Lupita Nyong’o: The Kenyan star who stunned Hollywood

Lupita Nyong’o, winner of the best supporting actress Oscar on Sunday, stunned Hollywood in her big-screen debut with her searing turn as an abused servant in 12 Years A Slave.

The Kenyan actress and Yale School of Drama graduate, who turned 31 on Saturday, has risen in a year from relative obscurity to Hollywood’s A list, winning plaudits for both her efforts on screen and her impeccable fashion sense.

Nyong’o has already picked up the Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards for best supporting actress for her turn as Patsey, a slave brutalised by her sadistic owner, played by Michael Fassbender.

Lupita Nyong'o accepts her Oscar. (Pic: AFP)
Lupita Nyong’o accepts her Oscar. (Pic: AFP)

“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s,” a tearful Nyong’o said Sunday upon accepting her award, after receiving a standing ovation from the audience.

“When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”

12 Years a Slave, by British director Steve McQueen – won the coveted best picture Oscar, beating eight fellow nominees –  American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Unusual career choice
Born in Mexico – the source of her Spanish name, and where her father was teaching political science at university – Nyong’o grew up in Kenya as the second of six children.

Acting is hardly a common career in Kenya for the child of a powerful politician, but her father, one-time health minister Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, said the family had always supported her dreams.

“She started acting very young, right from kindergarten, and even at home with just the family, she would come up with make-believe stories and perform them for us,” he told Kenya’s East African newspaper.

“She was always imaginative and creative.”

The career of Nyong’o – who now lives in the United States after studying at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and later at Yale – has been avidly followed by the media in her home nation, who remember her first major role on a television show.

She was inspired to follow an acting career after working as a production assistant on the 2005 drama “The Constant Gardener.” Actor Ralph Fiennes then told her only to get into acting if she couldn’t live without it.

“It’s not what I wanted to hear, but it’s what I needed to hear,” she told Arise Entertainment in a recent interview.

First time lucky
She struck gold with her first major role in 12 Years a Slave – a role she says she almost did not get because director Steve McQueen thought she “might be too pretty.”

Critics have hailed her turn in Patsey, which included some very difficult scenes, including one in which she is viciously whipped while tied to a pole.

“Acting is an exercise of deep trust in yourself and an exercise in letting go: Do [all of your preparation] and then trust that when the [filming] day comes, and you’re in the room with Michael Fassbender, what you need will come through,” she told Entertainment Weekly.

Nyong’o – who is now appearing in the thriller Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson – faced many challenges at the start of her career.

“She told me there were already actors and actresses in the US, and the odds were against her. Her dark skin tone, her short hair, her Kenyan accent, her name,” recalls Kenyan actor Antony Mwangi, who worked with her in Nairobi.

Ahead of her triumph on Sunday night, Nyong’o said she hoped to inspire a new generation of black actresses.

“In many ways, me being on the scene is doing for little girls everywhere what Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg did for me,” she told Entertainment Weekly.

“My world exploded by them being on screen. Hopefully I will inspire and be meaningful to other people. But I can’t take on other people’s dreams for me. I can only dream for myself.”

Egypt’s first Oscar-nominated film not shown at home

Directors of Egypt’s first Oscar-nominated film will be walking the red carpet at the Oscars ceremony this weekend in Los Angeles, but most Egyptians have yet to see the hard-hitting movie that chronicles the country’s unrest over the past three years.

Far from being widely celebrated in Egypt, the film has not been shown at Egyptian film festivals or theaters after running into problems with censorship authorities. The filmmakers say they have been blocked because of their portrayal of the country’s military-backed governments. They still hope to get approval for wider distribution.

“It’s a kind of politics disguised in bureaucracy,” said Karim Amer, the film’s producer, taking a line that one of the film’s central character uses to describe the government’s counter-revolutionary actions.

The Square, named for Tahrir, or Liberty Square, is built around the geographic focal point of the uprising, where millions of Egyptians gathered to protest Hosni Mubarak’s regime, the rule of the generals who succeeded him and now-deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. It recounts the country’s recent turmoil, beginning when Mubarak stepped down in 2011 through August 2013, right before security forces stormed two protest camps of Morsi supporters, killing hundreds.

square

The filmmakers tell the story through the eyes of three protesters hailing from different backgrounds. The self-described revolutionaries are Ahmed Hassan, a streetwise idealist; Khalid Abdalla, a British-Egyptian Hollywood actor raised abroad by his exiled activist father; and Magdy Ashour, a member of Morsi’s Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been outlawed and labeled a terrorist organization by the government installed by the military.

