Interesting people from Africa

Nigerian R’n'B sensation Dare is an award-winning artist and son of the pioneering jazz musician Art Alade. He burst onto our TV screens during the 2004 edition of South Africa's Project Fame Academy, a well renowned reality TV show and continent-wide talent hunt, where he had the opportunity to perform in front of over 100 million people. He released his debut album ‘From Me 2 U’ in Nigerian market two years later, stunning us with several hit singles, including ‘Fuji’ and ‘Escalade’. The top selling album also included the anthem, ‘Original Naija’ which was used as the theme song for the first ever edition of Big Brother Nigeria.
Dare has already shared the stage with the likes of Beyonce, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Usher and Sean Paul. His much anticipated sophomore album "UnDAREYted" was released on 31 March 2009. Further details at www.dareyonline.com

Abbey Artico is a well saxophonist in the bustling music scene of Johannesburg (www.saxophone.co.za). She has performed with the likes of PJ Powers (touring through Africa), Jennifer Jones and Little Sister. In 2004 she began her own all-girl corporate events band "SHE" (www.sheband.co.za) which has gone from strength to strength providing entertainment at corporate events nationwide and promoting women as entertainers.

Chaz Maviyane-Davis is an internationally renowned Graphic Designer from Zimbabwe who is now a professor in the USA. He is highly acknowledged for his work on human rights and is to be awarded with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree on 30.04.2009.

Founder and owner of Econet wireless holdings ZIMBABWE.Defied all odds against him and became the first Zimbabwean to make a mobile call in 1999 when he founded one of Africa's biggest mobile telecommunications company , proved it to the rest of the continent that for an African to start a big business one does not have to be connected with some politician in high office, all it takes is guts

look around the continent , from cape to cairo and see the diversity that the continent is made up of , the numerous languages , different skin tones , different shapes and sizes of the people and of course the diverse cultures . I believe God took his time when he created africans why? i mean we are so different in appearance and yet the same in behaviour , we all take our different cultures seriously and will go even to extremes to defend them . I thought to my self one day about the vast wealth this question mark shaped continent posseses and i just wondered what God thinks when he sees its people languishing in dire poverty , going from country to country abroad searching for a so called good life , only to find out that their place there is at the bottom . People of africa its now the time to eat our own bread , i mean we bake it but we end up eating the crumbs , why? .The gold, the diamonds , copper , cobalt , platinum, oil , iron , all these come from our majestic continent , so why do we have to wait for the whites to come and tell us what God has already given to us as inhabitants of this beautiful continent . I am challenging each and every african citizen to get up and start owning this continent , every company big or small must be run by an african as long as it is on our soil , if the the whites dont want that , lets start our own because God never declared the other race to be better than the other so why should we say it for ourselves . AFRICA NOW IS YOUR TIME
KUNDAI MATANGIRA JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA

Lesley Lokko trained as an architect, taught and practiced in the US, UK and South Africa for a decade and then chucked it all in to become a best-selling novelist. Her debut novel, Sundowners, was published in 2004 and was a Guardian Top 40 novel; her recent novel, Bitter Chocolate, was on the WH Smith bestseller charts for 3 months. She designed her own home in Accra, Ghana, which you can see on her website (www.lesleylokko.com) and her latest novel, Rich Girl, Poor Girl, partly set in Zimbabwe, is out in June 2009. Her novels are unabashedly commercial, following in the footsteps of authors like Jackie Collins, Barbara Taylor-Bradford and Penny Vincenzi, but with a difference - she writes about Africa and Africans (especially gorgeous African men!) but paints a very different picture of the continent - no starving kids, glorious empty landscapes and corrupt regimes...her Africa is modern, cosmopolitan, vibrant, messy, complex...just the way it really is! She splits her time between Accra, London and Johannesburg, although not simultaneously.

Sefi Atta is an award winning Nigerian author. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and the United States. Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississipi Review and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International's 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
www.sefiatta.com

Nigerian-born filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa is on a mission. She's out to change the way the world sees Africa, and she's using her latest film to do it. The film is called "This is My Africa," and it explores the perceptions of 20 people, black and white, who love the continent. As Saro-Wiwa tells Isha Sesay, it's a 50-minute crash course in African culture.

Miko Alexis Rwayitare is known as the father of African telecommunications and is credited with making the first ever mobile call on the continent when he launched Telecel in the DRC 1987. Rwayitare went on to build a number of successful mobile networks on the continent. He died on 25th September 2007

Nigerian Ndidi Nwuneli is the founder and managing partner of LEAP Africa, a leadership training and coaching organization which is committed to empowering, inspiring and equipping a new cadre of leaders in Africa. She initially returned to Nigeria as the pioneer executive director of FATE Foundation Nigeria, a non-profit organization which promotes entrepreneurial development among Nigerian youth, which she saw as the way forward for Nigeria. An ex-McKinsey Management Consultant, Ndidi holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree from Wharton School. She was selected as a 2003 Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos.