Coca-Cola Issues Statement Regarding Teddy Afro’s Version of FIFA World Cup Song

Tadias Magazine

By Tadias Staff

New York (TADIAS) — The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in Atlanta, responded to queries regarding the unreleased, Ethiopian version of Coke’s FIFA World Cup song performed by Teddy Afro. Coca Cola confirmed that Teddy’s contract was handled by a third party, Mandala Limited, a Kenyan production company based in Nairobi.

“Teddy Afro was brought into our Coke Studio in Africa to record a version of the Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup song, ‘The World is Ours’ with the goal of capturing the unique genre of Ethiopian music,” a representative of The Coca-Cola Company said in an email to Tadias Magazine. “The contract with Teddy Afro was executed by a 3rd party, Mandala Limited, a production House based Nairobi and Teddy Afro was compensated in full for his efforts.”

Coca-Cola under fire for dropping Teddy Afro’s World Cup Anthem

June 4, 2014

(EMF) – A large number of Diaspora community is urging East African nations to stop drinking Coca-Cola, in protest for Coca-Cola’s outrageous action to drop Teddy Afro’s World Cup Anthem.

Negative campaigning is on the rise as social media pages are flooded with a highly negative campaigns against Coca cola products following the leaked information by Mr. Misikir Mulugeta, Coca-Cola Brand Manager for Ethiopia, who downplayed the pop star Tewodros Kassahun.

Light at the end of the tunnel for the “Dark Continent”? By Prof. Alemayehu G. Mariam

(Author’s note: This commentary appeared on  Pambazuka.org  on May 29, 2014 as part of a mid-century outlook on possible scenarios in Africa. I make my “predictions” debating myself as a political scientist and a defense lawyer.)

Is there light at the end of the tunnel for the “Dark Continent”?

“Making predictions is hard. Especially about the future”, said the famous American baseball player, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra facetiously. Likewise, predicting whether there is light at the end of the tunnel in 2050 and beyond is hard. Especially about the Dark Continent. Making predictions about Africa based on the facts of the last half century will surely make one a doomsayer. Not looking in the rear view mirror would make one a soothsayer. I am neither.

As a political scientist, I am grudgingly guided by the reputed “founding father” of “modern” political science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who instructed that “Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times.” Machiavelli took a dim view of the human capacity to learn from mistakes. He must have believed man is doomed to incorrigibility.

Crimes Against University Students and Humanity By Prof. Al Mariam

On May 2, 2014, BBC reported 

that the security forces of the regime in Ethiopia had massacred at least 47 university and high school students in the town of  Ambo 80 miles west of the capital Addis Ababa. The regime dismissed the massacre and tried to sweep it under the rug claiming that a “few anti-peace forces incited and coordinated the violence”.  There has been little international coverage or outrage over the massacre.Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement condemning the “shooting at and beating [of] peaceful protesters in Ambo, Nekemte, Jimma, and other towns”. According to HRW, the student “protests erupted over the release of the proposed Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan” which would “expand Addis Ababa’s municipal boundary to include more than 15 communities in Oromia” and displace Oromo farmers and residents. HRW demanded an immediate end to the excessive use of force by the regime’s security forces against peaceful student demonstrators.

Ethiopia: Bloggers of the World, Unite!

by ERecycler

Today is the 25th day in jail for Zone 9 Bloggers in Ethiopia. They have not been charged; in fact, the government could not come up with reasonable cause for detaining the 6 bloggers and 3 journalists. It has now come to our attention that two have been tortured. All they did was blog about conditions in their own country. Corruption has gone out of control; in a decade beginning in 2001 $16.5 billions have been illicitly transferred to foreign banks [according to Washington, DC-based Global Financial Integrity]. There are chronic water, power and food shortages. The state security literally eavesdrops on telephone conversations and controls Internet connectivity making Ethiopia the least served in Africa. The ruling party took office through the barrel of the gun and divided the country arbitrarily along ethnic lines [and later orchestrated a sham elections that it won].

Ethiopia’s independent publishers may face another hurdle

A CPJ Guest Blogger

Newspapers are significant in Ethiopia because there are no other independent media sources in the country. (Ethiopia Forums)

>In what appears to be one of a collection of measures to silence the press ahead of 2015 elections, Ethiopian authorities in the Communications Ministry are preparing a new system to control the distribution of print media. Privately owned newspapers and magazines, possibly the only remaining independent news sources in the country, would face more state control if the proposal is set into motion.