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Tag: Benin

  • Trailblazing Raleigh woman brings traditional West African food to the Triangle

    Trailblazing Raleigh woman brings traditional West African food to the Triangle

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    RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — We’re highlighting trailblazing women in our community for Women’s History Month, and Adé Carrena is exactly that.

    Born in the West African country of Benin, her mother put her up for adoption at 10 years old, hoping to give her a better life.

    She faced a lot of obstacles after being adopted in America, and for years, she felt like she didn’t really fit in anywhere.

    “I wasn’t African enough in the eyes of African people to really be claiming this thing, and then having lived the black experience in America while also being clear that I came from Benin, I didn’t have the right to claim the black experience,” Carrena said.

    Then, she found cooking. It felt instinctual to her, and while she knew she was bringing something different and authentic to the food scene in America, it wasn’t an easy path here either.

    “I am a black female in the hospitality industry, the restaurant industry that’s specifically led by white men, so I found myself being the only woman if not the only black woman in that space,” Carrena said.

    Slowly, she built confidence and her success started to grow. She started cooking in the intersection of Southern food and traditional West African food.

    “There was absolutely an intersection and a parallel, and all of that needed to be honored and all of that needed to be like honored and highlighted,” she said.

    Leading with authenticity and intention, she started a business to give jobs to women back home in Benin, cultivating traditional goods and spices that she sells here in town. Her company is called iLéWA, and you can learn more about it here.

    She’s also opened a food truck. She caters, holds pop-ups, and teaches cooking classes as well. She is one of the only chefs in America cooking Beninese food.

    She was named Chef of the Year by the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association last year.

    She made traditional Beninese gumbo for us, the flavors were unreal. They felt like something we’d never tried before but had some air of familiarity. The meal was hearty, complex, and full of love.

    She hopes her story inspires others to live authentically, no matter the obstacles they might face.

    “I don’t know what young girl is sitting somewhere in front of a TV today, but I hope that that young girl sees that it’s possible,” Carrena said.

    Though she’s already made quite the name for herself, Carrena made it clear that she’s only just getting started.

    Copyright © 2024 WTVD-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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    Sydnee Scofield

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  • Dahomey doc on Europe’s looted African art wins Berlin film festival

    Dahomey doc on Europe’s looted African art wins Berlin film festival

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    Dahomey, a documentary by Franco-Senegalese director Mati Diop probing the thorny issues surrounding Europe’s return of looted antiquities to Africa, has won the Berlin International Film Festival’s top prize.

    Kenyan-Mexican Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o announced the seven-member panel’s choice for the Golden Bear award at a gala ceremony in the German capital Saturday.

    Diop said the prize “not only honours me but the entire visible and invisible community that the film represents”.

    Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said the documentary “confronts an issue that has been the forefront of many people’s minds, not just in the film world but also across Europe.

    “DDahomeyconcentrates on the Benin bronzes and the struggle to return those bronzes. The whole principle of restitution, that is what the director Mati Diop referred to in accepting the prize, the Golden Bear at this festival,” Kane said.

    South Korean arthouse favourite Hong Sang-soo captured the runner-up Grand Jury Prize for, A Traveller’s Needs, his third collaboration with French screen legend Isabelle Huppert.

    Mati Diop celebrates with Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, right, and Head of Programming Mark Peranson backstage during the awards ceremony in Berlin [Nadja Wohlleben/Pool/AFP]

    Hong, a frequent guest at the festival, thanked the jury, joking, “I don’t know what you saw in this film.”

    French auteur Bruno Dumont accepted the third-place Jury Prize for, The Empire, an intergalactic battle of good and evil set in a French fishing village.

    Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias won best director for, Pepe, his enigmatic docudrama conjuring the ghost of a hippopotamus owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar.

    Marvel movie star Sebastian Stan picked up the best performance Silver Bear for his appearance in the US satire, A Different Man.

    Stan plays an actor with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disease causing disfiguring tumours, who is cured with a groundbreaking medical treatment.

    The Romanian American star called it “a story that’s not only about acceptance, identity and self-truth but about disfigurement and disability – a subject matter that’s been long overlooked by our own bias”.

    ‘Collusion’

    The United Kingdom’s Emily Watson clinched the best supporting performance Silver Bear for her turn as a cruel mother superior in, Small Things Like These.

    The film, starring Cillian Murphy, is about one of modern Ireland’s biggest scandals: the Magdalene laundries network of Roman Catholic penitentiary workhouses for “fallen women”.

    She paid tribute to the “thousands and thousands of young women whose lives were devastated by the collusion between the Catholic church and the state in Ireland”.

