Bebe Kandia Kouyate of Guinea at Nectar Lounge in Silver Spring Tonight

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African Lounge in DMV, Bebe Kandia Kouyate, Guinea, Nectar Lounge

I have no idea who BB Kandia Kouyate of Guinea is, but she appears to be the daughter of a well-known Guinean singer who died young.  In any event, BB Kandia Kouyate is quite popular in her own right, at least based on YouTube views, and Nectar Lounge, just north of the DC line in Silver Spring is billing a performance by her tonight.

I’ve visited Nectar Lounge a few times before and found the crowd and music to be predominantly Anglophone, so it would be interesting to see what sort of crowd turns out for this performance.

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Local Guineans Fundraise for Education in Guinea via Basketball Tournament

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Baltimore, basketball, Bossa Bistro and Lounge, Gallice Jr, Guinea, Nectar Lounge, PromoGuinee, sports in development

Sports in development is an emerging though often overlooked field.  Speaking on a personal basis, my involvement in track was critical to my development as a youth.

Accordingly, I was interested to learn of the Baltimore based organization, PromoGuinee, which just hosted (November 29-30) a benefit basketball tournament for its work supporting the education of seconary school youth in Guinea – Conakry.  You can watch the promo video for the tournament here and learn more about the work of PromoGuinee here.

I know nothing about African sports leagues in the DMV, but this is something I hope to explore further.  It must have been a very fun weekend as there was an after party for the event at Nectar Lounge in Silver Spring on Saturday and another party the day before (with some of the better promotional artwork I’ve seen) in Adams Morgan:

CSIS Africa Notes Review #3: A New Guinea?

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Alpha Conde, governance in Guinea, Guinea, Guinea legislative elections, Guinea politics, L. Gray Cowan, Lansana Conte, mining in Guinea, Moussa Dadis Camara, Sekou Toure

This marks the 3^rd of the four review pieces of documents from the electronic CSIS Africa Notes Archive that I promised to publish this summer.  I have greatly enjoyed reading these pieces with the value of several decades of hindsight.  My first two reviews, on Zimbabwe and Liberia respectively, covered nations that I know well and have visited multiple times.

Conversely, Guinea is a nation that I know little about, but find very interesting.  Its first President, Sekou Toure, is a revered pan-Africanist figure (in certain circles), it was home to the American civil rights figure Stokely Carmichael for the last decades of his life, and although it has bumbled along from one authoritarian leader to the next, it has quite a wealth of mineral resources.