Did you ever have a dream of a street, a park, or perhaps a country being named after you?
Naming a country after himself was the arrogant feat accomplished by Cecil Rhodes, a British citizen in the late 1800s. As the founder of the British South Africa Company in 1893, Rhodes, besides reaping untold riches, managed to name a large territory in the southern part of Africa after himself, Rhodesia, a new country 1.5 times larger than his home country, England. No doubt a conquest bolstering his prestige in the gentlemen’s clubs of London, while his subjects spent lifetimes toiling and sweating in his diamond, gold and copper mines.
The Republic of Malawi is a small, landlocked country in the fertile highlands of Southeastern Africa, boarded by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Malawi is about the size of the state of Ohio, but with about double the population and rapidly growing.
Many may recall the Queen of Sheba, who according to 1 Kings 10 caravanned from East Africa to visit King Solomon of the Israelites, a monarch deemed wiser than all the sages of Egypt and the Middle East.
Can you name the 11th largest country in the world? Would it help if I said it is the second-biggest country in Africa?
If you’re still unsure, pull up a map of Africa and place a finger right in the center of this huge continent. Chances are you have found the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DR Congo for short. Probably, like the rest of us, you know very little about this country named after its lifegiving Congo River. Most of us are not aware DR Congo is a country of contradictions. It holds large resources of raw materials like gold, silver and diamonds, , while at the same time being among the poorest countries in the world.
The 9th International CURE Conference was held this year in Nairobi, the capital of the East African country of Kenya. From May 1-5, 95 delegates from 28 countries and 12 African nations came together under the banner of Pan Africa CURE to further their agenda of human rights and prison reform efforts in the Unites States and the African continent as well as other countries throughout the world.
