Rudy L. Massamba's Blog, page 3

Where are African [black] heroes in Western Cartoons?

The title of this post is purposefully asking the wrong question! Indeed, why should a Western or Asian cartoonist draw a black character as a hero if the community or audience he is targeting expects the hero to be either white or yellow? The answer is that it would not make sense to have a black hero drawn for the white community because it is the environment and the expectations of that environment that actually dictate the color of heroes in cartoons and comic books. In other words, the r...

[Is] God Hidden in Science [?] An African Perspective!

An exceptional Zimbabwean inventor, Maxwell Chikumbutso, asserts that “God was [his] professor” – hum! Can this be a serious claim from the man who has developed several outstanding prototypes, among which a generator that converts “radio frequencies” into “electricity” or an electric car that uses the same principle? What does the uncanny have to do with science? I don’t have the answers to these questions. But Maxwell Chikumbutso is not the first genius who claims that his inventions were “...

What’s Wrong with my English, as an African Inventor?

As the founder of Kumatoo, I receive emails or documentation from Africans with talent. All of them, however, do not necessarily have a good command of the “official language” spoken in their country and that was inherited through colonization. What matters to them is how they can convey a technical message even if the words are misspelled or used incorrectly, or even if the structure of their sentence would shock the purists.

A language is a means of communication. In other words, it is simp...

What’s wrong with my English, as an African inventor?

As the founder of Kumatoo, I receive emails or documentation from Africans with talent. All of them, however, do not necessarily have a good command of the “official language” spoken in their country and that was inherited through colonization. What matters to them is how they can convey a technical message even if the words are misspelled or used incorrectly, or even if the structure of their sentence would shock the purists.

A language is a means of communication. In other words, it is simp...

Part 2: Why some of Africa’s best talents are school dropouts?

Maxwell Chikumbutso, from Zimbabwe, is the prototype of the African inventor who dropped out of school at age 14 and still kept on using his intellectual capacities to find a solution to energy issues that remain a snag toAfrica’s true industrialization process. He has designed and manufactured a green generator that turns radio frequencies into electricity. Of course, this is … impossible! It’s impossible because he is “black” and African. Not surprisingly, the harshest critics emanated from...

Part 1: Why some of Africa’s best talents are school dropouts?

Africans have been formatted to believe that research and development occurs only in developed nations like the United States, Sweden, Germany, South Korea or Israel to name but a few. There are some arguments that tend to legitimize this belief. Indeed, the most advanced universities in the world are located in “developed nations” where researchers and inventors have access to state of the art facilities and equipment, unlike the majority of African scientists and inventors. Moreover, the qu...

Claudy Khan – a painter, a visionary and a genius

African artists are like African inventors, innovators or scientists. They have talent. However, we barely hear about them, especially on Western Media! Why so! Actually, should Western media value African artists or should African media value African (Black) artists?

In 2010, I was fortunate to meet Claudy Khan, in Pointe-Noire (Congo-Brazzaville). I was amazed by the structure of his painting and attracted by the uncanny conveyed by most of his paintings. Truly amazing! I have since then ke...