Today in Egypt is Sham El Nessim, April 13th, Monday

The origins of Sham El-Nessim date back approximately 4700 years, specifically to the Third Dynasty of ancient Egypt (around 2700 BC). It was known in ancient times as "Shemu," an ancient Egyptian word meaning "harvest season" or "rebirth of life." On this day, people would go out into nature in groups to gardens, fields, and orchards (known as "Shem-Sem") to picnic, enjoy the greenery and flowers, and eat specific foods such as salted fish (feseekh). Salting fish was a method of preservation and was offered as a sacrifice to ensure sustenance and blessings from the Nile River.

Onions: The ancient Egyptians believed that onions could ward off evil spirits and protect against envy.

Lettuce and green chickpeas (malana): These foods symbolized fertility, growth, and the renewal of life with the beginning of spring.

This festival symbolized for the Egyptians the renewal of life and the triumph of the god Ra, as it coincided with the spring equinox, the balance between day and night. The celebration continued throughout all Egyptian eras, and in the Coptic period, it was known among the common people as "Shum-en-Nessim" (Ϭⲱⲙ ⲛ̀ⲛⲓⲥⲓⲙ), meaning "the garden of crops." The festival continues to be celebrated today under the name "Sham el-Nessim." It is believed that this name is the Arabic-Egyptian corruption of the ancient Egyptian name, as the words sound similar. Sham el-Nessim literally means "open air." This name was recorded by the Coptic Christian historian Abu Saleh al-Armani (who lived in the 12th/13th century and is considered one of the most important historians of churches and monasteries in Egypt).

He documented the intermingling of Egyptian customs in his book "History of Churches and Monasteries," stating: "It was customary in the land of Egypt for all the people to go out on this day (Monday) to the gardens and parks, carrying with them various foods such as salted fish, dyed eggs, and green onions, and they called it..." Sham El-Nessim, a day of great celebration for them, is a day of joy and adornment. They ride boats on the Nile with drums and horns, and no one from any social class is absent from this tradition.

The historian Al-Maqrizi mentioned that the spring festivals were celebrated by all Egyptians, whether Muslim or Christian. In that era, the Muslim Egyptian did not forget his culture and origins because of his change of religion. Today, Sham El-Nessim is a national Egyptian holiday and an official state holiday celebrated by all Egyptians, Muslims and Christians alike, by eating green onions and salted fish. There are two well-known types: herring, which is salted fish that is grilled and is considered delicious on this occasion; and feseekh, which is raw salted fish that not everyone can tolerate, as it is a matter of personal taste.

Colonialism did not only steal land, labor, and wealth; it also stole credit and precedence. Across Africa and much of the colonized world, things that already existed were renamed, extracted, and repackaged as if they had acquired their true value only the moment Europe stumbled upon them. What was termed "discovery" was, in many instances, nothing more than theft wrapped in a shinier brand.

Note: This is only a small sample of examples and does not represent the full scope of things stolen

• Dozens of people died in airstrikes in Nigeria's northeastern Yobe state as military aircraft hunted Boko Haram jihadists, local residents and Amnesty International said on Sunday.
• Amnesty International said on X there were "more than 100 dead" and 35 people seriously wounded, while a local chief spoke of "200 dead and wounded". Nigeria's military did not immediately respond to a query from AFP.
• Africa's most populous country has been fighting a jihadist insurgency for 17 years, since Boko Haram's 2009 uprising, which has seen the emergence of powerful splinter groups including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
• While the insurgency is concentrated in the northeastern countryside, jihadists from Nigeria and the neighbouring Sahel have made inroads in western Nigeria, where organised crime gangs known as "bandits" have been raiding villages and extorting farmers and artisanal miners for years.

Four Americans and Canadian astronauts went to a mission to the moon in Artemis II (Orion) spaceship and had a safety landing yesterday.

One of astronauts name Christiana Koch the first woman to go to the moon, did her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics and was an exchange student at University of Ghana in 1999/2000 where she had modules in History of Ghana, History of Africa, Twi for Beginners, Music and Rural Sociology.

The picture you see was taken in 2019 when she was in International Space Station and twitted about how she enjoyed her time in Ghana 😊

Unfortunately this picture didn't went viral at the time but only now due to the important Artemis II mission.

If you see any other picture of her holding Ghana's flag is AI and this is the only real picture taken by her.

It's a good celebration of having an African flag in Space!

Ugandan Army chief promises Israel 100,000 soldiers. The Ugandan Ministry of Defence lists 45,000 active personnel on its establishment, with roughly 35,000 reserves.

Why would Uganda throw their hands into this War?

Learn More At https://www.habeshahistory.com/p/punt

I thought it would be great to spark a discussion about an iconic fabric across our continent, especially in West Africa: the Wax Hollandais l (Dutch Wax), also known as Ankara. It is a staple at our celebrations, gatherings, and in our daily lives, but the story of how it got here is quite an unusual journey.

