Danai to host Global Citizen festival
ZIMBABWE BORN award-winning actor, playwright and activist Danai Gurira (pictured) will host this year’s Global Citizen Festival to be held on September 24 in Accra, Ghana.
is was announced by Global Citizen, an international advocacy organisation, yesterday. e festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
Danai is best known for her role as Michonne on the Hollywood drama series
e Walking Dead (2012–2020); as Okoye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Black Panther (2018); Avengers: Infinity War (2018); and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
She was born in Iowa, United States, and was raised there until December 1983, when she moved with her family to Harare.
She later returned to the US and studied social psychology at Macalester College, receiving an Master of Fine Arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
She is the co-author of the play In the Continuum, with Nikkole Salter, and others such as Eclipsed, e Convert and Familiar.
Global Citizen is the world’s largest movement of action takers and impact makers dedicated to ending extreme poverty now. It posts, tweets, messages, votes, signs and calls to inspire those who can make things happen — government leaders, businesses, philanthropists, artists, and citizens.
e 2022 Global Citizen Festival campaign is supported by governments and world leaders.
In a statement, Global Citizen said Uncle Waffles will join a line-up of performers at the festival with Berla Mundi, Joselyn Dumas, Michaela Coel, Nomzamo Mbatha and Sabrina Dhowre Elba joining as presenters. e festival will also be presented in New York City’s Central Park, in the
United States.
Other artists include Angélique Kidjo and Billy Porter who will join the line-up of performers at Global Citizen Festival in New York City. ey join previously announced performers from across the globe, including Usher, SZA, Stormzy, Gyakie, Sarkodie, Stonebwoy and TEMS in Accra.
Said the statement from Global Citizen: “Global Citizen is calling on world leaders who will be gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, as well as major corporations and philanthropic foundations, to take to the Global Citizen Festival stages and announce new commitments to ‘End Extreme Poverty NOW’, including investing US$600 million into the future of women and girls; closing the annual US$10 billion climate financing shortfall; delivering US$500 million to help African farmers respond to the global food crisis; and reallocating IMF (International Monetary Fund) Special Drawing Rights to provide urgent economic support, while explicitly acknowledging that sustainable change is only possible with the people and activists who advocate for change on the ground, who should never have to risk their lives because of doing so.”
e 2022 Global Citizen Festival will broadcast and stream worldwide on TimesLive in Africa, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon Music, the Amazon Music channel on Twitch and Apple Music.
Tickets to the festivals can be earned by downloading the Global Citizen app or visiting www.globalcitizen.org to take action on the campaign’s issues. For each action taken, users earn points that can be redeemed for tickets to the festivals.
e 2022 Global Citizen Festival and the “End Extreme Poverty NOW” campaign are supported by a coalition of the world’s leading brands and companies including Global Partners, Accenture, Cisco, Citi, Delta Air Lines, Harith General Partners, P&G, Verizon, and YouTube, World Wide Technology, Campaign Partner for Global Citizen Festival: NYC, Live Nation. — Staff Writer.