Dancing on the beach in The Gambia

Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s win was powered by discontented younger voters. Unemployment among young adults is at nearly 20 per cent in Senegal. © John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images

i hope i do one day end up in the position to be a conflict journalist, both despite and because of all the things we’ve seen recently

Senegal’s 🇸🇳 President Suspiciously Suspends Elections

President Mackey Sall (who is unpopular in his country) has decided that Senegal 🇸🇳 is not ready to vote on his replacement due to “legal” reasons.

Senegalese President Macky Sall on Saturday announced that elections scheduled for Feb. 25 would be indefinitely delayed, marking a first in Senegal’s history and fueling concerns about the electoral process in a country with one of the strongest histories of democracy in West Africa. […]

Sall said that his decision to postpone the elections was intended to preserve their credibility, which he said was jeopardized by disagreements between the constitutional court and legislative branch centered on which candidates are allowed to run. Sall promised to hold a national dialogue to ensure that the elections are fair and transparent but offered no timeline. […]

Guillaume Soto-Mayor, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, said the decision to delay the election didn’t seem to have constitutional grounds and appears rooted in fear among the elite that Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the candidate selected by Sonko to run as his replacement, would win if elections were held Feb. 25. Sall was supporting Prime Minister Amadou Ba. (Washington Post)

This is the first time elections have been delayed in Senegal 🇸🇳, which is one of the few French-speaking African nations that has never experienced a military coup. With no date set for when elections will be held, some are seeing this latest move by President Sall to postpone his retirement from office & remain in power indefinitely.

If President Mackey fails to come up with a reasonable timeline for new elections, we could witness riots again—or worse—a military coup capturing the country.

aira's mixed btw

missing a penalty kick and then allowing two fucking goals in like 10 minutes. okay

The Department of African Cultural Studies seeks a postdoctoral fellow for academic year 2023-2024 to pursue research in African Cultural Studies with a focus on francophone West Africa, the Maghreb, and/or Caribbean. 

Digital Africa : nouvelle opportunité pour les startup africaines. Le programme Fuzé est lancé, voici comment participer

Vous êtes une startup qui remplit les critères suivants :  – Moins de 18 mois d’existence ? – Fondée ou co-fondée par au moins un citoyen de pays d’Afrique francophone ? – Vous avez une composante #tech dans son produit ou modèle économique ? – Vous avez des opérations (coût ou profit) dans un pays d’afrique francophone ? Alors postulez au Digital Africa Fuzé pour bénéficier d’un appui financier…

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[MWN is Moroccan Media]

French President Emmanuel Macron causes another controversy, saying French is the “true African language” that can help African countries reach unity.[...]

While speaking this week at an event on Francophone heritage, Macron went as far as to claim that French is “the pan-African” language. However, he acknowledged that French is slowly losing its grip as a de facto language in many African countries.

“In the Maghreb countries, they speak less and less French compared to 20 or 30 years ago,” Macron said with an air of disappointment.

The French president went on to provide his personal analysis of the reasons underpinning the decline of Francophone heritage. “There are forms of resistance (to the French language) that are seemingly political,” Macron said. [...]

Noting a third factor directly responsible for the decline of the French language status in Africa, he explained that “there is a will [to] revive other languages, saying that this [is] how we can find a political path.”

The remarks on reviving other languages infuriated social media users as this indicates that the French president is criticizing Africa for the growing number of movements calling for reinstituting national languages and preserving them from extinction.

21 Nov 22

Making fun of french is funny, i hate france with a burning passion, but like seeing monolingual english speakers (like meee, hi! despite all odds i dont speak french) making fun of french day in and day out and going "ew bleck patooie who speaks FRENCH horrible colonizer language EW" but have seemingly no gripes with other colonizer languages like english or spanish.... like... erm... "imagine speaking FRENCH" can i show you this map of africa real quick actually.

Like yeah funney joke and ultimately harmless... but is it really? Like as Supposed leftists maybe we should be opening our minds and hearts more and Considering what kind of internal biases we may be holding and how alienating it might be for other leftists and particularly francophone african leftists, ok post over goodbyeee <3

3 and 6 for Matt please

3) Who depends on them. & something they lost, but would love to have back

These days? No one lol. Every once in a blue moon, Alfred needs his emotional support canuck or some backup or another pair of hands or a second pair of eyes. He might smack Matt on the shoulder like, "what would I do with out you, dude?" but that's a shakey premise on a good day. Love doesn't correspond 1:1 with need. Arthur is much more enmeshed with Europe whether he likes it or not. Jack and Zee go into the Pacific whether he likes it or not.