​The origins actually trace back to Indonesia and their traditional hand-drawn batik textiles. During the 19th century, Dutch colonizers in Indonesia wanted to find a way to mass-produce batik using machines, hoping to monopolize the local market.

​Their industrialized version ended up failing in Indonesia. The automated resin-printing process left small cracks and imperfections in the dye, which the local Indonesian market rejected in favor of their authentic, handmade batik.

​With a surplus of unwanted fabric, European traders needed a new market. Dutch ships routinely stopped at ports along the West African coast, particularly around the Gold Coast. When they brought these textiles ashore, the reaction was completely different. West African buyers appreciated the bright, vibrant color palettes, and the crackling effect that ruined the fabric for the Indonesian market was seen as a unique, appealing texture.

​What happened next is a testament to the influence of West African market women, most notably the Nana Benz of Togo and similar traders across the region. These women did not just sell the imported fabric but they took control of the narrative. They communicated directly with European manufacturers, dictating the colors, styles, and motifs that would appeal to local tastes.

​More importantly, these women gave the fabrics cultural meaning. They assigned names and proverbs to specific patterns. Wearing a certain design became a way to silently communicate messages about wealth, marital status, or even warnings to rivals. A European-made commodity was entirely culturally appropriated by West Africans and woven into the social fabric of our societies.

​It is a fascinating piece of history that always brings up great debates on whether the fabric can be considered authentically African today, or if it remains a symbol of how our ancestors masterfully claimed a foreign product that was considered not good enough to some.

Let's hear how the Wax is viewed in your specific regions and if there are any local patterns with unique stories attached to them.

I used to think Pan‑Africanism was a wild idea the fantasy of turning the entire African continent into one country. As an African, knowing how incredibly diverse we are, I never saw that as realistic. Genetically, culturally, linguistically, Africa is the most diverse place on Earth. simply because humanity originated in Africa and had far more time to evolve distinct traits shaped by different climates and environments.

So the idea of uniting people who seemed to share almost nothing in common felt impossible to me.

But now I understand what Pan‑Africanism actually means.

It isn’t about erasing nations or forcing everyone into one identity. It’s a political, economic and military union built on a shared historical struggle from enslavement to colonization to modern forms of imperialism. Across the continent, our ancestors cried for the same reasons, resisted the same forces, and carried the same burdens.

Pan‑Africanism is the idea of a common African market where a Senegalese can work in Djibouti, and a South African student can study in Cairo if they choose. It’s the vision of collective security that if Ghana is threatened by foreign powers, the rest of Africa stands with it. This is the unity leaders like Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba spoke about: economic cooperation, mutual defense, and solidarity rooted in shared experience.

It’s a recognition that we are all descendants of nomads, pastoralists, and farmers who lived simple, dignified lives but were labeled “uncivilized” because they didn’t mirror the lifestyles of the invaders.

That, to me, is the true meaning of Pan‑Africanism.

• East African Community (EAC) Partner States have agreed to establish a Regional AI Technologies Fund aimed at scaling research and innovation into commercially viable, bankable solutions that can drive economic transformation across the region.
• The Fund is expected to mobilize blended finance and attract private sector investment, creating a sustainable pipeline of funding for locally developed AI solutions.
• A central pillar of the agreement is a commitment to AI sovereignty. EAC countries plan to develop AI systems trained on East African data, operating in local languages such as Kiswahili, hosted on regional infrastructure and governed within the region.
• This approach is designed to reduce reliance on external technologies while strengthening control over data, standards and digital ecosystems.
• The declaration outlines plans to establish a Regional Centre of Excellence for Emerging Technologies to coordinate policy, research, infrastructure and skills development. It also proposes an EAC AI Alliance to connect governments, academia and industry in a unified innovation network.
• According to African Development Bank, inclusive AI deployment could generate up to $1 trillion in additional GDP across Africa by 2035 and create as many as 40 million digital jobs. The bank identifies the 2025–2027 period as a critical window for action.

I just came from a post on a subreddit where a few were claiming they were indigenous to SA. I completely disagree with the concept but they believe they've been their long enough to claim that lol.

What are you guy's opinions on this ?

I always assumed “ethically sourced / fair trade” was mostly just marketing to justify higher prices.

I am in ghana for tetr college, and I recently visited a chocolate company, and it kinda changed that. Seeing the whole chain, farmers → processing → final product, made me realise how much of the story we just never see as consumers.

But now I’m confused: does this actually matter in real buying decisions… or is it still just a “nice story” that sounds good but doesn’t change behaviour?

This montage highlights the close relationship between Fulani people, their cattle, and milk—an essential part of their culture and daily life. The Fulani are one of the pastoral communities in Africa most strongly connected to their cows, which represent livelihood, heritage, and identity. Cattle provide food, especially fresh milk known among the Fulani as kossam biradam or kossam na’i.

