George Bamu, the founder of the U.S.-based 501C (3) non-profit, Africa Agenda, is a journalist, writer, and IT practitioner. A native of Cameroon, Bamu has lived in Aurora, Colorado for more than two decades. **Learn more at AfricaAgenda Dot Org

Questions about Media Coverage of Ethiopian Airlines Jet Crash

A few hours after a Boe­ing 737 Max 8 jet, owned and oper­at­ed by Ethiopi­an Air­lines crashed short­ly after take-off from Addis Aba­ba, the Ethiopi­an cap­i­tal, on March 10, the sto­ry about what hap­pened quick­ly swung from the many vic­tims who lost their lives in the acci­dent to ques­tions such as what ver­sion of aircraft…

NBC News Story On Central African Republic Fuels Afro-Pessimism

I stum­bled upon this sto­ry about the chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in the Cen­tral African Repub­lic (CAR) on TV Newswer, a web­site focused on things that are going on in the media and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape.  Then I turned to the report­ing that cor­re­spon­dent Cyn­thia McFad­den had pro­duced for NBC News per­tain­ing to her recent trip to the…

Reports of Ethiopian Airlines Crash Leads the News Globally

Reports that an Ethiopi­an Air­lines air­craft, a Boe­ing 737 MAX 8 crashed Sun­day, March 10 en route from Addis Aba­ba, the Ethiopi­an cap­i­tal to Nairo­bi, Kenya woke me up ear­ly in the morn­ing. I received two alerts on my smart­phone ear­ly in the morn­ing, from the New York Times, as well as from Reuters, which…

Nigerian Elections Lead the News

There has been plen­ty of news relat­ing to the African con­ti­nent over the last sev­er­al weeks but Saturday’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Nige­ria is the one event that gar­nered the most head­lines.  The pres­i­den­tial elec­tions were held on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 23 a week after it was delayed by the country’s Inde­pen­dent Nation­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (INEC). The…

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African Community In Colorado Enter the Rough and Tumble of US Politics

Edi­tor’s Note: This post was pub­lished before the Novem­ber 6, 2020, U.S. midterm elec­tions. The  results show Jason Crow defeat­ing Mike Coff­man by 10 points (54.1 by 42.9)  With­out a doubt, one of the hottest races in the 2018 U.S. midterm elec­tion is being fought in Colorado’s Front Range which includes Auro­ra, Cen­ten­ni­al, Brighton, and…

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Organizations Wage War on Fake News in Africa

The bat­tle to deal with deceit, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and its relat­ed ills, or fake news, has been on for many years. You’ll see me use the word “bat­tle” many times in my writ­ings on this sub­ject. It’s a bat­tle because the ter­rain is akin to war­fare. In a bat­tle where you either win or you lose,…

Colorado’s Africans and US Politics

                          The African Com­mu­ni­ty in Col­orado con­tin­ues to grow. As this growth is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue, cov­er­age of Colorado’s Africans by local and inter­na­tion­al news media shows us how impor­tant the com­mu­ni­ty is to the state’s pol­i­tics.  The com­mu­ni­ty in Col­orado brings together…

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Writing During Trump Era — 6 Things African Journalists Must Know

Writ­ing dur­ing the Don­ald Trump Era: It was crit­i­cal for those who advo­cat­ed on behalf of the African con­ti­nent, African blog­gers and jour­nal­ists espe­cial­ly, to take a stand and fight for the con­ti­nent we believe in. African blog­gers need to have a voice on the inter­net, just as the mil­i­tary has a voice on the…

Bad Africa Report from NYT Concerns CU Professor

I did not know many of the reports Peter S. Good­man allud­ed to in his Jan­u­ary 27 arti­cle in The New York Times had come out until Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado (CU) pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy Lau­ra Delu­ca drew my atten­tion to them. Delu­ca spends much of her time learn­ing about the African con­ti­nent and inter­act­ing with its…

Three Inaccuracies Identified in Cameroon Story by KUSA 9 News

Edi­tor’s Note: The orig­i­nal KUSA 9 News sto­ry was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2016 but we returned to it because of how impor­tant it is. The Cameroon sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues into 2018 and many fear it could lead to a full-scale civ­il war in the coun­try. The South­ern Cameroons issue which is plagu­ing the African nation of…