History About The Ashanti People

Ashanti, are a nation and ethnic group native to the Ashanti Region located centrally on the Ashantiland Peninsula.

The Asante people speak the Asante dialect of Twi. The language is spoken by over nine million ethnic Asante people as a first or second language. The word Ashanti is an English language misnomer. Asante literally means "because of wars". The wealthy gold-rich Asante people developed a large and influential empire; the Ashanti Empire along the Lake Volta and Gulf of Guinea. The Ashanti are believed to descend fromAbyssinians, who were pushed south by the Egyptian forces.

The Ashanti Empire was founded in 1670 and the Ashanti capital Kumasi was founded in 1680 the late 17th century by Asantehene (emperor) Osei Kofi Tutu I on the advice of Ɔkͻmfoͻ Anͻkye, his premier. Sited at the crossroads of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, Kumasi megacity's strategic location contributed significantly to the growing wealth of Kumasi. Over the duration of Kumasi metropolis' existence, a number of peculiar factors have combined to transform Kumasi metropolis into a fitting financial centre and political capital. The main causal factors included the unquestioning loyalty to the Ashanti monarchy and Kumasi metropolis' growing wealth derived in part from the capital's lucrative domestic-trade in items such as bullion.

Akon Launches “Solar Academy” That Will Supply Electricity To 600 Million Africans

Superstar Akon announces his Akon Lighting Africa initiative at the United Nations headquarters
Senegalese-American pop singer Akon, whose Akon Lighting Africa initiative aims to bring electricity to some of the 600 million Africans who currently lack it, announced the launch of a new “Solar Academy” for the people of Africa.
The institution, scheduled to open this summer in Mali, will train African engineers and entrepreneurs with the skills needed to develop solar-powered electricity systems and micro grids. Training equipment and programs will be supplied by European angel investors.
Harnessing solar energy is an ideal way to enable those Africans without electricity to get it since Africa has 320 days of sunshine a year. Samba Baithily co-founder of Akon Lighting Africa said,
“We have the sun and innovative technologies to bring electricity to homes and communities. We now need to consolidate African expertise.”
The group announced the launch of the academy at the second United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Forum in New York last week, in support of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDG’s) and Post 2015 Agenda

Africa’s 10 Richest - 2014

	#1	Aliko Dangote   -Nigeria	$21.6 B	58	cement, sugar, flour
	#2	Johann Rupert   -South Africa	$7.3 B	64	luxury goods
	#3	Nicky Oppenheimer  - South Africa	$6.8 B	69	diamonds
	#4	Nassef Sawiris      -  Cairo, Egypt	$6.1 B	54	construction
	#5	Christoffel Wiese  - South Africa	$5.4 B	73	retailing
	#6	Mike Adenuga   - Nigeria	$4.6 B	62	telcom, oil
	#7	Mohamed Mansour - Egypt	$4 B	67	diversified
	#8	Isabel dos Santos   - Angola	$3.7 B	42	investments
	#9	Issad Rebrab   - Algeria	$3.2 B	71	food
	#10	Naguib Sawiris  - Egypt	$3.1 B	60	telecom

Beautiful Kenya

Lapped by the Indian Ocean, straddling the equator, and with Mount Kenya rising above a magnificent landscape of forested hills, patchwork farms and wooded savanna, Kenya is a richly rewarding place to travel. The country’s dramatic geography has resulted in a great range of natural habitats, harbouring a huge variety of wildlife, while its history of migration and conquest has brought about a fascinating social panorama, which includes the Swahili city-states of the coast and the Maasai of the Rift Valley.
Kenya’s world-famous national parks, tribal peoples and superb beaches lend the country an exotic image with magnetic appeal. Treating it as a succession of tourist sights, however, is not the most stimulating way to experience it. If you get off the beaten track, you can enter the world inhabited by most Kenyans: a ceaselessly active scene of muddy farm tracks, corrugated-iron huts, tea shops and lodging houses, crammed buses and streets wandered by goats and children. Both on and off the tourist routes, you’ll find warmth and openness, and an abundance of superb scenery – rolling savanna dotted with Maasai herds and wild animals, high Kikuyu moorlands grazed by cattle and sheep, and dense forests full of monkeys and birdsong. Of course Kenya is not all postcard-perfect: start a conversation with any local and you’ll soon find out about the country’s deep economic and social tensions.

Majority of Kenyans don't want Raila to contest 2017 elections

Nairobi - 33% of Kenyans do not want CORD leader Raila Odinga to contest the 2017 Presidential Elections.
In a survey done by pollster Ipsos Synovate, the 33% thought that it would not be a good reason for Raila to contest the elections come 2017 an should instead retire.
Another 27% thought that Raila should continue to be active politically but should not contest the elections come 2017.
34% on their part, thought that Raila should contest the 2017 elections.
" Among all respondents, one third are of the view that Raila should indeed retire from politics completely with a statistically identical proportion (34%) holding the opposite view: that he should remain active and even contest the next presidential election should he desire to do so (and receive his party’s/coalition’s nomination, of course)," Ipsos said in a statement.
Talk of whether the CORD leader should contest the next polls has been rife, with political folk from both the ruling Jubilee coalition and their CORD counterparts having a say on the matter.
Raila himself has been equivocal that he will run for the presidency on a CORD ticket come 2017.
" I will contest for the 2017 General Election, that is a fact," he said back in March.
Detractors claim that Raila is too old to contest the elections and should let the younger folk do so instead.

This Is Africa: BACKGROUND TO ASHANTI

This Is Africa: BACKGROUND TO ASHANTI: The period in which these Ashanti Ballads are set is the late 1950's when the Gold Coast became Ghana - the first African colony to ac...

HISTORY OF MAASAI

The Maasai are a Nilotic group. They inhabit the African Great Lakes region. Nilotes speak Nilo-Saharan language, and came to Southeast Africa by way of South Sudan. Most Nilotes in the area, including the Maasai, the Samburu and the Kalenjin, are pastoralists, and are famous for their fearsome reputations as warriors and cattle-rustlers. As with the Bantu, the Maasai and other Nilotes in Eastern Africa have adopted many customs and practices from the neighboring Cushitic groups, including the age set system of social organization, circumcision, and vocabulary terms.

According to their own oral history, the Maasai originated from the lower Nile valley north of Lake Turkana (Northwest Kenya) and began migrating south around the 15th century, arriving in a long trunk of land stretching from what is now northern Kenya to what is now central Tanzania between the 17th and late 18th century. Many ethnic groups that had already formed settlements in the region were forcibly displaced by the incoming Maasai,^[11] while other, mainly southern Cushitic groups, were assimilated into Maasai society. The resulting mixture of Nilotic and Cushitic populations also produced the Kalenjin and Samburu.

The Maasai territory reached its largest size in the mid-19th century, and covered almost all of the Great Rift Valley and adjacent lands from Mount Marsabit in the north to Dodoma in the south. At this time the Maasai, as well as the larger Nilotic group they were part of, raised cattle as far east as the Tanga coast in Tanganyika (now mainland Tanzania). Raiders used spears and shields, but were most feared for throwing clubs (orinka) which could be accurately thrown from up to 70 paces (appx. 100 metres). In 1852, there was a report of a concentration of 800 Maasai warriors on the move in what is now Kenya. In 1857, after having depopulated the "Wakuafi wilderness" in what is now southeastern Kenya, Maasai warriors threatened Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.