In a July 2010 TED talk, Ethan Zuckerman encouraged us to use our new web tools and social networks to broaden our worlds, rather than following the same people and hashtags everywhere we go.
In that spirit, here are a few links relating to journalism, innovation and interesting people and projects in Africa that I’ve come across in recent weeks.
WIMBE, Malawi–This close to the equator, night descends quickly in November. By 6 p.m., the sky bursts with stars. All is dark outside the village of Wimbe, save for a compound of houses where outdoor fluorescent lights twinkle.
Far off the electric grid, three windmills rattle in the breeze, producing enough electricity to provide indoor and outdoor lighting, and to pump water. The windmills are the legacy of a rickety prototype conceived by William Kamkwamba, a desperate teenager with big dreams.
His ingenuity has changed the lives of his family and his village. The windmill has elevated William from starvation and obscurity to plenty and fame, and it is the reason why a global village is poised to assist and follow him.
Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism has honored an Associated Press reporter in Somalia with its award that recognizes those who display conscience and integrity in communications. Mohamed Olad Hassan has endured repeated death threats, intimidation and a shrapnel wound from a mortar explosion near his home in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in 2007. In December 2009, he narrowly escaped with his life when a bomb exploded at a graduation ceremony he was covering, killing two dozen people.
The Sunday Times, SA ’s biggest weekend paper, will be introducing a Zulu edition, spurred by a need to move into new markets and the impressive growth in readership of indigenous language newspapers.
Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley said… the 32- page Zulu edition… would carry the best of the Sunday Times national news section, sport, opinion, business and lifestyle copy, as well as KwaZulu-Natal provincial politics, municipal news, celebrity news and sport. It will sell for R8.
In developing markets, like Africa, desktop web access is often limited but mobiles are becoming widespread, which means there’s a very large territory to be claimed if tech companies can get the service just right.
Senegal is now the second country in Africa, following Ghana, where cellphone users can text an SMS to a Gchat account and receive a response for free.
How do you say “I’m feeling lucky” in Senegal’s main local language, Wolof?
Amna weurseuk. They’re words that technocrats at Google Inc. may be memorizing now that, as of last week, the search engine has made its entry into the West African nation’s mobile phone network.
The former French colony is now the second country in Africa, following Ghana, where cellphone users can text an SMS to a Gchat account and receive a response for free.
Google Senegal is currently in the official state language of French, but only 20 percent of the nation speaks it, while about 80 percent knows Wolof.
Southern Sudan Union of Journalists (SSUJ) has condemned Khartoum government’s decision to ban an English daily newspaper from circulation for one day.
Media reports say Sudanese National Security Council (SNSC) issued a one-day ban on The Citizen newspaper, for its’s November 1 issue, after the paper published an advert, which authorities alleged contravened Islamic Sharia law.
The advert was for a talent contest sponsored by Kenyan beer brand Tusker.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns yesterday’s arbitrary arrest of journalist Gafar Alsabki Ibrahim during a raid by intelligence officials on the independent newspaper Alsahafa. They took him away to an unknown location after making him surrender his mobile phone and preventing him from alerting his family. No reason was given for his arrest.
The press freedom organization urges the authorities to publicly explain why they carried out the raid and why they arrested Ibrahim, and to do so without delay.
The Sudan VoteMonitor project has published its final report (PDF) covering results, experiences and lessons learnt from reporting on Sudan’s first general elections in 26 years in April 2010.
The project, one of the latest Ushahidi implementations in Africa was led by the US based Sudan Institute for Research and Policy (SIRP) and Sudan based Asmaa Society for Development, in collaboration with other Sudanese civil society organizations (CSO’s) who deployed certified election observers throughout the country to report using standard paper forms. These reports were then collated and uploaded to SudanVoteMonitor by designated staff members. Additionally, observers equipped with mobile phones were able to send reports directly using the SMS short codes setup by the project.
The bulk of the reporting, however, was done by average citizens throughout the country using SMS, and online via the project website. This was one of the project’s biggest successes since this was a first time experience where technology was applied in reporting by citizens and civil societies in Sudan.
The Ushahidi platform was deployed during the first round of the presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire which happened on 31 October 2010. Implemented under the name of Wonzomai (Sentry in Bété, Ivory Coast Local language), the project gathers teams from Ivorian NGO Akendewa and from the French NGO Internet Without Borders.
Travelling through a remote part of north-eastern Zambia in 1988, Simon Berry was struck that no matter where he stopped, people would ask him: “Would you like a Coca-Cola?”