    German writer-director Matthias Glasner took the Silver Bear for best screenplay for his semi-autobiographical tragicomedy, Dying. The three-hour tour de force features some of the country’s top actors depicting a dysfunctional family.

    The Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution went to cinematographer Martin Gschlacht for the chilling Austrian historical horror movie, The Devil’s Bath. It tells the tale of depressed women in the 18th century who murdered in order to be executed.

    A separate Berlinale Documentary Award went to a Palestinian-Israeli activist collective for, No Other Land, about Palestinians displaced by Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied West Bank.

    “In accepting the prize, the two men most involved in this film – one Israeli, one Palestinian – both spoke about the need for a ceasefire immediately, and that is a thought picked up by many other people – some recipients of awards, [and] some people presenting awards,” Kane said.

    Cu Li Never Cries, by Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lan won the best first feature prize. The film tells the story of a woman who returns to Vietnam from Germany with the ashes of her estranged husband.

    Best short film went to, An Odd Turn, by Argentina’s Francisco Lezama about a museum security guard who predicts a surge in the dollar’s value with a pendulum.

    The Berlinale, as the festival is known, ranks with Cannes and Venice among Europe’s top cinema showcases.

    Last year, another documentary took home the Golden Bear, France’s, On the Adamant, about a floating day-care centre for people with psychiatric problems.

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  • Self-taught chefs win coveted stars from Michelin Guide

    Self-taught chefs win coveted stars from Michelin Guide

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    STRASBOURG, France (AP) — If your secret wish is to get a reward, not just family compliments, for your talents in the kitchen, then Georgiana Viou might serve as inspiration.

    The self-taught chef from the west African country of Benin, who came to Paris dreaming of becoming an interpreter, was awarded a star on Monday by the Michelin Guide, the bible of gastronomy, for her cuisine at “Rouge,” a restaurant in the southwestern French city of Nimes.

    She wasn’t alone. A chef who studied literature, David Degoursy, and pastry chef Jeanne Satori, with a degree in sustainable development, also won a star for their restaurant de:ja in Strasbourg, eastern France, where the annual awards ceremony was held.

    Michelin’s 2023 awards for French chefs put the accent on the regions of France, not Paris. The only chef to walk away with three stars — the highest award, reserved for gastronomic luminaries — was Alexandre Couillon for his creations at La Marine, his restaurant on the tip of the Ile de Noirmoutier on the Atlantic Ocean.

    Of the 44 new Michelin stars handed out, Viou’s is the only one won by a woman working single-handed. Several other women were honored as part of a team, like Satori, the pastry chef at de:ja.

    Viou, 45, has described her cuisine as a mix of French Mediterranean perfumed with notes recalling her home country. She has written several books about Benin’s cooking.

    Becoming a chef was a fall-back plan for Viou, who came to France in 1999 to study languages at the Sorbonne, hoping to become an interpreter. Working at a communications agency in the southern port city of Marseille, life’s complications forced her to change directions and, at 33, her second passion, cooking, took over.

    In an interview last fall with online publication terrafemina, she said that as a Black African woman who was older than most chefs-in-training in a mostly masculine universe her maturity helped her cope.

    But she dislikes being categorized because of her sex or skin color, saying that “it’s completely ridiculous” to be considered “a la mode” for being a Black female chef. She wants to be judged for what’s on the plate she serves.

    Viou learned to cook from her mother who had a simple little restaurant in Cotonou, Benin and got a lesson in perseverance from her grandmother. She worked her way up the chef’s ladder step by step in Marseille, eventually getting recognition at restaurants bearing her name. She joined Rouge, in Nimes, at its inception in June 2021.

    Last year, Viou was on the jury of the popular TV show MasterChef, years after being a candidate.

    Viou’s Michelin star was bestowed for her “singular cuisine … celebrating her Mediterranean environment and Benin roots.”

    “Today is really top,” she said at the awards ceremony, adding that she had been invited and thought, “This is cool. I’ll find myself among lots of chefs, an occasion for encounters,” not for the bestowal of a star.

    She was clearly overwhelmed.

    At Rouge (Red), “We’re not a team. We’re a family,” she said, her voice trembling and her eyes welling with happy tears. She then shyly took a few dance steps and raised her arms as if in thanks.

    Self-taught chefs with Michelin stars are less rare than one might think.

    There is Eric Girardin, for instance, at La Maison des Tetes in Colmar, near Strasbourg, who began his working life as an electrical engineer.

    The only woman to have won three Michelin stars is Anne-Sophie Pic. The grand-daughter and daughter of chefs, she moved from her native Drome region to Paris to study commerce before returning to her roots. With restaurants in Paris, London and Lausanne, Pic opened another in Singapore in 2019.

