This week we continue to reflect on GlocalCitizens@5 and we’re flashing back to our Womens' Herstory series in March 202. Ghana-based, London-born international award-winning journalist, playwright, global public speaker and entrepreneur, Esther Armah – a self-described ‘global black chick’ – has lived, worked, loved, and created across three cities in three countries on three continents – London, New York, and Accra. She is the Executive Director of the Esther Armah Institute of Emotional Justice and she leads a global team in Ghana, Chicago and London. Her most applauded work, which she describes as “more of a purpose than a profession” is centred on the concept of EMOTIONAL JUSTICE.

Pubilshed in 2022, her groundbreaking book Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing argues that the crucial missing piece to racial healing and sustainable equity is emotional justice—a new racial healing language to help us do our emotional work. She continues to build on this apparatus with complementary storytelling expressed via her breadth of creative media expertise. As part of EAIEJ’s third annual September event HEALING HARM | HEEDING HISTORY, themed WELLNESS in the face of WARFARE she’ll be hosting a screening and dialogue for her short film '...goodbye to the EMOTIONAL MAMMY' later this week.
Saturday, 20th September @ 6pm
African Film Society
East Legon, ACCRA
Tickets are SOLD OUT but be sure to follow and sign up for a screening near you!

Where to find Esther?
www.theaiej.com
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Instagram
On YouTube

Other topics of interest:
Million Women March
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Steve Beko
Oliver Tambo
Women in the ANC
Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa
New Heritage Theatre Group
Danceworks London
www.iamadinkra.com
ICYMI - Nana Amoako-Anin's episodes - Part 1 and Part 2

Special Guest: Esther Armah.

Click the and check out Vamba’s Pa Gya! session centering his latest book The Emperor's Son.

Where to find Vamba?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On X

Vamba’s essential Pan-African activism reading list:
[The Radience of the King)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radiance_of_the_King) by Camara Laye and excerpt to the introduction by Toni Morrison

Other topics of interest:
Who was Samori Touré?
Kolahun, Liberia
Liberia’s First Civil War
About Edward Wilmot Blyden, father of Pan-Africanism
About the Gulf War
Senegalese filmmaker, Ousmane Sembène
About Groningen
Why lekker is so sweet…
The Comet by W.E.B Dubois

For this week’s episode we’re back in West Africa with Nigerian-American journalist and author, Abi Ishola-Ayodeji. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Patience is a Subtle Thief, was named one of BuzzFeed's best books of May 2022 and received a coveted Kirkus-starred review. As a journalist, she has showcased her talent across a diverse range of platforms, including http://ELLE.com, PBS, http://Ebony.com, CUNY TV, and more. Her career has seen her cover extraordinary people, communities, and events from New York City to Paris and from Nigeria to Ghana.

In 2017, Essence Magazine named her among its Woke 100 Women for launching Beyond Classically Beautiful, an acclaimed photo story and media platform celebrating women of color who defy traditional beauty standards which you’ll learn much more about in our conversation.

After years of struggling to write a complete novel, she adopted a winning plan that helped her finish her manuscript seamlessly. She landed a deal with HarperCollins upon her first submission to a publisher. As she continues to work on her second novel, she is also coaching aspiring authors on how to write and finish the novel of their dreams.

Where to find Abi?
www.aishola.com
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On X
On Youtube

What’s Abi watching?
The Chi
Sex Education
Game of Thrones

Other topics of interest:
Revisit EP 74 Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
All about Miami Gardens, Florida
About Ibadan, Nigeria
Why Ilesa? A visti with fellow Glocal Citizen, Funsho Ogundipe
About Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola and the stolen election
More about the Center for Black Literature @ Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and the Wild Seeds Writers Retreat
About #imageactivitst, Michaela Angela Davis
About the film The Devil Wears Prada
James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and more about Abi’s Glocal Speak
About Supacel and sickle cell anemia

Special Guest: Abi Ishola-Ayodeji.

This week on the podcast, rather than one last guest rounding out our March 2023 herstories series, I went into our archives with a specific goal of putting together a salon of sorts about craft. I think of craft as how vocation, location, persistence and passion fulfill us. According to Merriam-Webster, it is skill in planning, making, or executing.

I always ask this question because I feel it allows my guest to share more than what they do on a day-to-day basis for economic returns i.e. work, and gets closer to the heart of who they are and how they go about manifesting a new world. So, this week we’re re-visiting with:

• Jamaican-American, Nydia Swaby a Black feminist researcher, writer, and curator based in London about Archives, Art and Freedom Dreams;

• Filipino-Jamaican-American, Zee Clarke an author, mindfulness practitioner and racial healing professional about Healing in Breathing;

• Ghanaian-Afro-German, Ekua Yankah a thought leader in international development on being a Polyglot, Professor, Policy Advisor and Art Patron;

• Ghanaian-Brit, Esther Armah an author, journalist and entrepreneur on storytelling for structural change;

• Nigerian, Sarah Adeyinka a humanitarian researcher and author on Humanitarian CoCreating; and

• and Detroit Native, Dereca Blackmon an inclusion innovator, speaker and spiritual activist about Uncommon Conversations.

