out very differently for Tonderai. He could have been an architect, he could have taught English in Hong Kong, but he took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference. Now he sits in the director’s chair yelling “Cut! Take two,” but he remembers that in life there are no second takes.   FL

There Are No Second Takes in life

According to her Twitter profile Thando Hopa considers herself, “A down to Earth dreamer with her head in the clouds. A Modelling Prosecutor who sneaks in some poetry here and there. Neva a dull moment. lil too bright for that”.
Gert-Johan Coetzee, a South African fashion designer, was due to show his collection at Vancouver Fashion Week but was stuck in a rut. Hopa was just the inspiration he needed.
“As I walked past her, it was almost like a light was shining in my eyes from the side,” says Coetzee.
Hopa had turned down modeling offers before and was indifferent to this one, but took Coetzee’s business card with the promise to find out who he was. The rest, as they say, is history.
Before this, Hopa never considered modeling and never wanted anything to do with it. It was her sister’s words of encouragement shortly before her chance meeting with Coetzee that persuaded her to take his card.
Hopa grew up in Lenasia South and later moved to Walkerville, both situated in the south of Johannesburg. She attended the private St Martin’s High School and acquired an LLB from the University of Witwatersrand.
Two years later she became a prosecutor with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the youngest in her Johannesburg group of recruits. Hopa says her biggest challenge was not only to learn to deal with people, but also to set aside her prejudices and stereotypes.
Hopa has albinism, a genetic condition that results in a partial or complete lack of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes that affects one in 20,000 people worldwide. The prevalence is much higher in Africa, with an estimated one in 2,000 affected. A recessive gene needs to be present in both parents for their child to be born with albinism.
Hopa was four years old when her brother was also born with albinism. As one of four children, she recalls not being happy because she was used to special treatment and attention, which she had to suddenly share with him. Their bond was strengthened by their ability to relate to each other better than  their other family members simply because they faced the same problems. Hopa feels her presence made things, to some extent, a little easier for him but acknowledges that they had to face different social experiences.
Those with the condition are vulnerable to sun exposure and bright light, almost all people with albinism are visually impaired, and the majority are classified as legally blind.  Hopa is no exception. She is very short-sighted and has trouble seeing street signs, causing her to rely on cabs most of the time.
She had a very happy childhood and was protected from the sometimes cruel world by her family. She recalls the first time her difference was made obvious. The  first day of school provided more than just education for little Hopa. The other children refused to sit next to her or touch her.
“I never felt the burden of being different because every time I went home I was loved, and I never looked different from anyone else. That’s the way they treated me. I never actually saw color,” she says.
Hopa spent her adolescent years questioning beauty and trying to figure out where she fitted . There were no role models that looked like her; she felt she was too different to be beautiful.
“I found myself wanting. Because in terms of media, in terms of everything, the responses I got from friends, from guys, I just didn’t feel like I was beautiful,” she says.
It was only in her university days that Hopa decided to redefine beauty. The determined Hopa set out on a mission to look hot, by her own definition, every day and to work on her confidence. She says she went through many style phases, including rock and Rastafarian.
There is no contractual agreement between Hopa and Coetzee, following her entry into fashion. The two have a friendship that Hopa says was fortified by last year’s South Africa Fashion Week.
Two weeks after meeting Coetzee, Hopa was scheduled to walk in his show for the event as the face of his collection. The only problem was that Hopa didn’t know how to walk in heels. The designer gave her a pair and told her to practice. Hopa says this was an emotionally confusing time for her. Her biggest fear was falling, but she says the support from the team and her family cushioned her.
“Gert must have checked up on me a thousand times that day,” she laughs.
In the end, Hopa felt triumphant.
Hopa’s goal for her modeling career is to stop being uncomfortable with albinism and reject the superstition and prejudice around albinism. She says that people are either in awe or repelled by it.
“We just want to make it another shade of normal,” she says.
People with albinism face harsher circumstances and social experiences in Africa, most severely in east Africa. The persecution of people with albinism is based on the superstition that certain body parts of albinos have magical powers that bring prosperity, while another says they are cursed.
Albinos are abducted, mutilated and their body parts sold.
A report by Canadian charity organization, Under The Same Sun, for the United Nations states that there were 155 attacks, including deaths, documented in Africa between 2006 and 2012.
Hopa says the problem is cultural and that she’s never had to worry about her life  because she’s different. All she can do is deal with the social circumstances she’s used to and understands.
Albinism is not new to the international modeling industry; top models include Stephen Thompson, Diandra Forrest and Shaun Ross. The world’s first albino model was Connie Chiu from Hong Kong. She got her first big break with Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris.
Hopa is at ease in front of both the judge and the camera. Her two worlds do not demand too much to require her to choose. So in the meantime, Hopa will remain a prosecutor during the week and a model on weekends.
Hopa’s dignity is her greatest asset and that’s all the NPA asks of her.   FL

