2019
May
22
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

May 22, 2019
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

No matter who triumphs in the National Basketball Association playoff game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors tomorrow, there will be a clear winner: Africa.

On one side is the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Greek-born son of Nigerian immigrants who is rapidly becoming the best basketball player on the planet. On the other are rising Raptors star Pascal Siakim of Cameroon and General Manager Masai Ujiri, a Nigerian seen by many as one of the game’s shrewdest executives.  

The NBA’s connection with Africa is growing. The league now frequently plays a preseason game in Africa, and another of the league’s transcendent young talents is Cameroon’s Joel Embiid. Mr. Ujiri says there are “10 Embiids walking around” Africa waiting to be discovered.

That effort begins in earnest next year, when the NBA launches a pan-African professional league of 12 teams. The benefits for the NBA are obvious. But the symbol for Africa is potentially even more potent. The continent is still struggling to overcome lingering colonial views of its art, justice, people, and economy. The NBA venture can be the reverse, a mutual investment in the promise of Africa’s future.

“This new league could be the most important lens through which Africa’s history of vibrant talent, culture, history and beauty is celebrated,” write a Kenyan lawyer and his colleague in the Toronto Star. “It might just be the world stage Africans have long dreamed of, and patiently waited for.”

Our five stories for today include a look at one of the paradoxes of hyperpartisanship, a first-person account of what it’s like to vote with nearly a billion friends, and why fashion’s repeated cultural faux pas are eminently avoidable.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Jane Barlow/PA/AP
Election staff member Scott Russell carries one of hundreds of polling station signs being dispatched ahead of the European Parliamentary election in Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22.

A deeper look

A letter to

My children
SOURCE:

*Election Commission of India, Scroll.in

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Karen Norris
Ann Hermes/Staff
Brandice Daniel, founder and CEO of Harlem’s Fashion Row, poses for a portrait in her home on May 10 in New York. Harlem’s Fashion Row highlights and promotes multicultural fashion designers.

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About this feature

A message of love

Marko Drobnjakovic/AP
Richard Browning (r.), the inventor of the Gravity jet suit, and an associate fly over a lake in Belgrade using Browning’s invention May 22. Browning, CEO of Gravity Industries, did a presentation ahead of the World Minds conference held in the Serbian capital May 23.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Tomorrow our Beijing staff writer, Ann Scott Tyson, will look beyond the United States and China to explore how the trade war between the two countries is touching far more of the globe.

More issues

2019
May
22
Wednesday
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