U.S. Chamber of Commerce Africa Digital Innovation Competition 2022 for African Startups ($25,000 cash prize)

Application Deadline: June 30, 2022 

As part of the 2022 Digital Economy Summit, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s U.S.-Africa Business Center (USAfBC) in conjunction with AmChams across Africa, is hosting its annual Digital Innovation Competition for African Startups. The competition is targeted towards Digital SMEs and startups that are looking to facilitate the delivery of digital, cross-border, interoperable, and cross-domain services, and solutions, while also accelerating their digitally enabled growth.

The Digital Innovation Competition will award innovators, entrepreneurs, and startups for developing solutions through digital products and services while creating a positive impact on African citizens.

Requirements

Be a startup or innovator with at least 51% African ownership
Must be incorporated /registered with the appropriate country-based body, e.g., Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)
Not be a government agency, public administration, political organization, or non-profit of any type Africa Digital Entrepreneurship Competition 2022

Benefits

The total Grand Prize package is worth $25,000. This includes $15,000 in prize money, a 6-month mentorship with a Fortune 500 Tech Company and a 1-year subscription to digital tools/platforms.

$15,000 2nd Prize Package
Second prize includes $10,000 in prize money, a 6-month mentorship with a Tech Company and a 6-month subscription to digital tools/platforms.

$10,000 3rd Prize Package
Third prize includes $5,000 in prize money, a 3-month mentorship with a Tech Company and a 3-month subscription to digital tools/platforms.

Click here to apply https://bit.ly/37Tzfuj

Nigeria and Senegal sanctioned by FIFA over fans rowdiness and indiscipline

FIFA issued a raft of sanctions worldwide after studying dozens of cases from qualifying games for the forthcoming World Cup in Qatar.

The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has ordered African champions Senegal and Nigeria to play one match behind closed doors after crowd disorder during last month’s 2022 World Cup playoffs.

Fans shone laser pointers at Egypt star Mohamed Salah as he missed in the penalty shootout, won by Senegal, in the second leg in Dakar.

Senegal were fined 175,000 Swiss francs ($180,000) over several incidents, including a pitch invasion, an offensive banner and for failing “to ensure that law and order are maintained in the stadium”.

The ruling body issued a raft of sanctions worldwide after studying dozens of cases from World Cup qualifying games played since the start of the year.

Nigeria was given a one-game stadium closure and fined 150,000 Swiss francs ($153,000) after fans invaded the pitch in Abuja following their playoff defeat by Ghana.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lebanon received similar punishments following disturbances at games against Morocco and Syria, respectively.

SOURCE: AFP

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“Just shoot (George Floyd Protesters) in the legs or something” – Trump to Pentagon

Ex Defense Secretary Mark Esper reveals what then President Trump told military brass in an Oval Office meeting to do about protesters of George Floyd's killing

THIS JUST IN – Former President Donald Trump reportedly urged top military brass to shoot protesters who flooded the streets in the summer of 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd.

That’s according to a new book by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who recalls Trump asking deputies in a June 2020 Oval Office meeting, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

The alarming excerpt, first reported by Axios on Monday, details a “surreal” scene at the Resolute Desk, “with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.”

“The good news — this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper writes. “The bad news — I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaks during a news briefing with President Donald Trump at the White House on March 18, 2020.

ALEX WONG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Esper’s account aligns with other reports from the summer of 2020, when Trump sent unidentified federal squads into cities such as Portland, Oregon, where they kidnapped protesters and wreaked havoc. Trump then portrayed the violence as originating from the Black Lives Matter movement.

In fact, the opposite was true: A statistical analysis by professors at Harvard and the University of Connecticut found the BLM protests were “remarkably nonviolent,” and that, when there was violence, it was often perpetrated by police or counterprotesters.

Trump reportedly told advisers that he wanted soldiers to “beat the fuck” out of BLM protesters, according to a book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.

Bender also reported that Trump wanted federal squads to “shoot” protesters and “crack their skulls,” or at least “shoot them in the leg — or maybe the foot, but be hard on them.”

Esper publicly broke with Trump in early June 2020 over the president’s desire to use the Insurrection Act to send U.S. armed forces into states to act as domestic law enforcement.

