Dobet Gnahoré

Dobet Gnahoré was born on June 17, 1982 in a small village in Côte d'Ivoire. Her father, Boni Gnahoré, is a master percussionist who founded a sort of artists' community in which Gnahoré grew up. She dropped out of school at age 12, determined to become a musician, and by her mid-teens, she had become a touring musician and dancer. By her early 20s, she hit the international music scene. She sings in more than eight different languages, and her lyrics speak to the issues of women in Africa, as well as multiple social issues. More. Watch her perform "Djigenue":

ECOWAS

This acronym puzzled me for months (Echoas, Echoise, Eckowass, I tried them all). Today's a day to say "Aha!". From Wikipedia:

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen West African countries, founded on May 28, 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos. Its mission is to promote economic integration. In 1976 Cape Verde joined ECOWAS, and in December 2000 Mauritania withdrew, having announced its intention to do so in December 1999.

It was founded to achieve "collective self-sufficiency" for the member states by means of economic and monetary union creating a single large trading bloc. The very slow progress towards this aim meant that the treaty was revised in Cotonou on July 24, 1993, towards a looser collaboration. The ECOWAS Secretariat and the Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development are its two main institutions to implement policies. The ECOWAS Fund was transformed into the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development in 2001. ECOWAS is one of the pillars of the African Economic Community (AEC).
The current President of the Commission is James Victor Gbeho. The current chairman is acting President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria.
It operates officially in three coequal languages (English, French, and Portuguese).

Official Website.

Africain à Paris

Last week, I spoke about Tukuleur being inspired by Toto’s Africa. Well, here’s another case of inspiration. If you like Sting’s Englishman in New York, you’ll also like Tiken Jah Fakoly’s “Africain à Paris” (Lyrics here). A lot of Africans emigrate to France, which is not surprising considering that French is spoken in a very large part of Africa. From Wiki: According to the 2007 report by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, an estimated 115 million African people spread across 31 francophone African countries can speak French either as a first or second language.

You must also watch the video of “Non à l'excision”, a beautiful song which supports the fight against the brutal act of excision which is still in practice in many countries of Africa. Read more about it here.

Tiken Jah Fakoly is originally from Côte d'Ivoire.