The movie follows their ideological trajectories, from hope and exuberance to disappointment and disillusion.

Ashour grows apart from the Brotherhood. He goes to protest in the square even after the group has prohibited members from demonstrating because, he says, the demands of the revolution have still not been met by the country’s interim leaders. Abdalla struggles to convince his exiled father that his activism will bear fruit, and Hassan suffers a head injury while throwing rocks at security forces and falls into a depression.

“The good and free people are being called agents and traitors, and the agents and traitors are being called heroes,” Hassan narrates over scenes of ambulances carrying away wounded protesters.

The film’s director, Jehane Noujaim, who grew up in Egypt, said she wanted to tell the story in a way that would let viewers in 50 or 100 years feel “that energy and that spirit of being in the square.”

Depiction of the military
The footage includes graphic images of bloodied bodies getting smashed by military vehicles, police dragging a protester’s limp body across the street and other scenes of brutality. At one point, a protester kneels on the sidewalk, weeping, with the blood of comrades on his hands.

“Our army is killing us. They are killing us,” the protester says. “They’ve forgotten Egypt.”

That depiction of the Egyptian military, which removed Morsi in July, is the reason the filmmakers believe the film has not been licensed for showing in Egypt.

But the project has gained acclaim in the West, winning audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival and at Toronto and Montreal festivals. It was acquired last year by subscription service Netflix.

In Egypt, it’s only available through YouTube and illegal downloads. After the academy announced the Oscar nominations, the film was hacked and released on the Internet. Amer estimates that more than 1.5 million people have watched it online.

“What’s been fantastic is to see the overwhelming ability of the internet to show truth from fiction,” he said.

Censorship authorities
Ahmed Awad, undersecretary to the Minister of Culture and head of censorship, told The Associated Press that the film has not been banned in Egypt for any political reasons. He said it was not shown because the film’s producers did not file the proper paperwork. He called the filmmakers’ accusations of repression “propaganda” designed to attract more attention.

“I am very happy about the Oscars, because it’s a very high level of art,” Awad said. “We are not against the film, but there are laws. I can’t make exceptions.”

Noujaim said that the team submitted the film to censorship authorities in September and received verbal permission to show it at a festival. But, she explained, the film never received an official letter to that effect, and the filmmakers did not feel comfortable proceeding without a formal permit given the tense political climate. She said they are appealing and submitting additional paperwork.

Some Egyptians who have seen the film say it is designed more for educating a Western audience than interpreting the country’s recent history, that it glosses over some events and does not capture the nuance of post-revolutionary politics.

Joe Fahim, an Egyptian film curator and critic, said the film is not an artistic masterpiece, but he believes it’s an important film for Egyptian audiences because it can serve as a record of the country’s political upheaval.

“It’s a reminder of the turbulent history of the past three years,” Fahim said.

Noujaim, who last month received a Directors Guild documentary award for The Square, said the film is ultimately an ode to the activists who made the revolution happen.

“That’s the only thing that’s ever worked – a dedicated few that stick to their principles, stick to every battle, and once in a while, they’re able to inspire the majority,” she said.

Despite the setbacks, Amer added, what’s fundamentally changed in Egypt is that “the young Egyptian voice that’s been born in that square is unwilling to give up, and I think that’s what our film chronicles and shows.” – Sapa-AP

Hunted in Uganda: Save us from this ‘sexuality genocide’

This is an SOS to the whole world: Help the LGBTI community survive this “sexuality genocide” in Uganda, writes a transgender woman from Kampala.

The situation in Uganda is horrible, with people getting harassed, detained and forcefully evicted.

The morning after President Yoweri Museveni signed the anti-gay Bill, we woke to the news of a gay friend of ours that had been lynched by a mob. His partner was badly beaten up and is now in hospital in critical condition.