Trump fired Esper in November 2020 after he lost the election.

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The African Nation That Lasted Only 12 Days

On January 15, 1966, just six years after Nigeria had become independent, a group of young army majors overthrew Nigeria’s democratic government in a military coup. The leaders of the coup said they were fighting corruption and ethnic rivalry. Those who staged the coup were mostly Christian southerners from the Igbo ethnic group. They killed several northerners including Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and Northern Region Premier Ahmadu Bello.

Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an army commander who was an Igbo, was able to bring down the coup but he also seized power. Six months later, a group of northern soldiers staged a counter-coup against the Igbo, causing the Igbo to flee south and later form a breakaway country called Biafra.

But before declaring Biafra a republic, some young men from a minority ethnic group — the Ijaw — had also declared their independence from Nigeria. They were led by a 27-year-old student union leader turned revolutionary fighter Isaac Adaka Boro.

The Ijaw, numbering about 15 million, inhabit Ondo, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom and Rivers state in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Boro, in February 1966, declared the Niger Delta region where he comes from a sovereign republic and himself the head of state, stating that minority ethnic groups like the Ijaw were being suppressed.

He had condemned the January 1966 coup that killed Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, whom he admired and believed could protect the Ijaw. He, therefore, rejected the new regime led by Igbo leader Aguiyi-Ironsi, proclaiming the first secession from Nigeria at only 27 years old. Boro’s Niger Delta Republic would only last for 12 days though some believe that his act politically emancipated the Ijaw people.

Born September 10, 1938, in Oloibiri (Bayelsa), the site of Nigeria’s first commercial oil discovery and first industrial oil well, Boro’s father People Boro was a school headmaster and this caused the family to move a lot as People Boro was transferred to different schools throughout his teaching career. Boro first followed in his father’s footsteps by going into teaching before later joining the police force.

In 1961, he got a scholarship to study at the University of Nigeria (UNN) where he became Students’ Union Government President in 1964 after failing to do so twice. He believed that coming from a minority group (the Ijaw) was what led him to fail twice in becoming a student union leader.

In 1965, Boro left UNN and moved to Lagos, where he founded a political movement called the Integrated WXYZ. The movement argued that Ijaw people should be allowed to control and make their own decisions about their natural resources.

Then came the January 1966 coup led by the Igbo. Boro and others believed that the Igbo coup was going to suppress other ethnic groups and impose Igbo domination.

So on February 23, 1966, after having trained scores of young men in a militia camp behind his father’s compound in Kaiama, Boro proclaimed the Niger Delta Republic. Besides condemning the January 1966 coup, Boro argued that the Niger Delta region providing the country’s wealth had suffered for too long.

“Today is a great day, not only in your lives but also in the history of the Niger Delta,” he said in his declaration speech. “Perhaps, it will be the greatest day for a very long time. This is not because we are going to bring the heavens down, but because we are going to demonstrate to the world what and how we feel about oppression.”

“Remember your 70-year-old grandmother who still farms before she eats; remember also your poverty-stricken people; remember, too, your petroleum which is being pumped out daily from your veins; and then fight for your freedom,” Boro told his supporters.

But his republic survived for just 12 days. His armed militia was defeated by the Nigerian forces. On March 7, he and other leaders of his militia group were arrested and charged with treason. Boro and his comrades were sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life in jail.

In August 1967, after Ojukwu and his people had declared the Biafran Republic, the Yakubu Gowon-government released Boro and enlisted him in the Nigerian Army to fight in the civil war on the side of the Nigerian government against the Biafra, according to this report. Boro recruited his own force of about 1,000 soldiers and recorded some victories but was killed before the war ended around the age of 30.

In 1982, Nigeria’s president Shehu Shagari conferred a posthumous national honor on him. The Bayelsa State government also declared May 16 as Isaac Boro day to remember the death of their freedom fighter and hero.

Boro certainly knew that he wasn’t going to succeed with his secession but he went ahead with it largely because he wanted the world to know what the Niger Delta was facing and after many decades, Niger Delta communities say not much has changed.

Source: Ghanaweb.com

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