Thando Hopa

Fashion’s Legal Eagle

It is a chilly Friday morning in New York and I am sitting in the back of a black SUV on its way to pick up supermodel Alek Wek from her brownstone Brooklyn home. It was meant to be a glamor photo shoot in the wide open spaces of upstate New York with the supermodel-turned-businesswoman-turned-activist. The temperamental weather in New York had other ideas and simply would not let us be great outdoor Africans. A weather advisory warning of a snow blizzard had been issued. New Yorkers are overly sensitive about the weather for good reason; Hurricane Sandy had torn at the city earlier in the year. I took the cue from my New York crew and booked a studio close-to-home in Brooklyn to minimize travel and exposure to inclement weather.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31063 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-232x300.jpeg" alt="" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-232x300.jpeg 232w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-300x388.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-600x776.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124.jpeg 612w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
Wek is as much a supermodel as she is the girl-next-door. She commands the runways in the name of fashion designers such as: Chanel, Hermes, Donna Karan, Christian Lacroix and Zac Posen. Her career has thrived in Paris, New York, Milan and London and she has also appeared on the covers of high-end fashion magazines such as Elle, Glamor, Cosmopolitan and Essence. She has also been the face of campaigns for Benetton, Kenzo and Saks Fifth Avenue.
No small feat for an African girl born in Wau, Sudan, now South Sudan, in 1977 to a family of nine. Speaking softly in her British accent, Wek talks of her life, between sips from the coffee cup clasped between her hands.
“Our careers define us to an extent, but then there’s you as a person. You are not born with that career even though you have it already in you. For most of us, and especially us African women, we have to overcome a lot of obstacles to get there. And even when you get there, however you define there for yourself, there is still more to accomplish.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31065 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-600x450.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868.jpeg 864w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Despite the fact that she is one of Africa’s global icons, she has a pleasant disposition and we chat like old friends as the driver deftly drives us through the snowy roads to the studio.
That Wek has defied all beauty standards is obvious. Dressed in skinny jeans, layered tops, winter jacket and her trademark head scarf, she stands at 180cm tall, with short hair. Wek is from the Dinka tribe of South Sudan, with piercing, oval-shaped brown eyes, high cheek bones and teeth whiter than white. It is an understatement to say Wek’s features are striking: very model material in a nouveau kind of way.
“I came into the industry at a time when some people would say: ‘she’s odd, she’s weird, she’s bizarre.’ But I never saw myself that way and the true people, the legends, the talented, saw me.”
As Wek slips into a gown made by fellow African David Tlale, of Johannesburg, she also assumes her professional power. In front of the camera, she epitomizes the confidence of the new generation of African leaders.
Her head wrap is more than a fashion statement. It is a reminder of the place she came from, where her fragile frame survived only through incredible strength and resilience.
“I have gone through the civil war where we were barricaded in our house for three days because of the shootings and bombings. The scariest thing for me was feeling like there is nobody to protect you and nobody’s life is accounted for. I used to have nightmares when we fled to England. It took me some years to get over that.”
Wek has never forgotten these desperate days. As her fame rose, she found her voice to speak for the millions of huddled and vulnerable refugees around the world.
“I know firsthand what it feels like to walk for weeks and weeks. I know what it feels like to eat whatever you can find in the bush. I know what it is like to be voiceless,” she declares as she describes the journey she undertook as her family fled from rebel and government forces, when civil war raged in her hometown in 1985.
Wek arrived in London, aged 14, and was discovered soon after by a Models 1 scout in a South London market and has been a model ever since.
“I model in moderation now. It is not the quantity, but the quality of my work. I also want to make time and space for the next phase of my life. I would love to settle down, get married and have children.”
So much so, that Wek has scaled back her work so she can live a more grounded life. This year, she ended a five-year relationship.
“For him, it was more like a three-year relationship since I traveled a lot. I then realized that I have to live in the same country as the man in order for this marriage thing to happen!” Not one to pine for long, she is back in the dating scene and also dotes on a fox terrier by the name of Lil Bit.
Wek says her mother is a true African mother.
“Whenever I visit mom in England, and we sit down to have supper, the first question is always: ‘The babies?’ So, I get to practice with my Lil Bit,” laughs Wek.
At 36, she is a grown woman—an African woman with a strong sense of self and purpose in life.
“If anything, fashion and modeling has not only given me trips to the most exotic locations around the world, fantastic perks, stays in five-star hotels and expensive gifts. Most importantly, it has given me a platform with which to make a difference on important issues that matter to me.”
This stance earned Wek a position as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in which she travels to war-torn nations.
In 2011, South Sudan split from the Sudan, as part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of protracted war in the continent’s largest country.
“Freedom is so special and so precious,” she speaks cautiously, as if she were reliving her traumatic childhood.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31066 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-300x212.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="212" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-300x212.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-600x424.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-768x542.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551.jpeg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
For the first time, since she fled from the region with her family, the Sudanese refugee-turned-supermodel went back to South Sudan.
“Going back after South Sudan became independent was very emotional for me. I never really thought that we would attain independence. It was a very surreal moment for me,” she says fighting back tears.
She is guarded when I ask her to rate the new president of South Sudan, Salva Kii.
“It would be unfair to try to rate him so soon and I will tell you why. When someone has been in the bush for decades fighting a war and now has to make a considerable switch to lead the country, you have to cut him or her some slack.”
Wek is mindful that South Sudan is a collective effort—a collaboration among stakeholders including the government and citizens.
“I truly believe that it is our generation. Us. You and I and the rest of the continent and diaspora. We are the ones we have been waiting for.”   FL

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The beauty that tumbled from war

