Berlin Critics’ Week, an independent event about film criticism which yearly takes place during the Berlinale festival in Berlin, showed two films on Sunday (23 February). One of the films is The Lost Okoroshi, the second feature of Nigerian director Abba T. Makama, while the other is the Brazilian entry Seven Years in May by Affonso Uchôa. Set in the …

On 14 February 2020, the Council of Europe´s Education Department launched a toolkit aimed at integrating refugees as teaching staff or visiting experts into higher education institutions. The “CoLAB Toolkit” presents inclusive practices on how to best integrate refugees based on their competences and qualifications into the academic environment. The toolkit is based on the lessons learned from the project CoLAB implemented …

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) included 29 Nigerian English words in its January 2020 update. As the world’s foremost historical dictionary of English, the OED documents 600,000 words through 3.5 million illustrative quotations from over 1,000 years of history across the English-speaking world. Among the words, typically used by Nigerians, included in the latest edition of OED are Buka, Danfo, …

Kenyan Hollywood actress Lupita Nyong’o paid a short visit to Nigeria at the weekend to attend an event organised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning Nigerian writer. The purpose of the event was for the Oscar-winning actress to intimate the Nigerian creative community with her screen-adaptation of Americanah, a novel by Adichie. HBO Max, a division of Warner Media Entertainment, …

The Netherlands has returned a ceremonial 18th century crown that had been stolen from Ethiopia in 1993. Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Ms Sigrid Kaag, personally handed over the crown to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed when she called on the Ethiopian leader in Addis Ababa on Tuesday (18 February). The crown, which has depictions of Jesus Christ, …

Nayé Bathily, an official of the World Bank, writes about the increasing role of women in political leadership in Africa and how the continent is showing itself to be a forerunner in the race for gender equality The archetype of the strong African woman standing as an unmoving pillar of her community is one that transcends national borders on the …

The Nigerian government has called on the United States of America to consider the long-standing relationship between the two countries and reverse its visa restrictions on Nigeria. The Federal Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, made the call on Wednesday when he received the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Leonard, and her team at his office in Abuja. According to a …

Twelve African EdTech Companies Named as First Fellows at Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning in ICT. Pan-African group will receive support to scale up EdTech innovations that improve teaching and learning in secondary education KIGALI, Rwanda, 1 February 2020,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- The Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning in Information, Communications, and Technology (ICT) today announced …

The European Union has warned that it could impose restrictive visa implementation rules on Nigeria, if it failed to co-operate in the readmission of its nationals deported from EU member countries. A restrictive visa regime would make obtaining visas to EU countries more difficult for Nigerian applicants. The EU Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Ms Virginie Battu-Henriksson, said …

The mass murder in Hanau, a small town near Frankfurt, where on Wednesday a 43-year-old German man gunned down nine people at shisha bars, is the latest albeit most shocking incident in the increasing racist violence in the country. The murderer, identified as Tobias R, also shot his mother before killing himself. “On the suspected perpetrator’s home page, he had …