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THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - KOFI ANNAN

Kofi Atta Annan (born 8 April 1938) is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." He is the founder and the Chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as being the chairman of The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela.

From 23 February until 31 August 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of progress with regard to conflict resolution, stating that "when the Syrian people desperately need action, there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council". He has been involved in several humanitarian projects and won several awards including the Kora All Africa Music Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Secretary-General of the United Nations

Appointment

On 13 December 1996, the United Nations Security Council recommended Annan to replace the previous Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, whose second term faced the veto of the United States. Confirmed four days later by the vote of the General Assembly, he started his first term as Secretary-General on 1 January 1997. He was reelected for a second term in 2001, which was unusual since this meant a third term for Africa. The Asian states didn't protest although it should have been their turn because Annan was so popular among the UN member states and UN staff.

Activities

Recommendations for UN reform

Millennium Development Goals

The United Nations Global Compact

Establishment of The Global Fund

Responsibility to Protect

Lubbers sexual-harassment investigation

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2001, its centennial year, the Nobel Committee decided that the Peace Prize was to be divided between the United Nations (UN) and Kofi Annan. Annan was awarded the Peace Prize for having revitalized the UN and for having given priority to human rights. The Nobel Committee also recognized his commitment to the struggle to containing the spread of HIV in Africa and his declared opposition to international terrorism.

Farewall Adresses

On 19 September 2006, Annan gave a farewell address to world leaders gathered at the UN headquarters in New York, in anticipation of his retirement on 31 December. In the speech he outlined three major problems of "an unjust world economy, world disorder, and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law", which he believes "have not resolved, but sharpened" during his time as Secretary-General. He also pointed to violence in Africa, and the Arab-Israeli conflict as two major issues warranting attention.

On 11 December 2006, in his final speech as Secretary-General, delivered at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, Annan recalled Truman's leadership in the founding of the United Nations. He called for the United States to return to President Truman's multilateralist foreign policies, and to follow Truman's credo that "the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world". He also said that the United States must maintain its commitment to human rights, "including in the struggle against terrorism."

Kofi Annan Foundation

In 2007, Kofi Annan established the Kofi Annan Foundation, an independent, not-for profit organization which works to promote better global governance and strengthen the capacities of people and countries to achieve a fairer, more peaceful world.

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - MOHAMMED ElBARADEI

Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei (born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who was the last Vice President of Egypt serving on an acting basis from 14 July 2013 until his resignation on 14 August 2013.He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2009. He and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei was also prominently featured in the Western press regarding relatively recent politics in Egypt, particularly the 2011 revolution which ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.

Public career as IAEA Director General (1997 - 2009)

ElBaradei began to serve as Director General of the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, on 1 December 1997, succeeding Hans Blix of Sweden.He was re-elected for two more four-year terms in 2001 and in 2005. His third and last term ended in November 2009. ElBaradei's tenure has been marked by high-profile, non-proliferation issues, which include the inspections in Iraq preceding the March 2003 invasion, and tensions over the nuclear program of Iran.

Nobel Peace Prize

On 7 October 2005, ElBaradei and the IAEA were announced as joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for their "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes, is used in the safest possible way." ElBaradei donated all of his winnings to building orphanages in Cairo. The IAEA's winnings are being spent to train scientists from developing countries to use nuclear techniques in combating cancer and malnutrition. ElBaradei is the fourth Egyptian to receive the Nobel Prize, following Anwar Sadat (1978 in Peace),Naguib Mahfouz (1988 in Literature), and Ahmed Zewail (1999 in Chemistry).

In his Nobel lecture, ElBaradei said that the changing landscape of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament may be defined by the emergence of an extensive black market in nuclear material and equipment, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive nuclear

technology, and the stagnation in nuclear disarmament. To combat proliferation, ElBaradei has suggested keeping nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of extremist groups, tightening control over the operations for producing the nuclear material that could be used in weapons, and accelerating disarmament efforts. ElBaradei also stated that only one percent of the money spent to develop new weapons would be enough to feed the entire world and that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience and no role in our security.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he was delighted that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, ElBaradei. "The secretary general congratulates him and the entire staff of the agency, past and present, on their contributions to global peace," a spokesman for Annan said.

PHOTO-QUOTE OF THE DAY

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - AHMED ZEWAIL HASSAN

Ahmed Hassan Zewail (born February 26, 1946) is an American and Egyptian scientist, known as the "father of femtochemistry", he won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Arab scientist to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field. He is the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics, and the director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology at the California Institute of Technology.

Career

After completing his PhD, Zewail did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley supervised by Charles Bonner Harris. Following this, he was awarded a faculty appointment at the California Institute of Technology in 1976, where he has remained since 1990, he was made the first Linus Pauling Chair in Chemical Physics. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982.

Zewail has been nominated and will participate in President Barack Obama's Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an advisory group of the nation's leading scientists and engineers to advise the President and Vice President and formulate policy in the areas of science, technology, and innovation.

