Here's our list of people who should be celebrated as the year comes to a close, along with "The Ebola Fighters" - doctors, nurses and health workers combating Ebola in West Africa - who TIME magazine named as their Person of the Year 2014:
Meriam Ibrahim
Pregnant, imprisoned with her 21-month-old son, and sentenced to death. It was the stuff of nightmares, yet Meriam Ibrahim survived it. Authorities in Sudan claimed her marriage to a Christian man was illegal because her father was a Muslim, charging her with apostasy and adultery. But Ibrahim had been raised as a Christian; her father left the family when she was six.
She ended up giving birth in May in jail shackled to the floor, but was eventually released in June following an international outcry, more than a million people signed a campaign for her release backed by Amnesty International. Eventually she was allowed to leave Sudan, met the Pope in Rome before moving with her family to the US.
Sudan has enforced Shariah law since 1983 and apostasy – forsaking Islam – is punishable by death. A number of other Sudanese nationals have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their faith.
Nigeria's ragtag militias
Much of northern Nigeria has been in the throes of a terrorist insurgency this year, but time and time again, the Nigerian military has embarrassed itself in the face of battle – soldiers have abandoned their posts, fled over the border into Cameroon and Chad, sometimes along with the villagers they are supposed to be protecting.
But groups of local vigilantes have stood their ground, armed with bows, machetes, clubs and homemade rifles. Despite their sparse resources, the militia fighters, known collectively as the Civilian Joint Task Force, appear to have become a substitute for the army in many areas of the restive northeast of Nigeria.
In the wake of the Chibok school kidnapping in April, local vigilantes pursued Boko Haram into the Sambisa forest and attempted to rescue the girls. In May, an estimated 200 Boko Haram fighters were killed in a counteroffensive by villagers protecting their homes, and in November, the fighters retook the commercial hub of Mubi in southern Borno state from Boko Haram with the help of local hunters.
Siphokazi Mdlankomo
She came in second place in the South African version of Masterchef, but she won the popular vote by a landslide - Siphokazi Mdlankomo is a domestic worker, and although she was beaten to the post by Roxi Wardman in the final, her culinary talents have won "huge admiration" among viewers, and she was "mobbed by screaming fans" at the airport upon her return to Cape Town from Johannesburg where the final was filmed.
Mdlankomo's strong showing in the competition has been called an "inspiration" and has re-ignited a debate about South Africa's domestic workers. Like mine workers and farm labourers, they are often invisible, overworked and under appreciated, but they embody the country's struggle for equal rights in apartheid South Africa, and continue to be a mainstay of the post-apartheid economy.
An estimated one in six working women in South Africa is a housekeeper or nanny. Female members of the third-biggest political party, the Julius Malema-led Economic Freedom Fighters have won dresses with aprons to Parliament in a symbolic gesture for workers rights, male workers often wear mine-workers helmets.
Lupita Nyong'o
She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "12 Years a Slave", remarkable since that was her first role in a major Hollywood film.
Since then, Lupita Nyong'o has been the biggest thing in celebrity-ville this year - named Glamour's Woman of the Year, described by Vanity Fair magazine as a "shoo in" on its 2014 international best dressed list for the flawless red carpet style, and being the cover of several high-profile magazines this year, including Vogue, Elle, People and Marie-Claire.
Though her fairy-tale rise has had a tinge of racism to it - her "unlikely beauty [and] exquisite 'otherness'"made the style media explode with excitement, Lupita's grace, eloquence and seemingly effortless charm entrenched her the year's biggest breakthrough; she represents "a possibility of another kind of dream girl" says Michaela Angela Davis, editor at Essence, Honey and Vibe magazines.
Salwa Bugaighis
One of Libya's most prominent human rights activists, Salwa Bugaighis was stabbed and shot through the head in June by gunmen who broke into her house in the eastern city of Benghazi, shortly after she voted in Libya's parliamentary election. The killing stunned the country, triggering outrage and an outpouring of grief.
Bugaighis, a lawyer from a prominent Benghazi family, was one of the first Libyans to take to the streets of Benghazi in February 2011 to protest against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. She was identified as perhaps the most charismatic figure in Libya's women's movement, supporting a successful campaign to establish minimum quotas for female lawmakers in parliament.
Over the past two years, the security situation in Benghazi—the cradle of Libya's revolution—has seriously deteriorated. Bombings, kidnappings and killings have become near daily in a campaign of violence that has mainly targeted members of the security forces. Judges, activists and journalists have also been attacked.
Africa's polio fighters
This year, Africa and the world came closer than ever to eradicating polio. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative reports that for the first time ever, no cases of wild poliovirus have been reported in Africa in the last 4 months. The most recent case was on 11 August in Somalia.
Africa's last major polio stronghold, Nigeria, reporting just six cases of polio from January to August this year. It's a significant drop from the 49 cases reported over the same time in 2013; there were 122 cases in 2012.
Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and Somalia are considered polio endemic countries, which also puts all the countries bordering these vulnerable to contracting the virus as people move across borders. But this year has seen a massive ramping up of the immunisation campaigns in at-risk countries, making the complete eradication of polio a possibility by 2018.
Dr Stella Adadevoh
Africa's "worst news" of 2014 was definitely Ebola, but a doomsday scenario of the disease hitting a city of 20 million was averted by the efforts of Stella Adadevoh, a doctor who raised a red flag when attending to a Liberian patient at the First Consultant Hospital in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos, in July.
Liberian Patrick Sawyer was already sick by the time he got onto a plane and flew to Lagos, en route to Calabar, 750km away, to attend a conference. When treating Sawyer, Adadevoh suspected that he might be suffering from Ebola - despite his denials that he had had contact with Ebola patients, his sister had died two weeks before he arrived in Nigeria - and quickly quarantined him, made contact with the health authorities.
Sawyer reportedly "had not taken it kindly" that he would not be allowed to leave; he "became aggressive and began removing intravenous tubes", and had to be physically restrained - it was probably at this point that Dr Adadevoh and eleven of her colleagues were infected with Ebola, she later died.
Nigeria has been called the "perfect storm" for Ebola - Africa's most populous country, it has dilapidated public health infrastructure, much of the northern parts of the country are out of government control. Luckily it won a geography lottery by not sharing a border with the countries at the epicentre of the disease, but Dr Adadevoh's efforts cannot be "overstated", she's been widely praised and called a hero, and there is talk of naming a hospital after her.
But perhaps what is striking - and sad - is that the outpouring of tributes shows just how unused people are to the idea of someone doing their job to the best of their ability, going above and beyond the call of duty and staying true to one's vocation.
Julius Yego
He's been called "Mr YouTube": The javelin throw is not a popular event in Kenya's athletics circuits, and so Yego essentially coached himself by watching videos on YouTube.
This year, he won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. At the beginning of Yego's career, he started off as a runner, but he gave up because he was "so slow" and switched to javelin instead. In a nation which dominates middle and long-distance track events, Yego was the first Kenyan athlete to win a Commonwealth title in a non-track event.
Yego's gold boosted Kenya to top of the athletics medal table at the Glasgow Games with a total of 10 titles claimed by his team, as well as 10 silvers and three bronzes.
Dennis Kimetto
Kenyan runner Dennis Kimetto smashed the world marathon record by nearly 30 seconds when he ran the Berlin Marathon in September - a remarkable performance that pushed the record ever closer to the two-hour mark.
It was the first time ever the marathon had been run under two hours three minutes, and it's Kimetto's third victory in the major marathon circuit, after winning Tokyo and Chicago last year.
Kimetto has had a sterling rise since his debut on the major marathons circuit on the same course in Berlin in 2012, when he finished second to training partner Geoffrey Mutai at 2:04:16. That mark is the fastest debut marathon in history on a record-eligible course.
Burkina Faso protesters
In early November, protests rocked the city of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, with protesters denouncing President Blaise Compaore's attempts to change the constitution and extend his 27-year rule.
It isn't the first time that Burkinabes were taking to the streets. Over the past one year, there's been flare-ups of demonstrators protesting Compaore's disregard of constitutional term limits, both in Ouagadougou and in the second city, Bobo Dioulasso.
Combined with rising food prices and poorly performing economy, it just seemed too much. On October 30, protesters stormed Parliament and set it on fire,ransacked government offices and set buildings, documents, equipment, and vehicles ablaze. Compaore stepped down and fled to Cote d'Ivoire, and an interim president was installed.
Like the Arab Spring revolutionaries, a lot has been made of the fact that two-thirds of Burkina Faso's population of almost 17 million is under 25, so though Compaore is the only president all of them have known, the lack of opportunity and corruption was too much for them to bear. Africa is walking the same demographic mine field, so we shouldn't be surprised if we see more "Black Springs" in 2015.
BONUS: The bodaboda/ okada man
Africa is the world's fastest-urbanising continent, with some cities like Dar es Salaam, Douala and Lagos posting growth rates of 6% per year, meaning that it takes just under 12 years for their populations to double. But public services haven't been able to keep up with demand; the cities are effectively choked with growth.
There's one unlikely hero to the rescue - the motorcycle taxi, known by various names including bodaboda and okada. The bikes are annoying, yes, but they are also an advantage in cities gridlocked by day-long traffic jams – they offer speed, convenience, door-to-door service, flexibility, and the ability to serve low density areas that are not commercially attractive to large buses or minibuses.
With the emergence of e-commerce ventures such as Jumia and Konga, boda bodas and okadas are fuelling the growth of home delivery services for traffic-weary city residents, for anything from cooking gas, grocery shopping, medicines, music, books, clothes and shoes
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