Africa Update Vol. 27
Welcome to the latest edition of Africa Update! We've got Kenya's first all-female motorcycle gang, pigs on ARVs in Uganda, religious leaders reducing violence against women in the DRC, the rise of the African literary festival, and more.
West Africa: Nigeria is trying to consolidate the 16 different state and federal agencies which currently give people IDs into a single national ID program. Young people in Nigeria are facing police harassment for reasons as small as wearing their hair in dreadlocks or carrying a laptop. In Senegal, people who attempted to seek asylum in Europe but got sent back home are finding it difficult to re-integrate. Ghana overinvested in electricity generation after years of power outages, and now produces more power than it can use.
Evening in Sierra Leone, by Anne Karing
Central Africa: Here's now the DRC continues to provide state services without much state funding. Programs to combat sexual violence in the DRC often reinforce the patriarchal norms they're trying to change. Rwanda has forbidden students from crossing the border to attend cheaper DRC schools out of concerns about Ebola. In Uganda, pork farmers may be creating ARV resistance by using the drugs to fatten up their pigs. Here's what we can learn from Ugandan schools with higher performance on reading outcomes than the national average.
East Africa: This was a really moving piece on the lived experience of displacement in South Sudan, where roughly 40% of the population is displaced after years of war. Sudan has just opened its first women's football league. I just learned that many Kenyan ethnic groups didn't bury the dead until the colonial era, when the British decided that burials signified an ancestral connection that could be used to make claims on land. A teenaged Kenyan chess champion can't compete in international competitions because she doesn't have a birth certificate, and thus can't get a passport. "By law, every student in Eritrea must spend their final year of high school at the Warsai Yikealo Secondary School ... [which] is inside a military camp."
Meet Kenya's first all-female biker gang, the Inked Sisterhood
Southern Africa: Several homeless people have brought a lawsuit against Cape Town to stop the city from fining people for sleeping in public. South African miners just won a landmark lawsuit that forces mining companies to compensate them for lung diseases they contracted at work. Meet South Africa's Ayakha Melithafa, a 17-year old climate activist who recently petitioned the UN alongside Greta Thunberg.
Public health: The US has warned citizens against traveling to Tanzania amid reports that the country has concealed Ebola deaths. In Kenya, a teenager killed herself after being kicked out of class when she got her period during school hours. Postpartum depression is an understudied topic in countries like Sierra Leone. An Ethiopian university student has invented a non-invasive malaria test after his brother died of the disease. A new drug which treats extremely drug-resistant TB has been approved after trials in South Africa.
Politics + economics: Nigeria has closed its border with Benin in an attempt to stop imports of rice and promote local production. A parliamentary report suggests that Kenya's flagship infrastructure investments haven't improved growth in the last decade. This is a great summary of projects mapping paratransit across Africa. Here are the factors that make African militaries more likely to stand with protestors during democratization protests. Many African countries are building coal-fired power plants despite abundant renewable resources.
Updates on poverty reduction from the World Bank
Gender: Lack of access to safe abortion is killing Kenyan women. A group of activists have sued the government in Sierra Leone for its ban on pregnant students attending school. In the DRC, a study found that religious leaders play a key role in local campaigns to reduce violence against women. A new study in Kenya finds that cash transfers also reduce rates of violence against women. Across Africa, women are less likely than men to have access to the internet or mobile phones.
Higher education: Here's some good background on the state of higher education in Africa. A Kenyan scientist is leading an effort to train 1000 African PhD students in immunology over the next decades. The African Institute of Mathematical Sciences plans to change math education on the continent with a network of campuses in six countries. New data science institutions are also popping up across Africa.
DW has a lovely photo essay on the history of East African kanga
Arts + technology: This was a great thread on studying African literature in African languages written for African audiences. Read about the rise of the literary festival in Africa. Here's how Google created a Nigerian accent for Google Maps. Check out the best African films of 2019 so far. Filmmakers in northern Ghana should check out this free training session (applications due Oct. 17).
Scholarships + conferences: Wits University is offering MA, PhD and postdoc funding for studies of urban mobility in Africa (due Nov. 1). Residents of low income Commonwealth countries can apply for split-site PhD funding for study at UK universities (due Nov. 6). If you're in Nairobi on October 24 - 26, don't miss the African Studies Association of Africa conference!
Cheers,
Rachel