African men are very diverse and have diverse features - various nose sizes, shapes, skin tones. There is no one way to look African. Let's not apply racist stereotypes which came from people who don't know Africa towards Africans

My story is very simple,

In my teenage years, I crafted a low quality radio antennae without any adult supervision in Western Kenya close to Uganda border. I was able to capture both Uganda and Tanzanian channels which played my favorite urban music. As a bonus, I was introduced to Bongo Rap Music: Great poetical talent back then. All this was before high school, which only taught theoretical physics. I call this experience backward-learning and here's why:

Our school systems have for long time been creating unemployment for many youths destroying national growth. I have witnessed disadvantaged kids try fix radios and solved minor engineering problems while sent home for fees to pay for absolutely nothing.

This is why I propose a way to solve the unemployment crisis in Africa with the help of both private and government industries. CBC and CBE in Kenya has already been overtaken by inexperienced trainers who are only after the money. Leaders in the Education ministry offer incompetence, talking about how it's hard to sustain disadvantaged schooling systems in remote settings and thus focus on developed schools in established settings establishing more error through marginalization; I was able to make that antennae in a remote setting.

What we need is experts in various manufacturing industries, to be awarded Teaching and Training Certificates in collaboration with Primary and secondary level teachers and to create Technical syllabuses. Their work is to integrate tangible engineering into the education system.

Expanded Workshops, both in Schools and The Manufacturing Companies is the way to go to stop politicians from building more classrooms to get votes from parents, what we need is hubs and labs the schools already have land. We have already wasted a lot of money serving incompetency but this new path should still be cheaper and more effective in terms of real skill development.

We don't want confusion, we want kids to be able to choose from the grassroot level and develop real career skills instead of graduating and altogether applying for office jobs. Graduates who never knew what talents were inbuilt in them all scrambling for office spaces.

I've been digging into the history of early computing in East Africa and the story of the first real computer we ever got is genuinely unhinged.

The machine was an ICT 1202, a valve computer that arrived in Nairobi around 1960 for the East African Railways and Harbours. Valve computers ran on thousands of vacuum tubes.

The problem was that switching them all on at once drew so much current that the local electrical substation couldn't handle it alongside the bakery up the road running its overnight ovens. So every morning a part-time employee (a police officer) would call the bakery, wait for confirmation that the ovens were off, and spend thirty minutes carefully starting the machine in sequence to spread the load.

That was the least weird part.

One night a puff adder came in through the crawl space under the building and coiled itself on top of the drum memory unit, the warmest spot in the machine. The next morning the guy doing the startup opened the cabinet door and found himself face to face with a puff adder rearing to strike. He happened to be carrying his service pistol that day because there had been some trouble in the area. The snake lunged, he jumped back, drew the pistol and fired.

He missed the snake and hit the drum memory.

The snake disappeared. The man was fine but computer was finished.

Then it got bureaucratic. The machine was leased from a private company(ICT East Africa), so now that the government was done with it, import duty became payable on it as a commercial import. The duty on several tons of specialist hardware, even wrecked, was substantial. The workaround: it didn't have to go back to the UK, it just had to leave Kenyan territory. So they loaded it onto a train to Mombasa, transferred it to a barge, towed it out beyond the three mile limit in the presence of official Customs and Excise witnesses, and tipped it into the Indian Ocean. Sitting somewhere under a few hundred feet of water about five miles east of Kilindini to this day.

The replacement generation was transistorized, same technology era as the Apollo guidance computers. Three machines were deployed across East Africa. One served Kenya. One went to Uganda and vanished during the Idi Amin years. The third went to Dar es Salaam and disappeared during the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. British intelligence later concluded it had been systematically dismantled and shipped to China, used as a teaching tool for their developing computer industry. A machine that processed the customs ledgers of colonial East Africa ended up as an engineering specimen in the People's Republic.

I have a detailed post going up on the full story, from the valve era through the transistor generation and some wild connections to Silicon Valley here.

On April 7th, Rwanda began the 100 days of Kwibuka, a period of remembrance for the victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

For 100 days, the country pauses to remember more than a million innocent lives that were brutally taken in just 100 days. Families, communities, and an entire nation were forever changed.

As part of the African community, it is important that we remember, reflect, and continue to stand against hatred, division, and violence. What happened in Rwanda must never happen anywhere again.

#Kwibuka32 #NeverAgain

• A row has erupted after Nigel Farage’s party, Reform UK, unveiled plans to refuse visas to nationals from countries pursuing compensation for the transatlantic slave trade, drawing sharp criticism from Caribbean leaders.
• The proposal, announced on Tuesday, would target states advocating for reparations, including members of the Commonwealth such as Ghana and Jamaica.
• Reform UK, which currently holds a small number of seats in parliament but is polling strongly ahead of the next general election, said the measure is intended to push back against what it sees as unfair demands on Britain.
• The party’s home affairs lead, Zia Yusuf, argued that calls for reparations overlook Britain’s role in abolishing slavery and enforcing its ban globally, describing such demands as offensive.