What is it?
A set of reforms to improve regulation, supervision and risk management in the banking sector.
Why do we need it?
The financial system is regulated to protect investors, ensure the solvency and soundness of financial institutions, keep efficiency and transparency in the markets as well as ensure a stable financial system. Regulators are there to reduce the risk of failure and contain any situations that occur. Micro-prudential regulation aims to limit the risks within intermediaries in order to reduce the possibility of an individual institution’s failure. This is the traditional regulation used before the 2007-2009 crisis, but failed to prevent systemic risks.
The financial crisis showed that not all institutions held sufficient capital and that the quality of the capital was sometimes poor and not available to absorb losses as they materialized.
Macro-prudential regulation aims to make institutions internalize the costs that their behavior imposes on others. It is now the focus of global regulators. Capital requirements may vary according to the intermediary’s contribution to systemic risk or with the business cycle—with a higher requirement in upswings to create a capital buffer against shocks. Institutions may also be required to take out extra insurance or to issue contingent convertible bonds. Due to macro-prudential regulation, some progress has been made in moving the world’s over the counter (OTC) derivatives markets to a centralized infrastructure.
Where does it come from? Capital requirements monitor a bank’s balance sheet by requiring that they hold a minimum level of capital and restricting the types of assets a bank can hold. The idea is that the capital buffer will help institutions absorb shocks and losses without going insolvent. Under the risk-based capital requirements of the Basel accord of 1988, minimum capital standards were linked to off-balance-sheet activities such as loan commitments and trading positions in futures and options. The Basel accord required that banks hold capital of at least 8% of their risk-weighted assets (RWA). Basel II tweaked the capital requirement to be based on the assets held by the individual bank. It however didn’t place enough importance on macro-prudential and systemic risk.
What changes does it bring?
The reforms in Basel III include a new definition of capital. The revisions made to raise Tier 1 capital’s quality and quantity (now 6%) should help prevent financial institution insolvency. Those in Tier 2, simplifying and reducing it to 2% of RWA, will help make sure depositors and senior creditors are repaid should failure occur. Tier 3 capital was removed all together. Aside from increased capital requirements, Basel III introduces stressed value-at-risk capital requirements for re-securitization; the introduction of a capital charge for potential mark-to-market losses and higher capital requirements for OTC derivatives.
The introduction of a leverage ratio, to be used in addition to the risk-based capital framework of Basel II, will be up to individual regulatory bodies to apply at their discretion.  The proposed new global liquidity standard entails a liquidity coverage ratio that requires the availability of high-quality and highly-liquid assets to exceed the net cash outflows of the next 30 days. This is to ensure that institutions can survive strain that may last up to 30 days. The other component of the new standard is the net stable funding ratio, requiring long-term financial resources to exceed long-term commitments.
Instability arises when banks have used short-term liabilities to finance long-term assets—resulting in what we call a liquidity and maturity mismatch—and market liquidity dries up due to a shock, such as a sudden reversal in capital flow. Banks will then be forced to sell off assets, leading to downward movements in prices. This places the entire system at risk.
Basel III will also introduce two new capital buffers: a 2.5% capital conservation buffer and a countercyclical buffer of 0-2.5%.
What happens next?
Global regulators have yet to agree on a way to deal with the “too big to fail” institutions. The “too big to fail” concept refers to the largest institutions, who’s failure would surely lead to the entire financial system crumbling. After the recent crisis, some of these banks consolidated to create even bigger ones. Since they know that they will not be allowed to fail they feel like they can take greater risks.
The implementation deadline for Basel III is 2019.   FL

