New music video from rapper Okyeame Kwame featuring Bertha. Click here to view the video shoot pictures and watch the video below. The video was directed by Abraham Ohene-Djan, CEO of OM Studios.
Online fraud against UK merchants is at levels that have forced many to refuse orders from certain countries, with Ghana, Nigeria and the US heading the list, a new ecommerce report has found.
According to payment company CyberSource’s annual fraud analysis of 200 companies, 55 percent of UK companies questioned refused to ship to Nigeria at all, ahead of Ghana on 34 percent, and, surprisingly, the US on 25 percent. Of digital-only companies (i.e, those shipping downloadable goods as opposed to physical ones) Nigeria again headed the blacklist, with 47 avoiding it ahead of Vietnam, China and South Korea on 29 percent each, and the US on 24 percent. The average fraud rate was now 1.6 percent of orders, down from 1.8 percent in 2009, with digital retailers suffering the highest rates overall. Rejection rates for online sales are now 5 percent.
Before watching the movie ‘Anchor Baby’, I read two reviews from Nigerian bloggers, since the movie was written, produced and directed by a Nigerian Lonzo Nzekwe. I wanted to have an informed look at how they see the movie. What I read was totally different from what I watched.
It’s like watching a football match and listening to commentators comment on the same match afterwards. Sometimes they make it sound as if the listener watched a totally different match from what they are talking about.
Quiet interesting, but that is the same way I saw those reviews – they veered off totally. Though I won’t belittle the reviews, I thought they were too petty especially if the movie I watched was the same movie they watched.
Slavery in its entirety had been abolished several decades ago. But there is a new form of slavery which is a bit refined. People call it ‘Brain Drain’. There are many ways in which Africans in the Diaspora or illegal immigrants are exploited on daily basis under the pretext of helping them to acquire documents. The ‘Anchor Baby’ dwells on several themes; love, betrayal, dreams, desperation but highlighted just one; the exploitation of illegal immigrant.
Recently I had the privilege of speaking with a friend of mine who has a media company in Atlanta. He, a Nigerian, works with a lot of celebrities from both Nigeria and Ghana. As we spoke, various topics came up in our conversation.
One of the topics that really got to me was that of the mentality of some of the west African celebrities mainly the actresses who rest their strength, not in their talents and abilities, but on their complexion.
I must say that I was truly educated during our more than one hour phone chat. My Nigerian friend, and his diverse and strong connections in the African movie industry in Atlanta and New York, shared the ‘reality check’ that some of these actresses come to find once they enter the States.
Many of the ‘light or fair’ skinned actresses seem to think that their complexion is some form of entitlement to stardom or even the ideal statement of beauty. Well, they are often, according to my friend, shocked to find that many of the girls in the US that they believe are white (caucasians) are actually black.
In the US “Blacks” come in a variety of shades, especially in the south. Blacks range from mullato, high yellow, yellow, red, dirty red, light, brown….you get the picture. I hear people use the term “halfcast” or even “mixed race” and yes, while here in the US we say “mixed” for people who are products of interracial parentage, it is usually accepted that if one of your parents are ‘black’ then you are ‘black’ no matter the shade of your complexion.
Well it seems that there is a new craze going around in the world of “celebritidom”. We all know that the practice of using skin whitening products has always been around.
What I was informed of was that now there is a more aggressive form of whitening/lightening ones complexion. Have you heard of glutathione injection? Well that is what the celebs are gravitating towards.