I am not surprised by this. Signing the Bill at a fully televised function and the comments he made during the event, Museveni made it clear that LGBTI people are considered an anomaly, suggesting that violence against them would not be frowned upon. More than ever, LGBTIs are a target. Over the past two days, the Red Pepper, a popular local tabloid, has taken to publishing the names and photos of LGBTI people, including their places of work and residence.

The tabloid 'Red Pepper' plays a lead role in the witch hunt for LGBTI Ugandans. (Pic: AFP)
The tabloid ‘Red Pepper’ plays a lead role in the witch hunt for LGBTI Ugandans. (Pic: AFP)

Two hundred people have been forcefully outed so far, making us easy targets for blood hungry homophobes. We have heard cases of people fleeing to Kenya. Some in a refugee camp at Kakuma in Kenya have suffered even more, since all refugees fleeing Uganda are apparently considered to be LGBTI. We have heard a case of a trans man’s travel documents being taken away at an airport.

The situation is dire. The cutting of aid from overseas has only served to exacerbate issues as now every ordinary Ugandan will blame LGBTI for their economic plight, further validating their prejudices of western imperialistic imposition on African states.

The whole debate has been misconstrued and our health and identities moralised and politicised. With emotions running high, it is hard to even hold any conversation around LGBTI issues in Uganda right now.

Constitutional challenge
All that remains is the constitutional challenge to the Act in Parliament but it will take ages for a positive ruling to materialise – if ever.

In the meantime, the safety and security of LGBTI people is of the utmost importance and we need countries to loosen their asylum regulations and grant the exposed LGBTI people an emergency exit as the fight continues.

That is the message we need to get out there as no foreign mission has come out clearly on this. They fought alongside us against the legislation and it would be unfortunate for them to abandon our members now.

There are several warning signs of a sexuality genocide brewing, incited by the government, including the president, the media and religious leaders.

This is an SOS to the whole world. My boyfriend and I have been under self-imposed house arrest since the passing of the Bill. My mum comes over at night to bring food.

We need to get out to safety, but not just me. It needs to be a collective mass action. If there is any help you can offer – the need is so urgent! Everyone, please get the word out there.

Ethiopian seed bank’s novel approach to preserving diversity under threat

(Pic: Flickr / IITA)
(Pic: Flickr / IITA)

There is concern that the work of small farmers as custodians of diversity will be undone by the G8 New Alliance, writes Claire Provost

Inside the Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity’s unassuming office complex in Addis Ababa, a series of vaults houses tens of thousands of seed samples tightly sealed into small envelopes and neatly catalogued in cold storage – a treasure trove of genetic diversity painstakingly assembled and set aside for future generations.

Founded in 1976, Ethiopia’s national seed bank is the oldest and largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. It is also part of a pioneering experiment to link scientists with small-scale farmers to collectively revive and conserve traditional, indigenous seeds in the face of drought and other threats.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops worldwide was lost over the course of the 20th century.

Melaku Worede, the former head of the seed bank, says recurrent droughts have put the country’s agricultural diversity at risk, a problem compounded by farmers in some areas abandoning their local varieties for new, high-yield, commercial seeds.

Hundreds of other respositories, including the famed Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and the UK’s Millennium Seed Bank, have cropped up around the world to store and save samples of major crops and their wild relatives. But funding shortages and political upheaval have threatened collections in some countries. Other samples have been in storage for decades, and may be dead, prompting fears that seed banks are turning into seed museums or morgues.

In Ethiopia, scientists have taken a different approach, opening their doors and collections to farmers and spearheading new partnerships with rural communities.

Farmers’ knowledge has been discounted by too many for too long, says Melaku. “They are underestimated out of prejudice … but we have to give due credit, and farmers also have to be rewarded for being custodians of our natural wealth.”

Melaku was head of the seed bank in the 1980s, when drought and acute food crises threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. “I thought, what are we doing? We have one of the best facilities and yet cannot help. I thought then of doing more than just storing seeds.”

Melaku and his colleagues left the capital for rural areas where they found farmers eating the seeds they would have normally planted or saved. Alarmed, they gave out raw grain in exchange for the farmers’ seeds, to be returned after the drought.

Soon the scientists were launching rescue missions and expeditions to collect and conserve seeds. They also experimented with community banks that could house bigger volumes of seeds and keep them in farmers’ hands.

