Blogs & Ecology

An analysis of Kenya political and social landscape through Obama's candidacy: “This is Kenya; and yet, with no sense of the irony, we celebrate Obama. We declare him a victory over racism and oppression. We say that he can only lose the election if Americans confirm their chauvinistic essence. We forget in our analyses that Obama is only where he is today because millions of white Americans have supported his candidature. We neglect that in supporting Obama in spite of our often violent opposition to what he stands for; it is we who are paying primary allegiance to race.”

Kenyan reggae video for Obama: “Obama Be Thy Name.”

Kenyan blogger, Abantu, feels like an American: “AMERICA VOTES! i have never been an American, probably never will be, but this morning i feel like an American.”

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.”

Image: thesaint

Imagine getting a text message from an elephant. What would it say? Perhaps, “Stop calling me Dumbo, and, no, I can’t fly.”? Well, it appears that we might find out pretty soon.

In the last two years alone, the Kenyan Wildlife Service has killed five African elephants from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy because they were trampling through human settlements and cropland. It’s a problem that will only get worse as humans encroach on elephant’s territory.

White African writes about Ethan's 7 rules of innovation in Africa: “Ethan Zuckerman has produced yet another amazing thought piece. This time, he’s talking about innovation in Africa and how that is brought about by resource constraints.”

What is Kelele?: “Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.”

Reaching the nomadic communities who roam the arid and hot Sahel of Africa with vaccines has always posed an exceptional challenge to health workers, particularly because vaccines need to be refrigerated.

Jonathan analyses advances in social media on the African continent: “Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet. In fact, the continent at large is undergoing a connectivity revolution unlike anything it has ever seen.”

Juliana Rotich and Josh Goldstein have written a paper on the role technology of post-election crisis in Kenya.

Obviously the upcoming American elections are of great interest to many people around the world and the role technology is playing has been interesting, to say the least. The Economist recently launched their Global Electoral College web application that encourages people all over the world to have their say with the American voters in November. Of course, these foreign votes won't count but it will be interesting to see how they compare to the actual outcome.

photo: Ricardo Medina

The morning plenary session at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting last Friday was on the “Global Impact of Rural Innovation” and had quite a distinguished panel of speakers. Well, every session at CGI had impressive credentials, but this one was particularly inspirational. Here are some of the highlights from Wangari Maathai , founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya:...

A recycling center in Kenya is looking for help: “The Karen Langata District Association (KLDA) runs a bottle bank at the Langata Link complex where residents of Karen and Langata can drop off empty glass bottles for recycling. Lately they have been receiving huge amounts of bottles and the glass company responsible for collecting these is not able to cope.”

Dani writes about an investment initiative for Africa, MyC4.com: “This is a web-based platform that allows you to look up a list of African entrepreneurs who need funding for their projects (described briefly on the site) and to offer them loans. You bid a certain interest rate, which is accepted as long as it is below the maximum the entrepreneur is willing to accept and as long as others have not bid below you.”

’Ma, did you know the towers routing this call are now powered by biofuels?’ Photo: Eirik Newth

In many parts of the developing world mobile phones have brought communications capabilities to places where building regular telephone lines would be impractical or cost-prohibitive. No need to build a physical communication grid, just build towers. Those towers have to be powered by something though, and most of the time it’s not from a renewable energy source. Until now...