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Basel III

It’s no secret that the Empire State’s inimitable energy, relentless pace and pulsating drive have led to the creation of some of America’s (and indeed the world’s) most famous and enduring commercial and cultural institutions.
This dynamism coupled with an effervescent melting pot of people of diverse nationalities and ethnicities has also given rise to a newer trend—an African one. In the past few years, the New York eye on Africa has gone from strength to strength, resulting in what we have today: a veritable community of business leaders—some African, some not—who are using New York as a base for building, showcasing and investing in African ventures and opportunities.
Not long ago, doing business in Africa was the preserve of die-hard Afrophiles in New York. Most New Yorkers had little interest in or connection to Africa; on the contrary they stayed away, discouraged by media depictions of Africa’s various crises. In 2013, this has changed dramatically as the metropolis has become the de-facto hub for much Africa-related activity on this side of the United States (US).
A slew of successful investment firms, PR agencies, fashion companies, media houses and various other businesses now operate out of the city, having laid firm foundations in recent years, all culminating in what appears to be a New York-based Africa boom.
A growing number of people, both African and non-African, are opening and investing in businesses and business-related activities focused on the continent. These people wish to deepen and strengthen the relationship between Africa and the US from their New York City bases. They are positive that they can take
Africa by storm. And, they are doing it. In fact, a New York location allows them to take advantage of the constant comings and goings of international colleagues and clients, who may be easier to access in the US than when further afield, while technology allows them to stay in constant communication with Africa.
You can see the shift by looking at the media’s portrayal of Africa. Major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Daily Beast are now willing to extol Africa’s virtues, while towards the end of last year, The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, hosted an invitation-only breakfast panel to discuss ‘Africa’s burgeoning media sector’.
You also know that change is underway when Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt returns from a trip to Africa and pens a thoughtful blog post, in which he describes Rwanda as a ‘jewel’ and admits his surprise that Nigerians are entrepreneurial, stylish and educated in addition to laying out some of the major opportunities that he has seen for Google’s growth on the continent.
International PR agent Claudine Moore, a British expat who is based in New York and spends a good proportion of her time working on African projects, counts the Nigerian airline Arik Air as one of her clients. She uses her British, American and African connections to advance business on both sides of the world. She is currently gearing up to present the first Social Media Week in Lagos (the first to be held on the continent) in February.
They say that art imitates life, and the city’s art world has not been shy in its current embrace of Africa. Currently showing at the Walther Collection is ‘Distance and Desire’ an exhibition of contemporary African art and photography. The Walther Collection is extraordinary in that it is owned by Artur Walther, a German man who has one of the largest collections of contemporary African art in the world.
Africa Fashion Week, which has become a regular feature of the global fashion week circuit, will return to New York once again this summer.
ARISE media group has also just announced the launch of a new Africa-focused 24-hour global news channel. Guess where its first US-based hub is? New York City of course.
New York finance firms have also been encouraged by President Barack Obama’s open desire to encourage US businesses to invest more heavily in Africa and are looking forward to attending the Africa investor summit later in the year which will once again bring together over 250 investors from around the world at the New York Stock Exchange.   FL
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<h2>The city of dreams</h2>
<h5>By Farai Gundan</h5>
From Wall Street, Tribeca, SoHo, Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of the boroughs that make up the 8.2 million-resident metropolitan city, Africans are quietly but steadfastly building their empires and pursuing their diasporan dreams.
Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and indeed it is the best of times for Africans in the United States. Particularly in New York, a global city, where the residents are constantly in an empire state of mind. This is not surprising given that New York yields tremendous influence in fashion, finance, technology, art, film and media, and music and entertainment. International organization, the United Nations, is headquartered in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan overlooking the East River making the mega-city an epicenter for international diplomacy.
Navigating around New York City on the subways, buses or yellow cabs; Africans in New York typically use HopStop, an app that provides optimal directions and was founded and developed by Nigerian-born tech entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo.
Africans can also experience home cooking right in New York. From the renowned Africa Kine, a restaurant that serves West African cuisine in Le Petit Senegal, a neighborhood of Harlem, to the popular Madiba, a South African eatery in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, or Buka’s, an authentic Nigerian restaurant and bar in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
From the electrifying musical performances of D’Banj, Lira and Oliver Mtukudzi during the summer months and the fireside readings of authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and NoViolet Bulawayo to Nollywood movie premieres, colorful traditional weddings, baby showers, graduations and family celebrations, Africans always find a reason to gather in New York. We celebrate our entertainers at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards, our African models walk the runways and fashion designers show off their talent during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. You find Africans working diligently in corporate America on Wall Street, choreographing hit musicals on Broadway or being cast in the popular play, Lion King.
Like the rest of my fellow Africans who left their beloved countries for greener pastures, I came to the United States fresh out of high school to pursue my tertiary education. I had two options: the United States of America or Japan. The United States offered a generous scholarship to a private liberal arts college in the mid-western state of Wisconsin. I was so determined and focused that I graduated in three years instead of the usual four. I also worked full time to financially support my mother and younger sister who were still in Zimbabwe at the time. Never easy but an “African girl’s gotta do what an African girl’s gotta do”. Fast forward to my graduation, my family stood proudly on the well-manicured lawn at college congratulating me on obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree: a first in my family.
Of course, I had my eyes on even higher goals—a joint law degree and M.B.A. But law school is expensive, so I opted for the M.B.A with the goal of one day returning to get my law degree. That day is still to come. I attended Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black university, where I learnt about the works of W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes, and other great black men and women. Graduate school was a turning point for me. I embraced my culture and realized who I am as an African woman. I even went natural with my hair, sporting a short Afro. It was the beginnings of a coming of age of an African girl.
I received great training in corporate America, however, after a defining moment with Oprah Winfrey, I left to pursue a career in media. From covering red carpets to the fashion runways and everything in between, I have been able to travel across the United States. Yet New York remains the place that can turn an African girl with dreams of being a media mogul into reality.   FL
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newyork-city-with-flags_Audrey-Anderson

I’m an african in new york

It’s been just over a year since I packed up my life in South Africa to return to the country of my birth. As the plane hit the tarmac at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos, I knew I was back. The humid heat of the city welcomed me home with a slap, as did my struggle through immigration and my search for a cell phone signal so I could find my driver amid the multitude.
In the two hours home on the gridlocked highway, where I luckily managed to grab my dinner from the hawkers, a mild trepidation slowly sank in. This was it; I was home and needed some sort of returnee boot camp.
If you think this is one of those pieces where a Nigerian returnee whines about the ills of the country, think again. Yes, Lagos is traffic-plagued, crowded, highly polluted and will probably have even the bald and patient pulling their hair out as they wait for business meetings, but I love this city. Lagos is a place with rare energy, where each day injects a fierce lucidity that recharges the soul. In this column I want to give you a feel of this buzz, this electricity; a tapestry of arts and soul. I want to lead you through the best nightspots in Africa. From the sweet sounds of highlife music, jazz saxophones and art galleries that tell a tale like no other; to beer parlours with the best pepper soup in the world. From the lavish lives of the high and mighty to the infectious drive of the street vendor.
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On Monday morning in Lagos, the streets swarm with white-collared young, energetic executives, suited up in the heat, tablet in hand, rushing from meeting to meeting. Boardrooms brim with the pulse of change in this land of opportunities.
Patches of mustard-yellow are spattered across the city centre as commercial buses and taxis honk  fiercely at each other, competing for a place on the road with the ‘tut-tut’ BRT buses and private cars, while the market slowly comes to life with stores laying their wares out for a beehive of new customers on the roadside. This day, is not any less important and eventful than the next few.
On Friday evening, men in tailored traditional outfits hunch over bars at the best spots around the city, while half empty bottles of cognac and champagne loll on the table amid boisterous baritone cheers and pulsing Nigerian tunes. This is where the real business deals begin.
Across the road at a posh lounge, ladies with their fancy hairstyles, all with Ankara skirts and designer handbags, cocktail in the right hand, blackberry in the other, plot their next move. The night is still young and promising–for both for the ladies and the bartenders.
A few hours later, as the rich and famous crawl out of the busiest night clubs into the hazy light where their newest Range Rovers sit, there are chewing gum hawkers and parking attendants asking, with their best smiles beaming, “Oga/madame, anything for us?” Have I mentioned opportunities enough in this piece?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31091 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Ann-Ogunsulire-Prof.-Wole-Soyinka-Tolu-Ogunlesi-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ann-Ogunsulire-Prof.-Wole-Soyinka-Tolu-Ogunlesi-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ann-Ogunsulire-Prof.-Wole-Soyinka-Tolu-Ogunlesi-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ann-Ogunsulire-Prof.-Wole-Soyinka-Tolu-Ogunlesi-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ann-Ogunsulire-Prof.-Wole-Soyinka-Tolu-Ogunlesi.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Wedding convoys trail across the city incessantly on a Saturday morning. Lagos is a wedding planner’s Utopia as no weekend goes by in this city without a few nuptials, each one grander than the other. Women are geared up in their towering headties, men in their best kaftans, agbadas and caps, while live bands perform as celebrants and friends are sprayed with cold-hard cash on the dancefloor. From  morning till dusk, it is nothing but a fancy affair. Multimillion-dollar yachts and motorboats tear up and down the creek between the main Lagos islands as the quieter gentlemen come out to play with their toys. They are on their way to private beach-houses on a Sunday afternoon, because they can. Tomorrow is Monday and we have to play before then.
Whichever way you look at it, Lagos is a layered, bitter-sweet dish of rich culture, tastefully infused with a hint of class and laced with plenty of grit for texture.
This is Lagos, my Lagos.

