The Africa They Never Show You

Poverty Porn - any media which exploits the poor's condition in order to generate sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause.You will find none of that here :)

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It's my 14 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Thank you all for following this space :)

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Africa's most innovative – and controversial – tech hacks

From 3D-printed limbs to hacktivists tackling oppression, Africa is the perfect place for tech innovation against the odds

There was a mild moral panic when it transpired that 3D printers could be used to make anything from handguns to drugs. But one project has been using the technology – which transforms digital files into physical objects – to replace limbs that children lost in the civil war in South Sudan.

Using a laptop, bunches of plastic and cables and two 3D printers, the American startup Not Impossible Labs created its first limb for a boy called Daniel in 2013. The team left the equipment behind and continue to supply the plastic to Daniel’s village to continue making prosthetic limbs.

After the success of the Daniel project, one inventor took the technology a step further by designing the Robobeast – a 3D printer that is durable enough “to be thrown in the back of a Land Rover, carted off into the bush, and to start working as soon as the power is on”, says the tech blog Htxt Africa. In other words the perfect 3D printer for Africa, as long as a power supply can be found.

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It's The No. 1 Country For Women In Politics — But Not In Daily Life

After the genocide, Rwanda had lost so many men that the president issued a call for equal opportunity for women. It worked in parliament. But what about in daily life?

She found with rare exception that no matter how powerful these women were in public, that power didn't extend into their own homes. 

"One told me how her husband expected her to make sure that his shoes were polished, the water was put in the bathroom for him, his clothes were ironed," Justine says. And this husband wanted not only his shoes laid out in the morning, but his socks placed on top of the shoes. And he wanted it done by his wife, the parliamentarian.

Justine heard countless stories like this — women were still expected to perform even ceremonial domestic duties. It was rarely an option to outsource such tasks to a maid or get your husband to shoulder more work at home. Some women feared violence from their husbands if they didn't comply with these expectations, and one said that she had felt so trapped, she had contemplated suicide.

Justine says that for some of these women, the very real strides that they were making outside the home could feel less like liberation and more like a duty to be fulfilled. Being a "good Rwandan," as she termed it in her research, meant both being patriotic — serving her country through her public work and career — but also being docile and serving her husband. 

As a result, Justine said, a female politician could stand up in parliament, advocating for issues like stronger penalties for sexual violence and subsidized maxi-pads for the poor, but find herself scared to speak out about the oppression in her own home.

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Moroccan breakfast

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Mountain Road Serpentines, Obudu Cattle Ranch, Cross River, Nigeria

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Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

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Danai & Lupita

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Mucubal woman during festivities near Virei, Angola (x)

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15 amazing eco-lodges around Africa

..Two South Africans traveled the continent far and wide to separate establishments with watertight green credentials from those merely purporting to have them. 

A group of nine environmentalists joined them, and together they scored the properties on a scale of one to 10 on factors such as conservation and community effort.

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Nyajuok Wiew (x)  

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Meet the Kenyan Furniture Maker Building the “Ikea” of Africa

FunKidz is the brainchild of Kenyan entrepreneur Ciiru Waweru. A wife and mother of two active children, Waweru told a Quartz Africa Innovators Summit that she was inspired to start FunKidz while she and her husband awaited the birth of her first child. She recollects having trouble with finding good quality furniture for babies and children in the Kenyan market; she had identified a need and was thereafter determined to meet it.  

Waweru says in addition to supplying world-class children’s furniture, she hopes to use the products from her company to offer a fresh narrative about African-made goods. Waweru is one of many African entrepreneurs working hard to change the dodgy stereotypes that associate African manufacturing with what are basically eccentric cultural artifacts or crafts produced with no need for complex modern manufacturing technology.

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Disney movie sparks a chess boom in Uganda

The Queen of Katwe tells the rags-to-riches story of Phiona Mutesi, a young, uneducated slum girl who first turned up at one of the Katwe Academy's chess sessions in 2005, mostly for the free porridge.

A few years later she became the first female winner of the country's junior chess championships and by the age of 17, she was representing Uganda at international competitions. 

"People liked seeing Phiona make it," said 34-year-old Robert Katende, who founded the academy in 2003." It gives them hope.....

Historically, in Uganda chess was a game enjoyed mostly by a small male elite in the capital, Kampala, but Phiona's story has inspired people from all walks of life.

Girls, in particular, have been taking up the game in considerable numbers. Vianney said there has been a threefold increase in the number of girls entering chess tournaments since 2012. "In the children's competitions it's almost 50/50 now," he said.....

"When my own daughter went to the training she became a different person… Now we have four parents who want to learn."

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The Guardian:  A day in the digital life of Africa

“Aside from keeping in touch with friends, I mainly use social media to share information about health services for women and girls: reporting on what is happening in rural Uganda and sharing their reality back with the politicians who sit in the capital, Kampala.

In Uganda 16 women die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, almost always because they can’t access the care they need. So, almost every weekend I make a trip to a village somewhere across the country, record videos at clinics – some which still have no electricity or running water – and tweet them at the politicians who are responsible for their upkeep.

We have seen improvements in some districts, but my highlight was in the regions of Lira and Apac where we managed to get the health centre restocked with mosquito nets.

This wouldn’t have been possible a couple of years ago but now most politicians have embraced social media. My approach is quite unique and at first I was worried that I would be regarded as too aggressive, putting the politicians off, but they say they appreciate it – at least in public anyway.”

-Winfred Ongom, 24, Kampala, Uganda

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First all-black women’s pro cycling team forming in Africa | Ella

An African news source today announced the forming on an all-black women’s pro cycling team to be part of the UCI Women’s WorldTour in 2017. A selection of 13 women from Rwanda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia —with Rwanda’s cycling star Jeanne d’Arc Girubuntu among them — is currently training at the Africa Rising Cycling Center (ARCC). The purpose of this training camp is …

Back in November, Ella CyclingTips asked Kimberly Coats just how big that cultural gap is for a black African woman wanting to compete in cycling. Her response was crystal clear; “Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? That’s how big the gap is.”

“In the rural villages where we live the women still don’t have a lot of rights and they are still doing most of the work,” said Coats. “But it can change and I can see it changing.”

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the Beauty of Tanzania

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Maria Borges, Herieth Paul and Riley Montana for Brandon Maxwell Fall/Winter 2016/2017 Campaign.

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South African women making it big in the world of brewing

A revolution is brewing in South Africa. Women are reclaiming their traditional role of making beer.

“Back in the days, brewing was a female thing. Over time it became industrialized and became a male thing. But, in the African culture, beers are still made by women only. In South Africa, more and more females are becoming part of beer brewing. It does make you proud that you are taking the whole thing back to where it started,” says Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, the brewmaster and part owner at Brewhogs, a microbrewery in Kyalami, north of Johannesburg.

The difference with women brewing beer today is that they are bringing in the money.

“It’s extra nice when you’re making money from doing something that you like,” says Nxusani-Mawela with a chuckle.