Demba Ba has a habit of falling to his knees post-goal and praying.

Via FIFA.com:

Premier League matches without defeat represents Newcastle United’s longest unbeaten run in the English top flight since 1951. The surprise sequence has taken the Magpies up to third, with over six months having now passed since they last tasted league defeat. The star of their unlikely rise has been Demba Ba, who has already become the first Newcastle player since Andy Cole to score multiple league hat-tricks in a single season – a feat that not even Alan Shearer managed during his time on Tyneside. The Senegalese striker has proved to be one of the Premier League’s most prolific predators since moving to West Ham United from Hoffenheim last season, accruing 15 goals in 18 starts for his two English clubs.

See also Goal.com on Ba announcing his intention to play for Senegal in the 2012 African Nations Cup in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon from January 21st to February 12th, much to the dismay of his club, their fans and the Newcastle sports media.

Further Reading

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When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.