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Working Hard Playing Harder

Francois Pienaar holding aloft the William Webb Ellis trophy. Graeme Smith clutching the ICC Test mace. Cameron van der Burgh grinning proudly, gold medal between his teeth, after setting a new world record in the breaststroke.
These are some of South Africa’s most memorable sporting moments. They happen at world cups, at Olympic Games and when a team reaches the top of the world rankings. And South Africa’s national women’s hoc-key side want one of their own.
They compete in the Africa Nations Cup in Nairobi this month, a competition they have won for the past five years. This time, however, victory will be only the beginning of a far more important mission. The top two teams in the tournament will progress to next year’s World Cup in Holland – and it’s there that the South Africans want to make their mark.
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Previously, the team’s success in Africa has not translated into similar achievements on the global stage. South Africa’s best finish in a World Cup is seventh place, and that was 15 years ago. But the steady progress they have made recently holds the promise of a stronger showing this year.
“We’ve been at this process for three years. And now we’re looking for the results to show it,” says Sanani Mangisa, the team’s first choice goalkeeper.
Since 2010, the team have been under the tutorship of Giles Bonnet, a former player for the national men’s side and, with almost three decades’ experience, a renowned coach. When he took over, Bonnet vowed to turn South Africa into a top-six country, a challenge he acknowledged; the team were ranked 12th in the world at the time.
Mangisa describes Bonnet as the best coach she has worked with, because he has “brought a new level of skills to the unit, to make sure we are technically better”.
Bonnet’s secret weapons are camps in China, where he has established close relationships with the hockey elite. He has a deal to use facilities in the Lüshunkou District in the south, where a world class facility has recently been built at a cost of $19.3 million.
“It’s a place where we can really be tested and all areas of weakness are highlighted,” he explains.
After a training camp in June, the team played in a world hockey league tournament in London, which did not end well. South Africa finished seventh out of eight teams.
“We need to close the gap between ourselves and European teams,” Mangisa says.
Bonnet agrees, and points out that hockey is “big business” in Europe. “Each team has many specialist coaches and support staff to assist in creating the perfect environment.”
The geography allows for inter-national competition to take place frequently. Some South African players have tried to ply their trade overseas to gain experience. Pietie Coetzee, perhaps the country’s best-known hockey player, spent some time in the Netherlands in 2007.
But Mangisa says getting a contract in Europe is not easy, and language barriers make it a lonely experience. There is an upside, however: “The big advantage is the salaries. You can live off being a player there.” The same cannot be said for South Africa, where many members of the national team try to hold down jobs while they are in training.
“I think that’s why we see many players coming through while they’re still at university. I did a three-year degree over five years so I could concentrate on my hockey as well,” Mangisa explains.
She was still a student when she was chosen for the Olympic team in 2008. South Africa finished the tournament in 11th place. Four years later, she was part of the squad that went to London. That year South Africa went one better and finished in 10th spot.
But Mangisa would like to see them get within reach of a medal in Rio. She believes the maturity of the squad could help them punch above their weight.
“We’ve taken juniors with us on tours, even if they are just part of the squad and don’t play, so they can get a feel for the unit and how we work. The big feeder system is from the universities and we’ve seen now, the under-21 team has done very well,” she points out.
South Africa’s women’s under-21 side finished eighth in the junior World Cup. That bodes well for a strong Nations Cup, World Cup and then Olympics. The country’s women’s sides have consistently outperformed their male counterparts at the Olympics, even if it is by finishing one place higher, as they did in London last year.
Mangisa admits the women’s results do not have as much to do with girl power as they do with a packed schedule.
“It’s about the amount of international hoc-key we play compared to the men’s team. We go to a lot more tournaments in a year because we have the money to do that, through our sponsor.”
Where other corporates may view women’s sport as a commodity best kept at arm’s length, Investec saw an opportunity.
“It is a commercially uncluttered market. The quality of sport is high and sportswomen have enabled us to appeal to a wider audience and engage in benefits not typically offered by men’s sporting codes,” explains Investec’s Janet Larson.
The sponsorship agreement does not set specific performance targets, however, Investec says it is satisfied that the team have “met their expectations over the past three years”. Their contract comes up for renewal at the end of the year and Larsen has confirmed that Investec is “in discussions regarding future opportunities”.