Be sure to check out full episodes using the links above, there’s a wealth of valuable, craft-inspired insights from each of these audacious women!

Special Guests: Dereca Blackmon, Ekua Yankah, Esther Armah, Nydia Swaby, Sarah Adeyinka, and Zhalisa "Zee" Clarke.

This week’s herstory comes to us from southern Africa. We’re exploring Zambia in a big way, especially the role that women have played in forward movement in the country. My guest is award-winning journalist, communications specialist and cultural curator, Samba Yonga. She is Founder and Head Communications Strategist at Ku-Atenga Media and co-founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia, established in 2017, with the mandate to research and restore African indigenous narratives, knowledge and 'living histories' focused on women. She has curated exhibitions and written papers focused on indigenous African knowledge systems and narratives in Zambia but also for art spaces, museums and universities such as National Musuems of World Cultures in Sweden, Yale University in USA, Windybrow Centre in South Africa and many others. In fact, she joined me in conversation just as she was headed to Shanghai University to present her works in the museum space at Museums, Decolonisation and Restitution: A Global Conversation.

Samba has been recognized as 100 most influential Africans by Quartz, New York, and one of 40 most influential Africans. She is also a Google Podcast Creator, TEDx Lusaka speaker and a Museum Lab Fellow for 2022. It’s always a treat to connect with other podcasters and after you have a listen, be sure to head over to the museum’s Youtube channel to check out the Leading Ladies animated podcast!

Where to find Samba?
www.whmzambia.org
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On Twitter
On YouTube

What’s Samba reading?
Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Some
491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Wallpaper Magazine
Vanity Fair Magazine

What’s Samba watching?
Luther on Netflix
Chef’s Table on Netflix
East Asian Dramas on Netflix

What’s Samba listening to?
Ratchet & Respectable Podcast
The Comb on BBC
Hidden Brain Podcast
The Moth Podcast
Selam & Hello Podcast

Other topics of interest:
The Old Drift: A Novel by Namwali Serpell
Lusaka, Zambia
About Trendsetters Magazine
On Settler Societies
Glocally Speaking in Zambian Languages
Mass Design Group
Third Culture Kids

Special Guest: Samba Yonga.

Esther, a Ghanaian Brit also has acclaimed experience as a multi media journalist, documentary maker and playwright with productions appearing on stages in New York, Chicago and Accra. She's a radio show host, a fellow podcaster as creator of 'THE SPIN', and has beed a television political commentator on MSNBC, CNN, GRITtv, BET and MSNBC. As a writer, her work has been published in The Guardian, West Africa magazine, Gawker, AlterNet.org, Salon.com, and The Huffington Post. Esther is truly a women on a change maker's mission addressing the systematic challenges that are pervasive throughout ALL cultures, and hers is a story you'll not want to miss.

She is currently living, working and playing mostly in Ghana; Esther still calls NYC and London "home" too.

Where to find Esther?
www.theaiej.com
On LinkedIn
On Twitter
On Facebook
On Instagram
On YouTube

Other topics of interest:
Million Women March
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Steve Beko
Oliver Tambo
Women in the ANC
Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa
New Heritage Theatre Group
Danceworks London
www.iamadinkra.com

ICYMI - Nana Amoako-Anin's episodes - Part 1 and Part 2

Special Guest: Esther Armah.

We're straddling borders between East Africa and New York City on this week's episode as I visit with Milton Allimadi, publisher of The Black Star News. He is also the author of 'The Hearts of Darkness..' about the history of Western media demonization of Africa. Milton attended the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia for an M.S. degree where he won the prestigious James Wechsler Memorial Prize award in international journalism at Columbia. He has M.A. and Bachelors degrees in Economics from Syracuse University. He started his journalism career with internships at The Journal of Commerce and The Wall Street Journal. He was a freelance reporter for The New York Times, a reporter and deputy managing editor with The City Sun, before founding The Black Star News. He is also an Adjunct Professor of African History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). He can be heard Tuesday afternoons @ 3PM on WBAI 99.5 FM or wbai.org Radio as the host of "The Black Star News Show" as well as on his weekly podcast, The African History Club on Patreon.

Where to find Milton?
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Instagram
On Twitter
On WBAI.org
On Patreon

What's Milton listening to?
François "Franco" Luambo Luanzo Makiadi
Bob Marley
Fela Kuti
Jimi Hendrix
Carlos Santana

Other topics of interest:
Uganda's U Vote app
Robert "Bobbi Wine" Kyagulanyi Ssentamu
Yoweri Museveni
About Andrew "Andy" Cooper
Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
Journalist Lloyd Garrison

Special Guest: Milton Allimadi.

