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Monthly Archives: January 2022

Ethiopia. Maqbasa. Name-giving.

One of the greatest feasts among the Guji – an Oromo ethnic group – is that of name-giving. Like all other great feasts, it is sealed with the sacrifice of a bull, dancing and youthful games. In speaking of the maqbasa or name-giving ceremony, we must first mention the gadaa system which divides life from…

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Economy. Dynamic Development.

The country is extremely rich in water resources and minerals. The latter have featured largely in its economy. On the contrary, the agricultural sector occupies a secondary position but, despite this, it employs as much as 37% of the workforce, a much higher percentage than the industrial sector which absorbs about 14,3%. These figures show…

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Burundi. When Rare Earths come before Human Rights.

On the last 19 November, President Joe Biden created shock and indignation among human rights activists after he signed an executive order to lift sanctions against Burundian officials which were imposed by Barrack Obama in 2015. During the Obama administration, the State Department said that the late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s pursuit of a third term…

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Brazil. The Tree of the Land of the Free People.

To be a people and to make theology with the people.  Living the experience of God the Liberator in the sequela of the Jesus of the Gospel.  The experience of a woman theologian on a journey towards “feeling oneself as belonging to a people and understanding the people”. The territory where I live is on…

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Business as a Cause of Forced Migration in Africa.

The media show us regularly the drama of forced migration. It is characterized by gory images of tragedies such as the migrants at the border of Poland and Belarus, people affected by environmental disasters such as those in the Niger Delta, caravans of migrants crossing deserts to nowhere, death people trying to cross the Mediterranean…

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Herbs & Plants. Crassocephallum vitellinum – Anti-peptic ulcer plant.

It is a medicinal plant used for treatment of a number of diseases among them that of peptic ulcer disease. But also for the treatment of stomach complications, malaria and mouth infections in children. It is a flowering herbaceous plant which is widely distributed in the sub-Saharan Africa including in Burundi, Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda,…

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China. The Itinerant Comboni Mission.

Twenty-five years have passed since a small group of Comboni missionaries arrived in Macao to start their work in the Chinese context. The Fen Xiang project was at the centre of their pastoral activities. The opening of a community in Macau and later in Taiwan was aimed at laying the foundations for the presence of…

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Rethinking the migration issue.

“A simple reception and some kind of accommodation” are “very different from a process of integration”. A personal experience. In about the year 2000, the U.K. government decided that it would send the largest number of its asylum seekers to Glasgow, an area that had never had new arrivals in large numbers except escapees from…

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Azerbaijan. Land of Fire.

Azerbaijan is a Caucasian republic located in the south-east, straddling Asia and Europe, in an extremely advantageous position that provided these territories with an opportunity to play a crucial role in the international, economic, and cultural ambit. Watered by the Caspian Sea, to the north it borders Georgia and Russia, to the west Armenia and…

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Bolivia. Chakana, the Andean cosmic bridge.

Andean Chakana is the symbol of the principle of relations with people and nature. It is the cosmic bridge between three communities: human, natural and supernatural. The Quechua term Chakana is composed of two words; Chaka means bridge and na is literally a syllable or a consonant but, in the Andean world, evokes a sense…

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Zambia. Dignity and Survival.

The slums surrounding the centre of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, can be classified by their level of degradation. They are located just a few kilometres from the central shops and street stalls. Dirty roads and houses without drinking water: this is what one can see in the suburbs of George and Lilanda, and the…

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Africa. Hotspots 2022.

This year there will be different hotspots in Africa. But two of them will have a deep impact on the security of their regions, due to the dimensions of the concerned states and the complexity of the threats. If Nigeria has long been considered a hotspot, the situation in Ethiopia worsened rapidly in the last…

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Advocacy

Ecuador. Alexandra Narvaez & Alex Lucitante. “We are people, who…

Two young leaders from the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe in Ecuador led a movement to protect their people’s ancestral territory from gold mining. Their leadership…

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Baobab

The Spider, the Elephant and The Hippo.

Because there was a famine in the land, the spider and his family grew thinner and thinner and hungrier and hungrier. In his desperation, the spider…

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Youth & Mission

The voices of young people. Some leave and some remain.

Leaving the Church does not mean abandoning the faith; moving away from the faith does not mean giving up one's spirituality. Even though they are leaving…

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