Techcabal.com Mark Zuckerberg dining with business and political leaders in Kenya
This week’s most important headlines out of and about Africa.
In this week’s news, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg visits Nigeria and Kenya, and African migrants flow into Mexico.
Mexico Issues Transit Visas to African Migrants
According to an Associated Press story reprinted by the Colorado Springs Gazette, authorities in Mexico have recently issued transit visas to an estimated 424 African migrants on their way to the United States.
The migrants are expected to apply for asylum in the United States when they get to the U.S.-Mexico border, the report states.
This story is intriguing because the recent flood of migrants into European Union countries has dominated the news. Not much has been reported about migrants from the African continent going elsewhere.
“Immigration support staff in Tijuana has been aiding migrants from the Congo, Somalia and Ghana to arrive at the U.S. port of entry at San Isidro,” The Gazette reports.
Founder of Facebook Visits Nigeria and Kenya
When a young internet tycoon like Mark Zuckerberg goes to a continent that is often described by Western media as poor or third world, what are people supposed to do? Stay quiet? Not at all.
Everyone is talking about Zuckerberg’s visit to the African continent. That’s right!
Zuckerberg, whose company Facebook is pioneering a new way to deliver the internet from space, made the surprise trip to Lagos, the Nigerian capital on August 30 to a lot of media fanfare.
The story line is that Zuckerberg is very excited about Nigeria. On September 1, he visited Nairobi, the Kenyan capital to lots of fanfare as well.
As he prepared for a meeting with developers in Lagos, August 30, Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page, “Building a more connected world is an opportunity to listen to the world’s many voices.”
Meanwhile the visit to Nigeria and Kenya has brought on a controversy of its own.
Apparently some are upset with CNN for what they believe is a mischaracterization of Nigeria when a writer wrote a misleading headline which identified the country as “sub-Saharan Africa” instead of Nigeria.
The story prompted Quartz Africa to question why we still use the term “sub-Saharan Africa” when there are other phases or terminology that could be used in its place.