    ___

    Ganley reported from Paris.

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  • Angélique Kidjo Awarded $100,000 Vilcek Prize in Music

    Angélique Kidjo Awarded $100,000 Vilcek Prize in Music

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    Born in Benin, Angélique Kidjo is as widely known for her cultural and humanitarian leadership as she is for her powerful music

    Press Release
    –

    Feb 7, 2023 10:45 EST


    NEW YORK, February 7, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Angélique Kidjo receives a 2023 Vilcek Prize in Music in recognition of her exceptional range as a singer-songwriter, and for her creative leadership in bringing African music to the global stage through her performances, albums, and collaborations. 

    “Angélique Kidjo is known for the resonant power of her voice—both as a lyrical storyteller and as an advocate for women and girls in Africa,” says Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “From captivating audiences at Carnegie Hall and the Grammy Awards to her establishment of the Batonga Foundation to provide African women and girls with access to education, employment, and economic independence, she has forged a path over the past four decades that has inspired generations of performers and advocates.” 

    In recognition of Kidjo’s leadership, the foundation has published a video biography and in-depth profile of the artist and humanitarian available on the foundation’s website: Angélique Kidjo: “The power of music exceeds us.” 

    The Vilcek Prize in Music is a $100,000 prize awarded by the Vilcek Foundation as part of the Vilcek Foundation Prizes. The prizes are awarded annually in recognition and celebration of immigrant vanguards in the arts and in biomedical science whose work has had a profound impact on culture and society. In addition to providing direct support to immigrant artists and scientists, the purpose of the prizes is to build greater awareness of the importance of immigration for intellectual and cultural life in the United States. 

    In 2023, the Vilcek Foundation is awarding two Vilcek Prizes in Music—one to Angélique Kidjo, and one to Chinese-born composer and performer Du Yun. The foundation is also awarding three smaller prizes of $50,000 each—the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Music—to young immigrant musicians whose work demonstrates a unique perspective and represents an important contribution to their genre. The recipients of the 2023 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Music are Arooj Aftab (b. Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents), Juan Pablo Contreras (b. Mexico), and Ruby Ibarra (b. Philippines). 

    Read more at the Vilcek Foundation: Angélique Kidjo: “The power of music exceeds us.”

    The Vilcek Foundation

    The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters an appreciation for the arts and sciences. The foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history. Since 2000, the foundation has awarded over $7 million in prizes to foreign-born individuals and has supported organizations with over $6 million in grants.

    The Vilcek Foundation is a private operating foundation, a federally tax-exempt nonprofit organization under IRS Section 501(c)(3). To learn more, please visit vilcek.org. 
     

    Source: The Vilcek Foundation

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  • Benin Raises €260 Million to Reduce Government Debt Service Costs and Increase High Priority Social Spending

    Benin Raises €260 Million to Reduce Government Debt Service Costs and Increase High Priority Social Spending

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    Press Release
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    updated: Oct 18, 2018


    COTONOU, Benin, October 18, 2018 (Newswire.com)
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    The Republic of Benin hereby announces it has successfully raised a total €260 million (FCFA 171 billion) loan from a global bank. This ground-breaking transaction conducted by the Minister of Economy and Finance testifies to the country’s capacity to attract global private investors.

    Romuald Wadagni, Minister of Economy and Finance, said: “This is a key milestone in Benin’s history. We have just concluded the first ever international financing of the country from a private investor with the support of the World Bank that will lower the government’s debt service costs and enable us to expand our priority social programs.” The execution of this transaction means the government can enhance its debt profile by repaying existing loans from local banks that have an average 2-year maturity and therefore finance high priority social programs.

    This is a key milestone in Benin’s history. We have just concluded the first ever international financing of the country from a private investor with the support of the World Bank that will lower the government’s debt service costs and enable us to expand our priority social programs.

    Romuald Wadagni, Minister of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Benin

    The World Bank has guaranteed the equivalent of 40 percent of the loan’s €260m principal. The terms include an interest rate margin under 3.5 percent and a 12-year maturity. The use of an innovative ATI-ACA insurance scheme for investors also enabled the government to secure exceptionally beneficial terms for Benin from an international bank.

    After having obtained a B+ international credit rating from Standard & Poor’s and signed this international transaction, the Ministry of Economy and Finance plans to continue attracting foreign investors in Benin, in the interest of Benin citizens.

    For press inquiries : + 33 6 76 73 57 31 or +229 97 51 07 07

    Source: Benin Ministry for Economy and Finance

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