This week's West African blog round-up starts from Burkina Faso where Stephen Davies of Voice in the Desert blogs about Africans’ penchant for football leagues in Europe in “FA Cup Final in Ouagadougou“: African men care very deeply about their football teams, including the teams they ‘adopt’ from abroad. In Ouagadougou there are passionate Manchester United supporters and equally passionate Chelsea supporters, and today they got together for the Cup Final. Sparks flew… From Burkina Faso to Cameroon, Scribbles from the Den blogs about “How Cameroon Auctioned Its Internet Namespace…“ Early in August 2006, the Internet was awash with reports of a “typo-squatting” scheme involving Cameroon. According to these reports, “Internet authorities in in the West African nation that owns the .cm top level domain (TLD) have been accused of authorizing a DNS wildcard that has the effect of redirecting all accidental .cm traffic instead of returning an error.” In layman’s terms, Cameroon Internet authorities were redirecting all misspelled .com addressed (e.g. www.dibussi.cm instead of www.dibussi.com ) to an advert-based website (agoga.com), where they were making millions of dollars in pay-per-click advert revenue (Pay-per-click is an advertising system where advertisers pay an agreed amount for each click delivered to their site). While not technically illegal, since the misspelled domain names are not being registered but simply redirected to another site, these actions raised serious ethical concerns. Still in Cameroon, another Cameroonian blogger highlights the recent woes of ex-World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz and the nominant of his replacement, Robert Zoellick. Enanga's Pov blogs about Robert Zoellick and the World Bank: Putting the Fox in Charge of the Hen-House In Cameroonian Pidgin English, when a person refuses to give up on something, he is said to “hold grass”. This image is drawn from small animals clinging desperately to grass to avoid being washed away by water. We all saw how Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, (now, thankfully, former) head of the World Bank, held grass for weeks after it was brought to public notice that he was embroiled in a sordid scandal involving a female companion. Well, Mr. Wolfowitz was swept away by the flood of public opinion. And now the US government is offering to replace him with someone who is, as evidenced by the article below, even worse, especially for the Third World. The grass-holding of the US government, which in the past few years has squandered whatever moral currency it ever garnered as the leader of the “free world”, should be a cause for great concern for those of us who cannot hold grass when faced with an unprincipled giant. From Cameroon to Ghana, where Paa.kwesi's blog pays a brief tribute to the late wife of Ghana's 1st President Dr Kwame Nkrumah (also late) in Thinking in English : Fathia Nkrumah, icon of an era. Fathia Nkrumah is dead. 8:07pm GMT, the message arrived in my email inbox. Perhaps, the last iconic survivor of an idealist era in Ghana's history, her passing should remind us of the highs and lows of our recent existence and that there is a difference between promise and fulfilment. May we the living pay her tribute by recognizing that because we are neighbors, we must get along, share in each others’ pains and joys. No, we are not descended from one ancestor, do not speak the same languages, eat different foods, celebrate different Gods; but we do share the same space. May our dealings with each other display this understanding that after all is said and done if my house is burning you will necessarily feel the heat. We are in each other's business all the time. Let's all be friends. My respects and condolences to her family. Due! Fathia, rest in peace. Now to Liberia. A new blog named The Trial of Charles Taylor has been set up to provide news and analysis on the war crimes trial of former Liberian President, Charles Taylor. We're highlighting the Dramatic start to first day of Taylor trial which was posted on 4th June 2007. In a dramatic opening to the Charles Taylor trial today, the man long-awaited to face justice in the dock in The Hague failed to show. And his lawyer, Karim Khan, interrupted the opening statement of the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s Chief Prosecutor, Stephen Rapp, by clumsily walking out of the courtroom in defiance of a court order to continue representing Taylor for the day — in an unexpected move, Taylor sacked Khan and asked to represent himself.