SA hockey team up their game

Lydia Nsekera was widowed when she was 36 years old. As a member of Burundian aristo-cracy, she could have turned to her family for financial support, but she chose not to. Instead, Nsekera took over her husband’s car repair company and used her skills as an internal auditor to turn it into a successful business.
At the same time, the Burundian Football Federation (FFB) was drowning in debt. The association had suffered severe financial mismanagement, was sanctioned by FIFA and faced an uncertain future. It only took the FFB a few months to see the improvements Nsekera had made at her garage before it approached her for assistance.
At face value it was an odd match. Nsekera was not a soccer player. She spent her school days playing basketball and competing in high jump, but had become interested in the game though her father and kept an eye on it over the years. Nsekera was savvy, and the FFB decided it could use someone with her acumen to lift it out of crisis.
When she was asked to accept a nomination for president of the federation, Nsekera was hesitant. She did not doubt her own ability but was unsure if she would be given the free rein she needed to turn around the ailing organization. She agreed to stand, provided she would be allowed to overhaul the structures if she was elected. The FFB agreed and Nsekera won the vote ahead of two male candidates.
A decade later, she became the first – and only – woman to sit on FIFA’s decision-making executive committee in its 109-year history, establishing herself as the pioneer for women’s representation in a man’s world.
“It’s massive for women and I hope our federation and other federations can follow the same path,” says Fran Hilton-Smith, the technical director of the South African Football Association (Safa).
“For example, in South Africa, we only have two women on the national executive committee and one of them is seconded from the PSL. It’s just the reality that football is still male-dominated, but like [Nsekera] has shown, to be successful as a woman, you need to be very determined.”
Hilton-Smith calls it “a miracle”, as it was previously unheard of for a woman to occupy such a senior position in a country’s soccer association. Of FIFA’s 209 member associations, Burundi’s is the only one to have a woman at its helm.
“For her to have been given that position was unprecedented,” says Hilton-Smith.
In her first year at the FFB, Nsekera achieved two major feats. She revived the national league, which had been dormant for three seasons, and rekindled the organization’s relationship with FIFA – to the extent that the soccer governing body agreed to pay for a new office complex for the FFB.
During Nsekera’s tenure, the Burundian league grew to three divisions, FIFA has funded another development project in the country and approved a plan for a national training center in the capital, Bujumbura. The country also held its first women’s soccer championship and the under-17 team won the East African regional competition.
The fortunes of Burundi’s national team have not changed as dramatically. They narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 2008 Africa Nations Cup, but rose from 147th to 104th in the rankings. Now they lie at 124th.
Officials at the FFB do not blame Nsekera for the team’s middling fortunes; instead they have praised her for what she has achieved so far.
“She will go as far as she wants, thanks to her work ethic and authority,” says Jeremie Manirakiza, the executive secretary of the FFB.
By her own admission, Nsekera’s success has come through slog. She has told Associated Press her recipe is simple. “I work, I work and I work.”
With that as her mantra, Nsekera has sat on the executive council of both the East and Central African Football associations, and was part of FIFA’s independent governance commission, as well as its radio and television sub-committee. Her role in furthering the cause of women has extended to serving on the African Women’s Football Commission, the Women’s World Cup Commission and the International Olympic Committee’s Women and Sport Commission.
Promoting the women’s agenda will be one of her focal points on the FIFA executive committee, but it cannot be her only one. The 25-person executive committee makes all the rulings that govern the world game. Members meet at least twice a year and among their most important considerations are the dates and places of FIFA tournaments, not to mention the regulations around how the world body is run.
Given Nsekera’s experience in overhauling an organization, her opinions should carry weight.
“She is on the committee and she will definitely be respected,” Hilton-Smith predicts.
Already, Nsekera has faced naysayers, ironically, other women. A FIFA delegate argues Australia’s Maya Dodd, a former international player and lawyer by trade, who was running against Nsekera, would have been a better choice and that Nsekera was pushed through only because there was much “pandering to the African vote.”
The same members claim Nsekera is not strong enough to take on the job because, “all she ever said at a meeting was: ‘Thank you for taking women’s football seriously’, and that she was only on the executive because Sepp Blatter had handpicked her for the job.
The FIFA boss, who has long supported Nsekera, has described her as a “princess of the game”. Whether or not that is because he wants the backing of the African continent in the future is debatable, but what is certain is that even if Nsekera was given an opportunity driven by someone else’s agenda, she is not one to waste a chance. Just ask the FFB.