Just south of Addis Ababa, hundreds of dark, tightly sealed jars are filled with legume, pulse and cereal seeds and stored on tall wooden bookshelves at the Ejere community seed bank. After each harvest, local farmers deposit samples, and in exchange get access to the bank’s stores.

Regassa Feyissa, who worked with Melaku for several years, says community seed banks offer the chance to conserve genetic diversity at the level of local farmers, where seeds are dynamically and frequently exposed to changing environmental conditions rather than held in suspension at sub-zero temperatures, while serving as a grain reserve in times of crisis.

Outside the Ejere bank, Tadesse Reta is planting wooden stakes in the ground, labeling sections of tilled land with the names of crops planted. Tadesse, 47, a local farmer, says he is looking forward to the bank’s forthcoming “field day”, where up to 400 farmers are expected to inspect crops, and debate the merits of the various seed varieties.

This is how participatory plant breeding works, Regassa says. “There is no recipe for developing varieties. It depends on who wants what.”

It is also an interesting approach for scientists, he adds. Unlike formal research, which looks for seed varieties that can work across different climates and soil types, farmers are constantly selecting for diversity, conserving a range of varieties and choosing them not just for their yields but also for their taste or because they are particularly resistant to disease or drought.

A new push to commercialise agriculture in Africa could, however, put the future of the continent’s diverse, indigenous seeds at risk.

New regulations
Regassa says the “indiscriminate push of technology and inputs” by industrial farming schemes and their supporters has proved costly for farmers and needs to be challenged. “Seed security is more important than anything at this point, especially when the government is under all of these external pressures.”

In September 2013, the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) ministers approved regulations that would require all seeds to be registered and deemed “uniform, stable and genetically distinct” before being traded and sold. Critics say this could, in effect, criminalise farmers’ traditional practices of saving and exchanging their seeds, while allowing corporations and those who can afford the registration process to capture the market.

Private investment in seeds is one of the stated indicators of success for the G8’s landmark agriculture and poverty plan in Ethiopia. Under the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, Ethiopia is to change its seed law and policies to increase and incentivise private investment in the development, multiplication and distribution of seeds.

This could spell disaster for small farmers, says Million Belay, co-ordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. “It clearly puts seed production and distribution in the hands of companies … Yes, agriculture needs investment, but that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to bring greater control over farmers’ lives.”

‘The right to choose your own sexuality is a human right’

(Pic: Reuters)
(Pic: Reuters)

In the wake of the recently passed “anti-gay” law by the Nigerian government and President Goodluck Jonathan, there has been much speculation online as to how Fela Kuti, my father, would react. So let us get this clear, and I will also express my own views on the matter.

My father would not support this law. He would know why the law was passed: as a way of distracting the population from the main problems we face today – poverty, lack of electricity and services, corruption, mismanagement, and so on and so forth.

That being said, Fela may have had some reservations about homosexuality itself. Who is to say? No one can speak for him. But Fela would not have had any reservations about upholding and protecting basic human rights. The right to choose your own sexuality and sexual behavior – as long as it is between consenting adults – is one such human right.

It’s a difficult topic for a lot of people in Nigeria to understand as it’s a very new issue that has never been quite public. Our culture and traditions and certain religious values make it more difficult for many to accept or understand, and it will take some time for those people to learn to respect the fundamental human rights of others to express themselves freely. People have said that being gay is “un-African” – I’m not an expert on our history, but I don’t know of any [instance] where the topic is mentioned in our history (I am not referring to Christian orthodoxy that was brought by non-African missionaries).

The gay community in Nigeria will have to be patient and realise acceptance of homosexuality is a gradual process which will take a very long time – especially in the north of Nigeria. But they must slowly put their case forward. They will need a lot of diplomatic support, and they will have to fight the law. They might definitely lose, but they will just have to keep on fighting for their fundamental right to live. There is no other choice.

We have to keep talking about the issue of gay rights, but it’s the government’s responsibility to take the lead to defend people’s fundamental rights. Citizens must have the right to be who they want to be.

Femi Kuti for okayafrica, a blog dedicated to bringing you the latest from Africa‘s New Wave.