My Africa Today

The short answer is: Yes! A closer look, especially after some experience and time in Accra, the nation's capital, clearly reveals the fact that not all citizens of Ghana are bad people. In fact, it's largely the contrary. Where poverty runs deep, as it does in Ghana and Nigeria, however, the attraction to easy money has caught the attention of many, and scam operations are growing faster and more out of control than any time in history.

Are there any beautiful, white and English speaking women in Ghana? The answer to this question is: Not many. Scammers in Ghana have learned from their neighbors in Nigeria, the founder of the imfamous 419 scam. These days, scammers are increasing their level of sophistication and it no longer takes a "fool" to be a victim of scam. Ghana fraud rings invest careful time with their victims, setting up a relationship of trust, confidence and if possible, love. Once the romance is established, the scammer makes his move. This is typically in the form of an emergency, help with a visa, a large inheritance and legal problem, etc.

Is it possible to have a real, honest and lasting relationship with someone in Ghana? Yes, it is possible. Are there foreigners living and working in Ghana who speak English? Yes, of course. Does the level of fraud and professional scams being operated from that country warrant the need for a background check to verify any relationship in Ghana? Yes, absolutely! It's the only way.

The moral of the story is, no matter what the circumstances, no matter where the person was met, either on the Internet or in person, if the individual is from or currently living in Ghana, due to the extreme level of scam activity in that country, we strongly advise a background check, of which Wymoo offers the most comprehensive services for the West Africa region. And lastly, never send money to any individual overseas who is not known in person or who has not been verified via a professional.

Be safe and best of luck,

Africa's first social media aggregator tracks more than 1,000 Africa-related blogs, podcasts and news sites. Readers can rank individual posts and read them online. In May, Afrigator began using OpenID, a system that allows users to operate a single login at multiple websites.

CEO: Justin Hartman

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

URL: afrigator.com

Launch: April 2007

Funding: $35,000 (angel investors)

Kikoys are a garment which was traditionally for men, as in many hot countries (and Scotland!) men wear a wraparound of some sort. These tropical garments are obviously worn due to the heat (except in Scotland!) and are particularly comfortable. Few require anything more than a little confidence to hold them up and some are tied with amazing skill and complexity but the Kikoy itself is simply wrapped around the middle, or hips, or anywhere and rolled over outwards a couple of times.

The Kikoy does need to be fairly tight, with a certain amount of tension, but not too tight, the mistake is to try and wrap it really tightly as this could result in an embarrassing and unscheduled show of leg! Inspired by the abundance of exuberant colours found on the East African coastline, Kikoys are woven of the brightest hue colour combinations that would alarm most people! Possibly originating from something that the Arab traders wore as they plied the coastline, the Kikoy has developed its very own character of Kenya and Tanzania and is a symbol of safaris in both beautiful countries. There is a band of devoted Kikoy wearers which is steadily increasing in size as more and more people discover the delights of a Kikoy, see our 50 ways to use a Kikoy!

Interview with the nigerian scammer exposed on ABC news.

Hands as a calculator have many advantages over the pencil and paper methods in arithmetic. The students require no external device and can practice the procedures at any time or place. Rote memory of the addition and multiplication tables, facts that can not be visualized, is the most difficult memorization possible. Representing numbers with the hands provides the visuals needed to enable a much easier memorization process to occur. A good pedagogical approach is to have the students verify the addition and multiplication tables using their hands as a calculator.

Swahili (or KiSwahili as it is known in Swahili) is the most widely spoken African language, as a first or additional language. As a consequence it is receiving some of the most attention with relation to use in information and communication technologies (ICTs).

This message is set up to facilitate communication about various technical initiatives, projects, and research. For the moment it will serve as an experiment to see if this format can serve as an easily accessible place for exchange of information on and links to research and projects for advanced computer applications in Swahili. These include:

• Online dictionaries like Kamusi
• Machine translation (MT) - computer programs for automatic translation into and out of Swahili
• Translation memory - computer programs that assist translators but are not the same as MT
• Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Text-to-speech (TTS) programs
• Speech recognition / speech-to-text (STT) programs
• Various WWW, "Web 2.0" & "semantic web" applications
• Programming in Swahili
• Other cutting edge ICTs

Part of the reason for setting this up is that I receive some information about Swahili language activities that is interesting and useful but does not always fit the format of other webpages such as those on Bisharat.net or the new PanAfrican Localisation (PAL) project site.

This forum is not intended to replace existing forums for discussion of Swahili language such as

• H-Swahili http://www.h-net.org/~swahili/
• Kamusi Project Swahili Online Forum http://research.yale.edu/swahili/learn/?q=forum
• Kiswahili http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Kiswahili/

Those interested in learning Swahili or disussing Swahili topics are suggested to use those lists.

Hopefully this message board - the latest in a group of others accessible via http://www.quicktopic.com/share?s=QSpo - will turn out to be useful and contribute in some way to advance computing in Swahili and other African languages.

Don

Don Osborn, Ph.D. dzo@bisharat.net
*Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative
*Bisharat! Initiative langues - technologie - développement
http://www.bisharat.net

*PanAfrican Localisation Project
*Projet panafricain sur la localisation
http://www.PanAfriL10n.org (new site coming)