Blogs & Ecology

Image: Terri O’Sullivan

Metre-wide cracks in the ground suddenly split open, as red-hot rock and ash are thrown violently into the air amid searing temperatures. It’s like a vision of how the Earth behaved in prehistoric times. Except these events have happened within the last three years in Ethiopia’s Afar region. What’s more, a matter of days ago there was more extreme volcanic activity there, with reports of the country’s biggest eruption to date – and the largest recorded lava flow in scientific history.

Afrigator's list of top 45 female African bloggers: “Ever wondered who the top female bloggers are in Africa, or which women you should be following online? We did, so we compiled the following list. For us compiling this list was an interesting excercise as we didn’t explicity know which blogs are authored by woman but we went on a mission to find out.”

On the Red Green and Blue Blog, Amanda reports “Ethiopia could soon have the largest wind farm in Africa after a new deal between the country and the French company Vergnet. The deal is worth $300 million and is expected to produce 120 megawatts in two and a half years…”

Drought is pushing Ethiopia to diversify its electric mix, adding wind power to hydro power. Photo: Andrew Heavens.

What do you do when you’re an African nation which relies nearly entirely on hydro power for your electricity, and you’re in the middle of a drought? If you’re Ethiopia you build a wind farm.

Ethiopian blogger, Arefe, writes “An Ethiopian actor who paid for Iago’s sin”: “The late Laureate Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin was the leading Amharic Shakespeare translator and his translation of Othello has been a popular item in the Addis Ababa theatrical repertoire.In the article, “Shakespeare in Ethiopia”, Prof.Richard Pankhurst relates the public’s reaction to the theatre, particularly to that of the deceitful Iago, played by Surafel Gashaw.”

TreeHugger's founder Graham Hill turns 38 tomorrow. He is asking his friends and family (and now you!) to give a tax deductible donation to Charity:Water in his name. It's a fantastic organization that is drilling wells across Africa and thereby helping lower disease, by increasing access to cleaner water, and poverty, since it reduces the need to haul water for hours each day -- we've covered them last year, too.

Land near the Rufiji River in Tanzania has been expropriated from local people for sugar cane cultivation by a Swedish company. Photo: Malangali via flickr.

We are, all of us, surrounded by a cloud of new technologies, from GPS to Google Earth to streaming video. We also have known since Mathew Brady and the birth of photojournalism, the power of the photograph to move and inform.

Mamá Etiopía [Spanish] reports that the Ethiopian Olympic team collected their first gold medal, won by female runner Tirunesh Dibaba in the 10,000 meters category. The blog also comments on other favorite Ethiopian athletes with high chances to win medals.

Ephrem Madebo of the blog Enset revisits the old debate of peaceful versus non-peaceful struggle for democracy in Ethiopia, after listening to a talk by Professor Mesfin.

The African Uptimist congratulates three African companies for winning the 2008 Ashden Awards.