The picture differed greatly between the early Cold War and World War Two. Matt was this incredibly important bridge between two empires. I think we, myself included, sleep on this as a community. But so do even Canadian historians, unless they have a taste for diplomatic history. Just how important Canada was not only to the Americans and the British as two entities but how little would have gotten done in the North Atlantic without the ability to keep shit running, and everyone getting along just gets lost in the more dramatic stories. No one will make a movie like Saving Private Ryan or Dunkirk about boring stuff like food logistics or submarine hunting. Or if they do, the protagonist is going to be an American. British units serving next to Americans all across the European theatre dragged Canadian officers with them to do what essentially became anglo-to-anglo translation. We have this picture from the top down of Churchill and Roosevelt, but on every level below that, Canada is the great facilitator. To the point it causes conflict with India, Australia, South Africa and France. Even the USSR got a bit miffed about the influence of Canada in the early UN. At one point, he was this hinge between the power brokers and held enormous power. It's a lot of emotional intelligence that my autistic ass is kind of shit at writing, but the sheer influence he held for about 20 years is just so intense.

There was also a time when he was absolutely indispensable to his father. Need a war crime committed? The spare is prepared. More than half of the UK's food between 1940 and 1944 was Canadian, including 77% of wheat. By '44, More than 45% of RAF ground crews? Canadian. More than a quarter of the pilots were also Canadian. The entire gold reserve of the British Empire was smuggled to Montreal quietly and competently even most economic historians don't even remember its a thing. If it was asked of him, he did it, and he did it well.

But that was a very long time ago now. And perhaps, as L.P. Hartley put it, the past is another country. And I think Matt of today misses that time. Not the blood and treasure lost, not the strain, and god knows not the empire or even the rest of it, really. But there was that snapshot in time where he spoke and was heard. Before the French decided the Francophone soul of Canada was again politically expedient and did their damndest to tear it out, Matt was in so many ways, a stupidly important power broker. But that was long before he became a negative space where any echo of what Americans are or are not sounds.

Guys, almost 80 million people worldwide speak French as a first language, and 194 million people speak it as a second language. Half of all french speakers in the world are from Africa. When you are making fun/jokingly hating on francophones, you are not just hitting Emmanuel Macron, you are also hitting random canadian meti speakers, cameroonians, vietnamese people, etc.

France has a history as a colonial language, but if you are making fun of it In English, (spanish dutch russian portugese the list goes on), you do not have a moral high ground.

Coup Alert: Gabon 🇬🇦 Military Leaders Seize Power

After Gabon’s 🇬🇦 incumbent leader was declared victorious in a fraudulent election, the military seized control of the French-speaking African nation.

LIBREVILLE, Aug 30 (Reuters) - A group of senior Gabonese military officers appeared on national television in the early hours of Wednesday and said they had taken power, minutes after the state election body announced President Ali Bongo had won a third term.

Appearing on television channel Gabon 24, the officers said they represented all security and defence forces in the Central African nation. They said the election results were cancelled, all borders closed until further notice and state institutions dissolved.

So, another French-speaking African nation has fallen to a military coup, which is troubling as we could witness the end of democratic republics amongst former French colonies on the continent.

It would not be surprising to see Russia 🇷🇺 reach out to Gabon 🇬🇦 shortly. However, if they follow the patterns of the coup belt nations, half the continent could end up divided between democracies & dictatorships, which would not bode well in the long term (as human rights abuses are harder to monitor under authoritarian regimes).

‘Two Of Us’ was heard as music on the program, The Bachelor Afrique, a francophone television program in Africa [6.11.2023] 📸 pbo_28

i want to make this a separate post instead of tacking it onto the last post i reblogged, because a) i feel like its getting way too far away from the point of the OP and as someone who has been in that position several times on my main blog its annoying as shit, and b) i dont want it to feel like anybody is ganging up on OP or "dragging" them or whatever, i dont think what they said was mean spirited or came from a place of bad faith etc etc etc. (if i did i would have been a whole fucking lot meaner in replying lmfao) and i also dont think anything it said was Wrong tbh.

okay all that being said!

i will put my tags of my last reblog in the main text here, because this is something i want to expand on:

not to get too Deep about it but. the colonizing countries literally have more wealth and resources and opportunity *because* th#*they stole so much from the global south. they have the $ and the stability to develop ‘frivolous’ things like gym#at the direct expense of the colonies who are left penniless and in perpetual chaos and upheaval

(for context this is re: children of immigrants in diaspora and their connections to their parents'/grandparents' homelands and culture, and maintaining those ties when the reason they came to the global north are for increased opportunity for success and upward mobility etc.)

