2012 was a different year with a lot of disappointments, hurts, pains, coup d’etat, and all sorts of things in Africa. We said goodbye to quite a few people in 2012, including:

1. President John Atta Mills of Ghana, who  joined his ancestors suddenly on 24 July 2012… So long Prof… May the land of Ghana hold you tight.

2. President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, who passed on 20 August 2012… leaving Ethiopia in turmoil.

3. President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, who passed away on 5 April 2012… he is succeeded in power by the second woman president in Africa: Mrs. Joyce Banda.

4. Minister Paul-Antoine Bohoun Bouabre of Côte d’Ivoire left us on 10 January 2012; this is the man who single-handedly saved Cote d’Ivoire from a financial cliff.

5. Cameroonian legendary footballer Théophile Abega, nicknamed ‘The Doctor’, left us on November 15, 2012. He was voted as one of Africa’s top 200 players of the past 50 years.

6. Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, was sentenced to 50 years for war crimes in May of this year.

7. A coup d’etat deposed the rightful president of Mali, President Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT) on 22 March 2012, one month before scheduled elections. This has left Mali in turmoil; the country is now going down the path of Cote d’Ivoire and Libya: split into two, and eventually … broken apart?

8. A coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau on April 12, 2012, by the military junta two weeks before the second round of elections saw the arrest of the two presidential candidates: Carlos Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira.

9. Abdoulaye Wade, the négrier of Senegal, was booted out of his presidency by the people of Senegal who voted for Macky Sall on 25 March 2012 (a true example of democracy in Africa).

10. Last but not least, the most hateful one of all: Nicolas Sarkozy, the ‘bourreau’ of Africa was booted out of the French presidency on 6 March 2012 … bye bye Sarko… you went for the recolonization and destruction of Cote d’Ivoire and Libya… and the deck of cards are still falling; now Mali… ? Sarko is gone… but his deeds are still going on.