With just two people for every square kilometre, it was of the most sparsely populated places in the world.
In this area today, one in five children dies before their fifth birthday, most from dehydration caused by diarrhoea.
In a region where the challenging logistics of getting medical supplies to mothers was killing children, Coke was readily available.
Mr Berry’s idea was simple: Put medicine in crates of Coca-Cola. Wherever you could buy Coke, you could also get life-saving treatment.
“I thought if we can get Coca-Cola to all these places, why can’t we do a similar thing for very simple medicines?” he told BBC World Service’s Health Check programme. [You can listen to the podcast of the Health Check programme by following this link. It's chapter 2 of the programme.]
Usually, the only news about Kenya that the editors of The Economist deem fit to print is the dark and depressing type: stories of grand corruption, poverty and poor governance.
Described as “Kenya’s Debit Card”, this uniquely Kenyan innovation is now being replicated in other countries, including Afghanistan. This Kenyan success story, says Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, represents both “a revolution and a revelation.” Figures released by Safaricom in March this year show that an astounding 550 million Kenya shillings, or roughly US$7 million, is transferred daily using M-Pesa.
So it was refreshing, if not startling, to see a recent editorial in The Economist describing Kenya as “a success story” in the use and application of mobile phone banking. The editorial states: “By far the most successful example of mobile money is M-Pesa, launched in 2007 by Safaricom of Kenya. It now has nearly 7 million users — not bad for a country of 38 million people, 18.3 million of who have mobile phones.”
The biggest concentration of overlooked markets is in Africa (which is in many ways an overlooked continent). Africa’s star performers are South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Botswana, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco and Tunisia. Collectively these countries match the average GDP per head of the BRICs.
FROM the headlines, it sounded like a sensational climbdown: Pope Benedict XVI had said the use of condoms in some circumstances was permissible. In fact, the pontiff had not announced a U-turn, but shifted a nuance. In an interview with a German journalist, Peter Seewald, for a book published by the Vatican (and checked before publication), he gave an example of a situation in which condom use might be acceptable. If a male prostitute was trying, responsibly, to do his bit to halt the spread of AIDS, that would be “a first step towards moralisation”.
…Charities and campaigners dealing with AIDS, which afflicts 22.5m people in Africa alone, welcomed the news but hoped for more.
*Cartoonist Dave Wolland has posted a cartoon relating to this story for sale on allaboutthestory.com.
THE timing of the pope’s much-discussed change of position on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV (he will now allow prostitutes to use them without fear of hellfire) was surely no coincidence. He made it on November 21st—ten days before World AIDS Day and two before UNAIDS, the United Nations body charged with combating the epidemic, released its latest report on the state of the battle.
That report carries good news. Though some 33m people are infected, the rate of new infections is falling—down from 3.1m a year a decade ago to 2.6m in 2009. Moreover, as the map shows, the figure is falling fastest in many of the most heavily infected countries, especially those of sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia.
All Evolving Newsroom
Into Africa
In a July 2010 TED talk, Ethan Zuckerman encouraged us to use our new web tools and social networks to broaden our worlds, rather than following the same people and hashtags everywhere we go.
In that spirit, here are a few links relating to journalism, innovation and interesting people and projects in Africa that I’ve come across in recent weeks.
Boy’s dream to build windmill transforms lives in Malawi
TheStar.com
Harvard fellows honor Somali reporter
Boston.com
South Africa: Sunday Times to print Zulu edition
Publicitas
Google nudges into new territory with voice search for Africa
Guardian | PDA
Google continues push into Africa with free Gchat texts for Senegal
Christian Science Monitor
South Sudan journalist’s union condemns one-day ban of newspaper
SudanTribune.com | November 3, 2010 (JUBA)
Sudan: Two Journalists Arrested in the Past Week
all.africa.com | 4 November 2010
Report on Sudan Vote Monitor
Ushahidi blog
Ivory Coast presidential election: Ushahidi Platform Use Case
Ushahidi blog
Another journalist arrested in Zimbabwe
Guardian | Roy Greenslade
Can Coke save lives in Africa?
BBC | Dave Lee
Melinda French Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola
TED.com
Mobile telephony: Kenya’s not-so-silent revolution
Sunday Nation | Rasna Warah
The emerging emerging markets
The Economist
A slight shift in position on condoms
The Economist
*Cartoonist Dave Wolland has posted a cartoon relating to this story for sale on allaboutthestory.com.
HIV’s slow retreat
The Economist