Awards and Honors

In 1999, Zewail became the third Egyptian national to receive the Nobel Prize. Zewail gave his Nobel Lecture on "Femtochemistry: Atomic-Scale Dynamics of the Chemical Bond Using Ultrafast Lasers". His prize was following Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat (1978 in Peace), Naguib Mahfouz (1988 in Literature). Mohamed ElBaradei followed him (2005 in peace). Other international awards include the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1993) awarded to him by the Wolf Foundation, the Tolman Medal (1997), the Robert A. Welch Award (1997), the Othmer Gold Medal in 2009, the Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society and Davy Medal from the Royal Society in 2011.He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2001. In 1999, he received Egypt's highest state honor, the Grand Collar of the Nile.

Zewail was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lund University in Sweden in May 2003 and is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Cambridge University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science in 2006. In October 2006, Zewail received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science for his pioneering development of the new field femtoscience and for his seminal contributions to the revolutionary discipline of physical biology, creating new ways for better understanding the functional behavior of biological systems by directly visualizing them in the four dimensions of space and time. In May 2008, Zewail received an honorary doctorate from Complutense University of Madrid. In February, 2009, Zewail was awarded an honorary doctorate in arts and sciences by the University of Jordan. In May 2010, he received a Doctor of Humane Letters from Southwestern University. In October/2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Glasgow, UK His students include scientists like Martin Gruebele. He also has won the King Faisal award in 1989. The Zewail city of science and technology is named in his honour.

Zewail also received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2002.

PHOTO-QUOTE OF THE DAY

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

Naguib Mahfouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.

Writing career

Photo of Naguib Mahfouz on wall of Kirsha's café, which was mentioned in his novel Midaq Alley

Mahfouz published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts and five plays over a 70-year career. Possibly his most famous work, The Cairo Trilogy, depicts the lives of three generations of different families in Cairo from World War I until after the 1952 military coup that overthrew King Farouk. He was a board member of the publisher Dar el-Ma'aref. Many of his novels were serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, "Point of View". Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.

Nobel Prize for Literature

Mahfouz was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Arab writer to have won the award. Shortly after winning the prize Mahfouz was quoted as saying "The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level. The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition."The Swedish letter to Mahfouz included the quotations "rich and complex work invites us to reconsider the fundamental things in life. Themes like the nature of time and love, society and norms, knowledge and faith recur in a variety of situations and are presented in thought-provoking, evocative, and clearly daring ways. And the poetic quality of your prose can be felt across the language barrier. In the prize citation you are credited with the forming of an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind." Because Mahfouz found traveling to Sweden difficult at his age, he did not attend the award ceremony.

Attempted assassination

The appearance of The Satanic Verses brought back up the controversy surrounding Mahfouz's novelChildren of Gebelawi. Death threats against Mahfouz followed, including one from the "blind sheikh," Egyptian-born Omar Abdul-Rahman. Mahfouz was given police protection, but in 1994 an Islamic extremist succeeded in attacking the 82-year-old novelist by stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home.

He survived, permanently affected by damage to nerves of his right upper limb. After the incident Mahfouz was unable to write for more than a few minutes a day and consequently produced fewer and fewer works. Subsequently, he lived under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, in the beginning of 2006, the novel was published in Egypt with a preface written by Ahmad Kamal Aboul-Magd. After the threats, Mahfouz stayed in Cairo with his lawyer Nabil Mounir Habib. Mahfouz and Mounir would spend most of their time in Mounir's office; Mahfouz used Mounir's library as a reference for most of his books. Mahfouz stayed with Mounir until his death.

Personal life

Mahfouz remained a bachelor until age 43 because he believed that with its numerous restrictions and limitations, marriage would hamper his literary future. "I was afraid of marriage . . . especially when I saw how busy my brothers and sisters were with social events because of it. This one went to visit people, that one invited people. I had the impression that married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom."

However, in 1954, he quietly married a Coptic Orthodox woman from Alexandria, Atiyyatallah Ibrahim, with whom he had two daughters, Fatima and Umm Kalthum. The couple initially lived on a houseboat in the Agouza section of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile, then moved to an apartment along the river in the same area. Mahfouz avoided public exposure, especially inquiries into his private life, which might have become, as he put it, “a silly topic in journals and radio programs.”

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA

Not many are familiar with the origin and history of one of the world's most prestigious awards, the NOBEL PRIZE. Very well organised and awarded to people who have had the most amazing effect on the world at large in various fields namely, Economics, Peace, Medicine, Physics, Literature, and Chemistry.

A great number of recipients (about 900, including individuals and organizations since inception to 2015) have emerged form various parts of the world for the various categories thereof. It comes with a somewhat huge cash prize and prestige in appreciation for impression on the world.

