Kelvin Okafor, 27, is wowing art critics around the world – one pencil stroke at a time.
The London native and Middlesex University fine arts graduate has received numerous awards and an outpouring of praise for his incredible drawings that resemble soft focus digital photos. His artwork, which takes approximately 100 hours to complete, has been valued at £10,000 ($15,738).
Using only graphite pencils, charcoal, black colored pencil and gray pastels, Okafor has created stunning images of Mother Teresa (left), Princess Diana, Beyonce, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nas and more.
“I want my drawings to prompt an emotional response, making viewers feel as though they are looking at a real live subject,” he writes on his blog.
Click below to see video of Okafor and more of his astounding works:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ykDeiMlQM&w=560&h=315]
article by Camille Travis via uptownmagazine.com
Posts published in “International”
Western lowland gorilla. Credit: Thomas Breuer/Wildlife Conservation Society/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
(UPI) — The Republic of Congo has declared a new national park to protect a population of 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a U.S. conservation group says. The Wildlife Conservation Society, based in New York, reported the 1,765-square-mile Ntokou-Pikounda National Park will safeguard the western lowland gorillas as well as around 850 elephants and 950 chimpanzees.
“The Republic of Congo has shown the world its commitment to protect the largest population of gorillas on the planet,” WCS President Cristian Samper said. “We commend the Congolese government for its leadership and foresight to set aside lands so that wildlife can flourish.”
“The Republic of Congo has shown the world its commitment to protect the largest population of gorillas on the planet,” WCS President Cristian Samper said. “We commend the Congolese government for its leadership and foresight to set aside lands so that wildlife can flourish.”
Wide open spaces: Projects like the one in Nanyuki could let people in the more remote areas connect to the internet
Beatrice Nderango is the headmistress of Gakawa Secondary School, which lies about 10km from Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya’s rift valley, not far from the Mount Kenya national park. The school is situated in a village that has no phone line and no electricity. The people that live here are mostly subsistence farmers.
“We don’t really have a cash crop, but the farmers do a bit of farming,” says Mrs Nderango. “They grow potatoes, a little bit of maize, but we don’t do well in maize because of the wild animals. They invade the farms.”
Although Kenya has fibre optic broadband thanks to the Seacom cable, most of rural Kenya is not connected and until now getting online would mean traveling to town.
But all of this is changing, thanks to technology that uses the unused parts of the wireless spectrum that is set aside for television broadcasters – the white spaces.
The project is part of the 4Afrika Initiative, an investment program being announced by technology giant Microsoft, that also includes a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone for the region and investment in help for small businesses on the continent, and in education and internships.
It is no longer news that many Nigerian artifacts are in Europe and America held by both public institutions such as Museums, Universities and Galleries as well as by private individuals, but what is new is the collaborative efforts being made by the Nigerian government and the countries where these artifacts are taken in the first place to repatriate them back to the country where they rightly belong.
One of these collaborative diplomatic efforts yielded a positive result yesterday when the French Embassy in Nigeria handed over five Nok Terracotta figures seized by the French Customs service in Paris. Nok arts came to light in 1928, when Co. J. Dent Young found a small terracotta head amongst the gravel from tin mining operations near the village of Nok in Jos Plateau of central Nigeria and since then these cultural materials were named after the village where the finds were made.
It is indeed unfortunate that so much Nok materials have been looted over time to supply the international art market which is supposed to be the exclusive cultural artifacts of the Nigerian people. So when the French Ambassador to Nigeria Jacques Champagne de Labriolle handed over 5 stolen artifacts of Nok origin to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCCM) last Tuesday many stakeholders in the art sector landed the move, describing it as a right step in the right direction.
(Photo: TREVOR SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images)
On Feb. 2, 1990, South African President F.W. de Klerk announced the release of imprisoned political leader Nelson Mandela and lifted the country’s ban on membership in the African National Congress, the political party that pushed for equal rights for Blacks under the racially oppressive apartheid government.