Lydia knows how to play ball

The last few years have seen an unprecedented number of people rushing to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android. But looking at the installed user base on each platform and information on the payouts made by the different companies, it appears that the vast majority of developers will find themselves with little revenue to show for.
Google, Apple, Microsoft : Rich in users, developers
The consensus around the industry is that Google dominates the mobile market with 900 million users, while Apple follows with 600 million iOS devices purchased, and Microsoft comes in third place with an estimated 12 million Windows Phones sold (the vast majority of those, 81%, being sold by Nokia).
With different forums aimed at attracting developers, each company handles announcing the size of their markets differently.
Apple, at its WorldWide Developer Conference, talked about 1.25 million apps in the app store accounting for 50 billion downloads and $5 billion paid off to developers in the last year. To the company, it is a sign of pride to be able to pay this developer community. Internal data from the app store, gathered from sources close to the company, indicate that the numbers are in line with the actual payments made to developers.
At Google I/O, the largest Android developer conference, Google touted 150,000 developers responsible for over 800,000 apps. While the company does not break out revenue numbers on their apps, recent data in their financial filings seemed to indicate somewhere around $900 million in pay-outs to developers “over the last 12 months” and discussions with external research analysts put the number of downloaded apps from the Google Play store at around 48 billion, close to what Apple has claimed.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been claiming 160,000 apps in their store from 45,000 developers. In a recent interview, Microsoft officials claimed that the average user downloaded 54 apps, which would put their download count at 650 million to date. While the company does not break out data for its mobile division, looking at the variations in the accounts payable line of their 10-Qs over the last few quarters before and after they introduced their app store shows a variation of up to $100 million since 2011 that could be attributed to the app store.
So taking all that data into account, we can summarize it as follows:
Looking at this, it is clear that Apple is winning the game in terms of total number of apps and money paid to developers. But lost in the shuffle is how much money developers can actually make on those platforms.
Meager dollars per download
Taking the data in front of us, we can get a sense of how many apps the average developer creates and what kind of revenue a developer can expect from those apps, on ave-rage (granted, power laws dictate that a small number of developers will do extremely well while the vast majority will fail, but we’re trying to look at averages here).
Based on this, the average developer on those platforms is pretty busy, developing 3 to 5 apps depending on the platform. Interestingly, Android is the big winner on downloads for a given app but this is largely offset by substantially lower revenue, with the average app download bringing in around 2 cents to its developer; Apple fairs 5 times better, bringing in a dime for every one of the 40,000 potential app downloads a developer could strive for. But the interesting thing is that Microsoft’s platform may be substantially more rewarding for its developers, bringing in $.15 per download (a fact that is offset by download numbers shown to be only 10 percent of what the other platforms can offer).
With the average paid app retailing for $.99, what we see here is the direct impact of free apps on those marketplaces. Android’s substantial lead in offering free apps cuts deeply into the average revenue paid out to developers while the smaller availability of free apps on the Windows platform may work to its advantage.
But what does that mean in terms of actually revenue?
Impact on developers’ wallets
Multiplying the average revenue per app by its average number of downloads, we can get a sense as to what an average developer can expect to make on an app today. Taking the same number and multiplying it by the number of apps an average developer creates, we get a sense of the revenues one can pull from going that way:
What we see here is that while decent amounts of money can be made on an app, a hard-working developer on iOS will be able to get a new car, while Android and Microsoft developers will be forced into the used car market if they plan to take those earnings on the road. At $4,000 in average revenue per app, Apple has a lead but it still begs the question as to how many developers can actually make a living directly from apps on any platform. Direct revenue from the apps themselves may not be able to justify large development teams but other revenue sources (advertising, for example) may help developers increase their take.
Of course, these are average values and many hope to find the next big hit, the one that will be on the higher end of the median. But for every app that goes north of those numbers, the average for the remaining apps drop.
Where are the opportunities?
There is, however, some hope. While Apple has developed a rich market for developers, Google and Microsoft both have opportunities to improve. For Google, the focus should be on improving the numbers by helping developers monetize their apps so they can come more in line with what Apple can offer. Even if they only reached half of what Apple does in terms of revenue per download, they would be able to match the revenue developers make. For Microsoft, the story is all about the number of users. If they were to manage their average revenue per app while growing their user base, they could potentially out-earn all the other platforms.
In all three cases, however, there is much work to be done to increase monetization of free apps. And that may be the next growth opportunity for any developer as it presents an opportunity that is substantially larger than the existing one.
Every app developer hopes to build the next big hit but, as is the case for any hit-driven market, a large group will be left behind with little to show for their efforts. At the end of the day, the model for mobile apps is no different than any other of the past: whether it is gold in the Yukon, websites in the 1990s, or app developers today, larger amounts of revenue will go to those who enable development than to those who are doing the development. Levi Strauss made his fortune selling picks and shovels to gold prospectors; Adobe, Amazon, and Google made theirs enabling web developers; and as the mobile revolution takes hold, some new players will emerge providing tools to create apps and those may be the biggest winners.

How Much do average apps make?