Amongst many things, ALFRED NOBEL was an inventor. Born on 21 October 1833 in Sweden, into a family of engineers. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which DYNAMITE is the most famous.
In 1888, Nobel was greatly shocked to read his own obituary, titled the merchant of death is dead, in a french newspaper. As it was his brother who had died. Nobel was disconcerted by this and he came apprehensive as to how he would be remembered when he passes on.

It was in this light, Nobel stated specifically in his will that his fortune be used to create a prize for those who confer the "greatest benefits on mankind" in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, (and Economics). After consideration of his will, the award of the Nobel prize begin in the year 1901.

Africa has produced 22 worthy recipients of this esteemed award. We will consider these exceptional people and what stood them out in their various fields.

Come along, let us inspire Africa and Africans with our own brightest that have graced the world's stage by their life choices and work!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

AYODELE AWOJOBI - THE AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL GENIUS FROM NIGERIA

Whether educational, intellectual, political, entertainment, business, medical or otherwise, role models emerge from every part of a nation and its composite parts. These role models play a huge part in grooming the youths of any society as they aspire to be like them or surpass their deeds. They are looked up to for inspiration and motivation for personal growth or showed off as the nation's pride. Role models may not be titled leaders but, they are people who found their purpose, lived it fully and by their lives, help others in finding "the way"

The decibel to which the praises of role models are sung, I think should be proportional to their patriotism, selfless contribution, personal achievements. Some transcend national to becoming international icons, continental figures or a world class reference and they should be accorded the respect as it is.

In a continent as ours, where education is still a huge struggle and not much has been done in terms of effort to educate the people en mass, it is very necessary to loudly celebrate Academicians who have left a mark in time so they can be a very near form of inspiration for the children and youths. More so, with the short supply of quality leaders, it is most essential to celebrate leaders with exceptional positive contributions to societal growth.

On the subject, Ayodele Awojobi a Nigerian man stood out in his days as a genius, yes, a GENIUS. Born on March 12 1937, Ayodele was many things. From an excellent academician, an activist, an author, an inventor, and one who was drawn to politics. His brilliance was spoken of beyond the shores of his home country. And his commitment to a better society through education was unmatched.

Ayodele was a straight-A's secondary school student, while at the CMS Grammar school, passing his West African School Certificate examinations with a record eight distinctions in 1955. He proceeded to the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Ibadan, for his General Certificate of Examinations, GCE (Advanced Level), where in 1958 he sat for, and obtained distinctions in all his papers: Physics, Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. In 1962 Awojobi was awarded his first degree in Mechanical Engineering – a BSc (Eng) London, with first class honours, at the then Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria (now Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria). He had studied there on a federal government scholarship won on the merit of his performance in the GCE (Advanced-level) examinations of 1958.

He boasted openly saying that it was his intention to finish the whole course within a period of three years only; an impracticable feat due to the fact that nowhere was the BSc Mechanical Engineering curriculum designed to run less than four years. Ayodele accomplished it in three years just as he had predicted.

The federal government awarded Awojobi another scholarship in 1962 to study further at the post-graduate level in the field of Mechanical Engineering at the Imperial College of the University of London (now Imperial College London). He completed the course, successfully defending his thesis, and was awarded a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1966.

Awojobi went to London to study for his Doctorate and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, DSc. He was the first African to be awarded the Doctor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, at the Imperial College London. To have received the award at the age of 37 is significant, more so as the degree is only exceptionally and rarely awarded to a scholar under the age of 40

The status of the degree has declined, however, because it is not widely understood but in former times the doctorate in science was regarded as a greater distinction than a professorial chair. It is in fact a higher tier of research doctorates, awarded on the basis of a formally submitted portfolio of published research of a very high standard. 

He returned to Nigeria in 1974 and was made an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Lagos. However, one week after having been appointed associate professor, the University of Lagos Senate, after receiving news that Awojobi had just been awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc), immediately appointed him professor in Mechanical Engineering, making him the youngest professor in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos and the first ever to be expressly promoted from associate to full professorship within a week.

^{By nature, Ayodele Awojobi was a teacher as he sought to increase the literacy rate of the citizens in his nation.} He engaged with great educators of his, and earlier generations, such as the late nationalist and Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo (who forwarded several of Ayodele's educational books).

He imparted knowledge at various other levels, even as he contended with his day job as a full-time professor and university lecturer. He envisaged his country as a whole becoming more advanced, technologically – this was exemplified when he refused lucrative offers from commercial outfits for his Autonov 1 invention, he rather preferring to preserve his design for his country's future benefit.

^{Awojobi was a very vocal activist who spoke against electoral fraud and in a case, dragged the federal government to court in 1966 over electoral malpractice and rigging. He went from school to school giving speeches and handing out his books.}

With such a vibrant resume and more, I can only but wonder why AYODELE AWOJOBI's name is not loudly mentioned in the spheres where he made his mark, and I am very particular about education. Why is it that so little of this academic giant and his achievements are rarely known by this generation? How is it that we live in a society where thieves are loudly celebrated and rascals are immortalized?
We much change this and begin telling our stories, telling them strong, telling them long!