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BakraBites.com is a new site featuring biting, hard-hitting articles by Kwesi Bacchra and other leading authors and historians about current affairs in Britain, Europe and the World with a particular emphasis on Africa, the Caribbean, Carnival and other Black issues and history.

African Bamboo Association
Mr. Abdou Rahmane CISSÉ Latgana
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The 1997 treaty banning the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines has been ratified by 118 countries and signed by 140 . Since the treaty became law, countries may no longer sign it, they must accede. Those countries which have already signed, must still ratify in order to be fully bound by the ban provisions.

The First Universal Forum of Cultures will be held in Barcelona in the year 2004. It is to be a new type of world event, of spirit and scale similar to the Olympic Games and International Expositions, but based on the cultures of the world. The premiere adventure in a new sort of international encounter for the 21st century. The Forum will turn Barcelona into a great festival, a stage open to the creativity of all nations and a space in which dialogue among the citizens of the world is possible.

NEWS FROM AFRICA

Africa news update from the BBC desk in London.

Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund since 1995, Carol Bellamy is a respected voice in the international community. Ms. Bellamy was born on 14 January 1942. Ms. Bellamy has focused the world's leading children's organization on five major priorities: immunizing every child; getting all girls and boys into school, and getting all schools to offer quality basic education; reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS and its impact on young people; fighting for the protection of children from violence and exploitation; and introducing early childhood programs in every country. Prior to her UNICEF appointment, Ms. Bellamy had been serving as Director of the Peace Corps since 1993. She was the first volunteer to have returned to direct the agency, which has some 6,500 volunteers in more than 90 countries. During her service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 1963 to 1965, Ms. Bellamy ran a school lunch programme and produced a radio show on health and nutrition in Spanish, which was broadcast in rural areas.

Benin is situated in West Africa and is bounded to the east by Nigeria, to the north by Niger and Burkina Faso, and to the west by Togo. Benin stretches 700km (435 miles) from the Bight of Benin to the Niger River.

Chuck Berry (born 1926), creator of the "duck walk" and known as the "father of rock and roll," has been a major influence on popular music. Even though his career and life reached great peaks and declined to low valleys, he still prevails in music while his contemporaries have vanished. Chuck Berry's music has transcended generations. He earns respect to this day because he is truly an entertainer. Berry gained success by watching the audience's reaction and playing accordingly, putting his listeners' amusement above all else. For this reason, tunes like "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene" and "Memphis" have become anthems to an integrated American youth and popular culture. Berry is a musical icon who established rock and roll as a musical form and brought the worlds of black and white together in song. Born in St. Louis on October 18, 1926, Berry emulated the smooth vocal clarity of his idol, Nat King Cole, while playing blues songs from bands like Muddy Waters.

Born August 14, 1966, in Cleveland, Ohio, Halle Maria Berry. Halle won many high-profile competitions, including Miss Teen All American, Miss USA and Miss World. Once she was done raking in points by winning pageant after pageant, Halle continued her education at Cleveland's Cuyahoga Community College in 1986, studying broadcast journalism. Halle got her first big break in 1989, when Spike Lee cast her as a crack-addicted woman in Jungle Fever, starring opposite Samuel L. Jackson. She was the first black American in the Miss World Competition. She didn't win a prize but her dress did, but is the second "Bond Girl" to win an Oscar.

SIM Mi NSONKON from Cameroon, living in London, wrote "Panafricanisme", a book (in the French language) and created the new bilingual website www.kametrenaissance.com regarding Black Renaissance.

Black-Network.com is an Interactive Community of Resources for African-Americans Worldwide with free Email, Chat Rooms & Personals. It claims it has put all of the BEST African American resources available on the web into one easy to navigate community. Its primary goal is " Uplifting the Black People". Think about how they struggled, for over 400 years, trying to gain equality in this world. Their ancestors embarked upon their journey here, most in the holds of slave ships, after being promised a better life!

Karen Blixen, one of Denmark`s most famous writers, always maintained that she was a storyteller, and that she much preferred to tell a story than to write it. It was in Africa, to take her mind off the problems of the farm, that Karen Blixen created some of the stories for which she is world famous today. Her second book, Out of Africa (1937), was published almost simultaneously in America, England and Denmark. This is the best known of all Karen Blixen`s books and it describes her life in Africa. It was adapted into a major motion picture in 1985.

Jean Bédel Bokassa (zhäN-bedel´ bokäs´sä), president of Central African Republic (1966-79). He served (1939-61) in the French army, then organized his country's army, becoming commander in chief in 1963. In 1966 he led an army coup against President David Dacko, becoming president and prime minister of the republic. Declared president for life in 1972, he crowned himself “emperor” of the so-called Central African Empire in 1977. Erratic and violent, he was overthrown by a French-supported coup (1979) that reinstated Dacko as president. Bokassa lived in exile in France and Côte d'Ivoire, returning to the Central African Republic in 1987. He was arrested and charged with torture, murder, and cannibalism. Convicted of murdering several political opponents, Bokassa was sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to life in prison. He was released in 1993.

In 1999, the U2 lead-singer got involved with Jubilee 2000, now known as Drop the Debt, a London-based coalition of academics and activists who equated Third World debt with slavery. In the course of his work with the campaign Bono has met with Presidents, Prime Ministers and the Pope to get attention for the issue. He relishes the incongruity of a rock star talking about world policy, but he backs it up by knowing his stuff. He reads economics tomes and did some unofficial studying at Harvard. "I think that politicians are attracted at first by the celebrity," says Harvard economics guru Jeffrey Sachs, who has huddled with Bono and the Pope on the debt issue. "But once they meet him, they find that he is an outstandingly capable interlocutor." Senator Jesse Helms met with Bono to talk about starving children in Africa and ended up weeping—marking the first time a rocker has inspired an emotion in the Senator from North Carolina other than perhaps outrage.

Botswana, a land of staggering beauty, is ideally located in the heart of Southern Africa. This is the country where the river ends in the sands of the Kalahari. Its natural beauty lies in its land constellation, its wilderness, wildlife and cultural diversity.

The Bureau of African Affairs advises the Secretary of State and guides the operation of the U.S. diplomatic establishment in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. For additional assistance relating to U.S. foreign policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa, please contact the Bureau of African Affairs' Office of Public Affairs at (202) 647-6609. For Congressional inquiries, please contact the Bureau of African Affairs' Congressional Affairs Officer at (202) 647-6480.

Situated in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, Burkina Faso is 500 Km from the Atlantic Ocean. Three main great rivers run through the country: The Mouhoun in the west and the Nazinon and the Nakembe which cut across the flat relief at the centre of the country.

Burundi is a small mountainous country with a long history of tribal wars. The majority of the population are Hutus, while Tutsis, originally from Ethiopia and Uganda, and the original inhabitants Twa Pygmies form minorities. During colonial times the country came under the control of Belgium.