It’s a popular hubris that we live in an age of unprecedented technological innovation – that our ancestors lived in a time where there were fewer technological advances, blinded as they were by their primitive superstitions and lack of access to the resources we have today.
While we certainly live in an era of amazing technology, it’s not necessarily true that our level of innovation is unprecedented. The fact of the matter is that our ancestors were just as smart as we are (in fact, given the human brain size has been shrinking for centuries, they might have been smarter.) And as archaeologists uncover more about the past, they’ve also learned that many technologies we take for granted today were first developed centuries or even millennia ago, only to be lost.
Take, for example, plastic surgery. It’s something we think of as a relatively new technology, right? But in fact, plastic surgery was practiced in India centuries before the birth of Christ. It continued to be practiced for thousands of years, but wasn’t “discovered” in Europe until the 18th century, when British doctors learned about it from India.
Recently, there have been two recent engineering discoveries from Ancient Rome that have the potential to shake up some major areas of industry – discoveries that show we still have a lot to learn from our ancestors.
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The first finding is rather astonishing. As noted earlier this month by Zeeya Merali, a 1,600 year old chalice known as the Lycurgus Cup have proved to be more than just a stunning work of art. It’s also an example of one of the earliest forms of nanotechnology.
The cup, as Merali notes, was actually a mystery for centuries. That’s because it appears green when lit from one angle, but red when lit from a different angle. It wasn’t until the 1990s, after decades of study in the 20th century, that it was determined how it was created. As it turns out, the glass itself was infused with particles of silver and gold that were only about 50 nanometers in diameter. The particular ratio of the mixture was definitely known, as other similar cups have been discovered.
In a paper from 2007, scientists who have studied the cup noted that “[e]ven using modern powerdriven tools, this type of vessel takes a great deal of time to complete.” But more than that, this technology might turn out to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry.
That’s because researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, using the same techniques the Romans used, earlier this yeardeveloped a device that enables them detect DNA and proteins without having to chemically modify them first. That lowers the overall costs and helps resist errors that occur in the process. The team estimates that their device is about “100 times better sensitivity” than any other similar product.
In their paper, published in Advanced Optical Materials, the research teams says that “We envisage extensive use of the device for DNA microarrays, therapeutic antibody screening for drug discovery and pathogen detection in resource poor setting and a low cost, higher sensitive alternative to existing SPR/LSPR instruments.”
But the Ancient Romans aren’t content to only revolutionize medicine. Soon, you may be living or working on a building or road that’s built with the same materials that the Romans built their own with – materials that, when created, also produce fewer carbon emissions.
That’s thanks to the work of a research team at the University of California at Berkeley, which has studied the ways that Roman concrete has managed to endure for over 2,000 years in the same conditions that cause modern concrete to degrade after about 50 years.
The key to the durability of Roman concrete was its mixture of lime and volcanic ash, which produces a concrete that includes aluminum, something most modern cements lack. Modern cements also rely on limestone, but the Roman recipe calls for much less of it. That means that Roman concrete can be created at temperatures nearly a thousand degrees lower than modern cements. As a result, using Roman cement means not only a more durable material, but also one that can be produced with less fuel in less time – making it both more efficient and more environmentally sustainable.
That’s a good thing, considering that “manufacturing Portland cement accounts for seven percent of the carbon dioxide that industry puts into the air,” as lead researcher Paulo Monteiro noted in a statement. The research team’s chemical analysis of Roman concrete was recently published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, and more of their research will be published later this year.
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These new applications of Ancient Roman technology have, I think, something powerful to teach us in the present day. Many of the problems that face civilization are as old as civilization itself. And as we look for innovative ways to deal with those problems, it’s a mistake to only look for guidance in new ideas. It may be that if we look backwards at what our ancestors did, we maWy find that they’ve already solved our problems for us. We just have to be humble enough to accept that.

These two ancient Roman techs could disrupt modern industry

She is a talk show host, TV producer, media personality and entrepreneur. With the success of her talk show Moments with Mo, Mosunmola ‘Mo’ Abudu is often described as Africa’s own ‘Queen of Talk’.
At a glamorous launch of her Ebony Life TV channel in Lagos, Nigeria, in July, Forbes recognized Abudu as the first woman on the continent to own a pan-African TV channel. With Ebony Life, Abudu hopes to change perceptions of Africa, by showcasing the diversity of the continent and celebrating Africans who are making their mark.
“We believe it’s time to present a different Africa, one never seen before,” she explains.
Abudu was born in London to Nigerian parents. She worked for several corporate giants, including Exxon Mobil, before establishing a human resources consultancy, Vic Lawrence and Associates.
With her passion for media, however, it wasn’t long before she launched on her own television program. Abudu lives by the mantra, ‘If you think it, you can do it’. Her program, is the first daily talk show in Africa to be syndicated across the continent. It focuses on a variety of topics from lifestyle and healthcare to politics and culture.
To date, Abudu has hosted many high-profile people and dignitaries, including former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.
“I remember Hillary Clinton saying to me, ‘People like you have to make a difference by creating a different reality of Africa’. Growing up as an African child in the UK, I remember vividly how I always had to defend who I was as an African. Even in later years… asking people about their perception of Africa, I was shocked at the word associations used to describe our continent, ‘famine, safari, Oxfam and HIV’.”
Abudu says Ebony TV was just an idea but the start-up sum of $15 million seemed insurmountable. However, she did not let her fears deter her.
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“The sheer reality is that there are millions of people who have done great things and started out with nothing except the idea. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas, passion, and ideals. And don’t think that anyone is too different or too insignificant to help,” she advises.
It took Abudu four years of planning, presentations and looking for investors to get Ebony TV off the ground. “This was my idea, my passion and I was determined to succeed.”
The media mogul describes Africa as a “brand of opportunities, where you have the freedom to create whatever you want, because you will always find talent and people willing to help you”.
“On a continent growing fast in terms of GDP and a massive middle class, particularly in Nigeria, challenges must be looked at as opportunities. I couldn’t have achieved this anywhere else,” she says.
She hopes her achievements will inspire other women entrepreneurs.
“Women have dreams, but we tend to hold ourselves back and are our own worst enemy at times. We place ourselves last and put our dreams on hold out of fear and the belief that we can’t do it. We also tend to put other women down; it’s unfortunately a global thing. We need to learn to support each other and celebrate our success.”
She may be a high-flyer in the media industry but Abudu is first and foremost a woman. She believes women have a responsibility to maintain balance in their lives.
“I work extremely hard daily but I believe in looking good and nice. I make sure that I find the time to focus on myself, to feel confident and articulate in business,” she says firmly.
Abudu lights up when she mentions her children.
“Without them, I have nothing. Balancing my role as a working mother is not easy, but they are good children, which has allowed me to progress as far as I have.”
After losing her father when she was a young, Abudu says her mother plays an important role in her life.
“My source of inspiration is my mother; she is indeed my biggest motivator and gives me strength. When I don’t believe in myself, she believes in me.”
Abudu is determined to make a difference in people’s lives, especially young people.
“Even though the [Ebony Life] brand is still young, we will have extensions, including apps, perhaps even accessories and African fashion, which will hopefully leave an impact, particularly on the youth in Africa.”
And with her focus and passion, it is easy to believe her when she says, “everything you think you know about Africa is about to change, forever!”.

Tag: October 2013

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