Mandela, the leader of the ANC, spent 27 years behind bars after being convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. De Klerk worked with Mandela to transition the country from apartheid rule to the majority rule it enjoys today. Both he and Mandela were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts. In 1994, Mandela won the presidency in South Africa’s first all-inclusive elections. In 1999, at 80 years old, he opted out of another run for presidency to retire from public life.
article by Britt Middleton via bet.com
Mandela, the leader of the ANC, spent 27 years behind bars after being convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. De Klerk worked with Mandela to transition the country from apartheid rule to the majority rule it enjoys today. Both he and Mandela were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts. In 1994, Mandela won the presidency in South Africa’s first all-inclusive elections. In 1999, at 80 years old, he opted out of another run for presidency to retire from public life.
article by Britt Middleton via bet.com
Ghana’s Grace Amey-Obeng, one of West Africa’s most successful businesswomen, made her fortune promoting products which emphasised the beauty of the black skin, at a time when many of her competitors were selling dangerous skin-bleaching formulas.
The business empire she started a quarter of a century ago with around $100 (£63) now has an annual turnover of between $8m and $10m. Her FC Group of Companies – which includes a beauty clinic, a firm that supplies salon equipment and cosmetics, and a college – has eight branches in Ghana and exports to Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ivory Coast, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Mrs Amey-Obeng has won dozens of accolades and industry awards for her skincare beauty products and marketing. But one of the things that make her especially proud is her FC Beauty College which, since its opening in 1999, has trained more than 5,000 young people, mostly women.
In the three years since a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook up Haiti, the recovery process is still ongoing and today the Timberland clothing company is at the forefront.
In partnership with a local non-governmental organization, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, Timberland supports an agroforestry program to train Haitian farmers to improve crop yields and has planted 2.2 million trees along the way. According to Forbes.com, An additional 1 million trees will be planted this year as well as in 2014 and 2015.
The project will help improve the environmental, economic and social conditions in the Gonaives region. Timberland and Smallholder Farmers Alliance are helping local farmers learn how to improve crop yields, develop eight community tree nurseries and support agricultural training centers in the region.
article via thegrio.com
South African billionaire, Patrice Motsepe (PHOTO CREDIT: Forbes.com)
Joining Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, South African billionaire, Patrice Motsepe, announced that he will be donating half of his company’s assets to combat South Africa’s poverty, advancing women, and reforming education, health and unemployment, reports Forbes.com.
“[My wife] Precious and I will contribute at least half of the funds generated by our family assets to the Motsepe Foundation to be used during our lifetime and beyond to improve the lifestyles and living conditions of the poor, disabled, unemployed, women, youth, workers and marginalised South Africans, Africans and people around the world.”
With a Forbe’s estimated net worth of $2.65 billion, Motsepe is South Africa’s richest Black man. His announcement Wednesday was attended by King Goodwill Zwelithini of the Zulu nation, South Africa’s Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and Rabbi Warren Goldstein, among others.
Ms. Margarida Matsinhe (left) has worked in vaccine delivery in Mozambique for more than 30 years.
Sixty-four-year-old Margarida Matsinhe has won the 2013 Gates Vaccine Innovation Award for her “instrumental” work in overhauling the vaccine system in her native Mozambique.
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made the announcement on Wednesday in his annual letter. The award recognizes “revolutionary ways” for immunizing the world’s poorest children. Nominees are assessed on innovation and creativity, impact and scale.
Matsinhe, a field officer with the non-profit Village Reach, has worked in vaccine delivery in Mozambique for more than 30 years, including during the country’s civil war and post-war reconstruction period. She currently serves on the government’s Committee of Experts on Immunisation and advises leaders on vaccine quality and distribution strategies.
Partly as a result of her work, Mozambique has achieved vaccine coverage of 95 percent, but Matsinhe says her goal is no less than 100 percent.
Phiona Mutesi relishes her first victory at the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia
(CNN) — She grew up in one of the poorest spots on earth. She couldn’t read or write. As a child, she scrounged for food each day for herself, her mother, and her brother. But a chance encounter with a chess coach turned her into a rising international chess star, the subject of a book — and the protagonist in a future Disney movie.
Ugandan teenager Phiona Mutesi is “the ultimate underdog,” her biographer says. Those who work with her believe she’s 16. But since her birthday is unclear, she might still only be 15, they say. Her father died from AIDS when Mutesi was around 3. “I thought the life I was living, that everyone was living that life,” the teenager told CNN, describing her childhood in Katwe, a slum in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.
“I was living a hard life, where I was sleeping on the streets, and you couldn’t have anything to eat at the streets. So that’s when I decided for my brother to get a cup of porridge.”
Robert Katende, a missionary and refugee of Uganda’s civil war, had started a chess program in Katwe. He offered a bowl of porridge to any child who would show up and learn.