i wont turn this into a treatise on economic exploitation and its consequences like i alluded to in the tags (i would if i had like 3 glasses of wine tho lol) but the following is something i really do want to underscore:

i love nemour for a lot of reasons. the gymnastics itself, yes of course. i know i snark and make jokes all the time about her shitting on the FFG every time she does anything great under the 🇩🇿 flag. but sincerely, what she is doing for gymnastics in algeria, in north africa in general (hell even in africa overall given the attention that african champs got because of her), is truly something special. i will admit that i dont stay on top of algerian sports media lol but i do speak french and what ive seen, just what has come across my radar, in the francophone algerian press (both in france and in algeria) is drumming up major excitement about her. this is the kind of attention that gets people who otherwise wouldnt give a shit emotionally invested in the sport. the social and historical baggage of the treatment of algeria and algerians in france, and the olympics being in paris, is just the icing on the cake.

its not exactly the same dynamic, especially not in terms of the Discourse about resources and access in diaspora, but i cant help but to be reminded of daiane dos santos, who famously started the sport at the age of 12. and only 8 years later she became a world champion on floor. she was the first world champion in WAG from brazil, south america entirely in fact, ever!!!! rebeca andrade mentions her all the time as an inspiration for her as a little girl. rebe went out of her way (i mean that figuratively as well as very literally, we all know the story about her brothers escorting her through the favela to the gym and back) to do the sport, because she saw dos santos do great things and looked up to her. and now shes REBECA FUCKING ANDRADE. would we have Rebe™ if it hadnt been for daiane? no probably not!

i guess it just..... not "upsets" me, thats not the word im looking for, but maybe gives me pause when i see anybody say (about any of the aforementioned US-born gymnasts representing other countries, not just in this case with nemour) that its opportunistic or undeserved to be competing under the flag of a country your parent(s) came from but you've never properly lived in. because...... isnt that the whole purpose of the multi-generational Narrative Arc? dont they pick up their whole lives and move to "wealthy" countries to pursue better lives for themselves, and more importantly, for their children? and then their children do take advantage of those opportunities they would not have gotten back "home" and reach the highest levels of a (very expensive and, until very recently, highly "inaccessible") sport. and then there's a chorus of "well it isn't like she's FROM from there and came up from the ranks within that country." i mean you're not wrong but thats.... kinda the point!!! she couldnt have done it at "home," shes a clear example of how much talent there is in places that are torn apart and dirt fucking poor and how if you give those people the opportunity, they can be really fucking good at this! world class, even!

she is, in a very REAL sense, "representing" algeria. if she does well in paris (🧿🧿🧿🧿 *furiously knocking on every wooden surface in my apt*) she will become an emblematic iconic sports star for algeria. she will be the reason a ton of little girls in algeria (and even franco-algériennes in france) will want to sign up for gymnastics! she will have (and has already had, by the looks of it) a tangible impact on the popularity and the future of the sport in algeria. it cannot be overstated how fucking much that means.

Sending this in English despite the fact we both speak French (the trials and tribulations of anglo-saxons social medias), but after reading your post about Arabic classes in France, I was wondering if you heard comments recently about how a significant % of future Francophones won’t be white by virtue of the multilingual population in ex-colonies? I currently live in Québec and I heard this being mentioned in the context of cultural products (think arts and entertainment), and it immediately made me wonder if it’s been a speaking point in French politics. Je ne suis pas la politique Européenne de trop près depuis quelques années et je ne pense pas que les articles en ligne donne une bonne idée de la propension d’un sentiment dans le quotidien vs. sur internet (d’où ma question).

A friend actually mentioned that to me and while I haven’t read the article/study regarding that specific subject I think it’s bullshit.

Former colonies where people speak French are almost all in Africa and the French language is growing weaker in the continent. So if anything I think less and less PoC will speak French as times goes by. When my cousin in Algeria was 11 she spoke a pretty good French for exemple, now 18 years later my youngest cousin who is 10 doesn’t speak a word in French.

That’s how it’s seen in France too. The speaking point in French politics is not how PoC will be the majority of French speaking people but how “Francophonie” is growing weaker especially in Africa and how it’s a sign of the decline of France’s neocolonialism influence.

Politicians from left to right had a melt down because one of the new Algerian bills had English on it… the right was like “it’s so disrespectful they removed the French to put English instead it’s insulting it’s all because Macron is too nice with Algeria” the left was like “it’s so sad they removed French to put English instead “Francophonie” is losing and it’s all because Macron is creating us problems with Algeria” meanwhile the Algerian bill had NEVER been in French in the first place…

Now in term of cultural production only I can’t say anything but in general? I honestly don’t think it will happen.

Edit: editing to add that this is purely based on how I see things and how it’s seen by French politicians. That being without any change there will eventually be more PoC speaking French than there will be white people speaking French.