ANNOUNCEMENT The extraordinary seminar programme offered by the State of Berlin on the topic of start-ups and self-employment for people with a migration background interested in starting a business begins a new round in July! For the past 21 years, the state of Berlin has been strengthening cultural diversity of Berlin’s start-ups and has been running the seminar series “Vielfalt gründet” (formerly: …

School teacher Christine List writes on her experience taking her pupils to the African past in a literature class. The high school students read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for the project. List narrates her pupils’ mixed impressions of the literary voyage It had been four weeks since the students have been studying Africa in their geography project. During the …

Incumbent Julius Maada Bio has won re-election in Sierra Leone’s tense presidential vote, but his main challenger was quick to reject the results. The electoral commission said on Tuesday that Bio, 59, was re-elected with 56.17 percent at Saturday’s general election. His top rival Samura Kamara, of the All People’s Congress (APC), came second with 41.16 percent. Dr Kamara (72) …

Almost one third of the Hessian population has an immigration history, according to the State Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. In 2022, 1.97 million inhabitants of Hesse, one of Germany’s 16 federal states, accounting for 31.3 per cent of all inhabitants have a migration background. As of 31 December 2022, 6.39 million people lived in the state, the largest population since …

Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, has passed a bill to reform the Skilled Workers Immigration Act into law. The MPs of the federal governing coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP voted almost unanimously in favour of the draft law on Friday. The opposition parties, the CDU/CSU and the far-right AfD, voted against the bill while the left-leaning Linke abstained. The …

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has invited David Olatokunbo Alaba to invest in Nigeria, the homeland of the Austrian international footballer’s father. The Nigerian leader made the plea when he addressed Nigerians in Paris on Thursday in his first formal engagement with the diaspora. Asiwaju Tinubu, who is in the French capital to attend the Global Financing Pact Summit convened by …

Widely regarded as ‘the Oscars of the aviation industry’, the World Airline Awards have been presented for the 24th time at the Paris Air Show, taking place from June 19 to 25 in the French capital. The annual global ranking of airlines, organised by Skytrax, is eagerly anticipated each year, even though three airlines – Qatar, Singapore and Emirates, have …

Kenako Afrika-Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. And it’s doing it in a big style! In addition to its activities on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, its traditional venue, from 20 to 30 July, there will also be a Kenako Kids Festival, organised in cooperation with FEZ Berlin, the largest non-profit child, youth and family centre in Europe. Kenako Kids at FEZ-Berlin, …

Each year on 20 June, the world marks World Refugee Day, to draw attention to the plight of millions of people who have been forced to flee war, violence and persecution and to the international obligations under the United Nations 1951 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Refugees. In the face of the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World …

The German chapter of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) has elected a new executive committee. The election was part of the body’s annual general meeting, which took place virtually on Saturday, 17 June. Dr (Engr) Moses Kolade Ogun was elected with 83% of the votes cast to lead NIDO Germany as President for the next two years. He replaced …