Where to find Milton?
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Instagram
On Twitter
On WBAI.org
On Patreon

What's Milton listening to?
François "Franco" Luambo Luanzo Makiadi
Bob Marley
Fela Kuti
Jimi Hendrix
Carlos Santana

Other topics of interest:
Uganda's U Vote app
Robert "Bobbi Wine" Kyagulanyi Ssentamu
Yoweri Museveni
About Andrew "Andy" Cooper
Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
Journalist Lloyd Garrison

Special Guest: Milton Allimadi.

Frankie's career has spanned broadcast journalism working with BET and ABC to the New York Post for 15 years as its City Hall Reporter and lead writer on legislative affairs from 1999-2008. His coverage of major news stories including the aftermath of the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, HIV/AIDS and healthcare disparities in communities around the Big Apple was critically acclaimed. In 2008 he exposed a decades long secretive slush fund scheme that resulted in reforming the way the City Council doled out taxpayer funds and a federal investigation that saw several lawmakers jailed. He covered crime, courts, labor issues and human services public health and politics, reporting from around the country and abroad for the paper.

Prof Edozien has also been keeping busy during the season of lockdowns as a participant in the Afrolit Sans Frontieres Festival which is a virtual literary festival founded by South African author and curator Zukiswa Wanner as a response to the curfews and lockdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic within the African continent. The fifth season will be live from 27 July - 3 August with live sessions twice daily at 12PM GMT and 6PM GMT @ Afrolit Sans Frontieres

I hope you enjoy this very illuminating discussion about the frameworks of a career as a writer and taking a book from concept to conception.

Where to find Frankie?
www.edozien.net
On Instagram
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Twitter

What’s on Frankie's must read list:
Ghana Must Go
Home Going by Yaa Gyasi
The Profit of Zongo Street by Mohammed Naseehu
Of Women and Frogs by Bisi Agjapon
The writings of Ayesha Harruna Attah
The writings of Ama Ata Aidoo
The writings of Wangari Maathai

What's Frankie listening to:
Master KG (feat. Burna Boy & Nomcebo Zikode) - Jerusalema
All things Burna Boy

Other talking points:
Afrolit Sans Frontiers
NYU Accra
The High Table by Tema Wilkey
Vidya Bookstore Ghana
Book Nook Bookstore

Special Guest: Chiké Frankie Edozien.

Frankie's career has spanned broadcast journalism working with BET and ABC to the New York Post for 15 years as its City Hall Reporter and lead writer on legislative affairs from 1999-2008. His coverage of major news stories including the aftermath of the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, HIV/AIDS and healthcare disparities in communities around the Big Apple was critically acclaimed. In 2008 he exposed a decades long secretive slush fund scheme that resulted in reforming the way the City Council doled out taxpayer funds and a federal investigation that saw several lawmakers jailed. He covered crime, courts, labor issues and human services public health and politics, reporting from around the country and abroad for the paper.

Prof Edozien has also been keeping busy during the season of lockdowns as a participant in the Afrolit Sans Frontieres Festival which is a virtual literary festival founded by South African author and curator Zukiswa Wanner as a response to the curfews and lockdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic within the African continent. The fifth season will be live from 27 July - 3 August with live sessions twice daily at 12PM GMT and 6PM GMT @ Afrolit Sans Frontieres

I hope you enjoy this very illuminating discussion about the frameworks of a career as a writer and taking a book from concept to conception.

Where to find Frankie?
www.edozien.net
On Instagram
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Twitter

What’s on Frankie's must read list:
Ghana Must Go
Home Going by Yaa Gyasi
The Profit of Zongo Street by Mohammed Naseehu
Of Women and Frogs by Bisi Agjapon
The writings of Ayesha Harruna Attah
The writings of Ama Ata Aidoo
The writings of Wangari Maathai

What's Frankie listening to:
Master KG (feat. Burna Boy & Nomcebo Zikode) - Jerusalema
All things Burna Boy

Other talking points:
Afrolit Sans Frontiers
NYU Accra
The High Table by Tema Wilkey
Vidya Bookstore Ghana
Book Nook Bookstore

Special Guest: Chiké Frankie Edozien.

Hello Glocal Citizens! "What the what?” is the first thing that comes to mind when I look back on the past few months. Those of us not in the midst of protest or lockdown are likely itching to get away..anywhere but this surreal reality. Well, I urge you to stay in the now and focus your attention on this week's virtual tour which lands us in South Africa in a conversation that takes us on a path to solutions with fellow Ghanaian, Emmanuel Agbeko Gamor. Emmanuel is an award-winning multimedia journalist and digital aficionado. He recently launched the Unpacking Africa podcast where he hosts conversations from Tech to Arts and Culture all the while sharing resources, exploring ecosystems in our communities and figuring out issues pertaining to the African continent.

Where to find Emmanuel?
www.eagamor.com
The Unpacking Africa podcast
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On Twitter
Unpacking Africa research and resources journal

*What’s Emmanuel reading? *
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Case studies:
The Tata Group
About Heel the World

Special Guest: Emmanuel Agbeko Gamor.