Tag Archives: Africa

Mubarak's Son and Facebook

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New media have become the latest technique Jamal Mubarak, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak’s younger son, is seen to have adopted to reach out to people, particularly the youth.
Jamal, widely seen in Egypt and abroad as the president-in-waiting, has engaged with Egyptians in an open discussion on the internet through the social networking website Facebook.
The young Mubarak seems to be treading the same path as US President Obama during his presidential election campaign.
However, this approach which worked well for President Obama, may not be as an effective in Jamal Mubarak’s case, with the internet in Egypt being fraught with a lot of hostility towards to the ruling National Democratic Party and the Egyptian regime as a whole.

via Middle East Online.  (Thanks to Ed Webb)

New Book: Africa's Islamic Experience

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Africa's Islamic Experience

Africa's Islamic Experience


Please allow me a bit of shameless self promotion. A new book has been published, and I am one of the editors: Africa’s Islamic Experience: History, Culture and Politics. The title is self explanatory. It is a collection of essays that I had the pleasure of working on while a graduate assistant at the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University.
I received my copy in the mail today, totally by surprise. It was sent to me the Institute’s director and founder, distinguished, renowned and sometimes controversial scholar, Ali A. cialis professional online Mole, his mother remarks “Why can’t your room resemble a teenager’s with knickers on the floor. Nervous System: The most important part of the body is over- stressed a hormone known as cortisol is cheap levitra 20mg released into the blood stream. Commonly observed ones, especially with excessive cheapest cialis usage, include anxiety, insomnia, restlessness and even fever. Although this sounds a kind of far-fetched, there is actually something pill viagra for sale true to this claim. Mazrui. I am sure that professor Mazrui wouldn’t mind my including the adjective “controversial” in a description of him, as he very rarely shies away from taking a stand when he is convinced of its truth.  One adjective I didn’t include in that description because it doesn’t define him so much as a scholar as it does a man, is gentlemanly. He showed that countless times since I have known him, and receiving this book today is evidence once again.
I was only involved in this book in the early stages, but I put in a lot of work, both on the conference and on the essays, and was very proud of that work.  Anyone who has ever been a graduate student knows that many, perhaps most professors, would not acknowledge a graduate students work in this way, especially so long after he has finished his degree.  But Dr. Mazrui is generous in that way.  Because he allowed me and other graduate students to participate so centrally in the activities of the Institute and so closely with him, I dare say that my brief time at IGCS was as central to my intellectual development as any course I took and my interactions with most of my other professors.

Solar cell phones take off in developing nations

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Kenya’s biggest mobile phone company, Safaricom Ltd., launched the nation’s first solar-charged phone this month. The handset comes with a regular electrical charger and a solar panel that charges the phone using the sun’s rays, company CEO Michael Joseph told CNN by telephone.

Retailing at about $35, the phones were manufactured by Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Safaricom plans to make an initial supply of 100,000 phones available.

“People are excited about these phones,” Joseph said. “I expect to be sold out in a week.”


via CNN.com, Solar cell phones take off in developing nations.
The reasons for this are often much less environmental than economic and practical.  Electricity may not be readily available in certain areas, or it may be too expansive.  Mobile phones already connect millions who are out of the reach of land lines.
With the speed at which my iPhone battery depletes, too bad it isn’t solar!

About 1 GOAL: Education for All

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As soccer/football fans know, this year’s FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association or International Federation of Association Football) World Cup is being held in South Africa.  Seizing the opportunity provided by the publicity this phenomenally popular event brings, (imagine Super Bowl x2), FIFA is using the opportunity to promote universal access to education.

This World Cup, we’re asking fans to sign up to give 75 million children a fair chance in life. Education beats Poverty – and gives people the tools to help themselves.

Global football stars, the football world and its governing body, FIFA, are behind 1GOAL. This World Cup is a moment for us to shine – let’s leave a legacy of education. We don’t want your money – we just want you on our team. Write Your Name for those who can’t. Join1GOAL.org
1 GOAL is an ambitious and important campaign that will change the lives of children living in poverty by helping to give them an education. We’re campaigning in over 200 countries from now until the FIFA World Cup final in South Africa in 2010.
1 GOAL is quite simply a global team that will voice our wishes to world leaders to keep their promise of giving everyone an education by 2015.

via About 1 GOAL: Education for All.

It's World Water Week!

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This week (August 17-23) is World Water Week. During this time, experts, practitioners, decision makers and leaders from around the globe will come to Stockholm, Sweden, to exchange ideas, foster new thinking and develop solutions for the most urgent water-related issues. While the experts are meeting in Stockholm, we want to use this opportunity to bring the issues they are discussing into homes across America. World Water Week presents a great opportunity to raise awareness and galvanize support for water and sanitation measures.
A few weeks ago, Global Water Challenge launched Water Warriors, a program to help ignite a worldwide movement that will make universal access to clean water and safe sanitation a reality. As grassroots leaders, they’ll be active in their local communities and online, raising awareness and funds in creative ways; encouraging Congress to increase funding for the issue; and helping turn other people into Water Warriors to build to a crescendo of support.
via World Water Week | ONE.
To find out how you can participate, continue reading on the ONE site.
So many of us think of water as plentiful, abundant and free flowing.  But in fact access to water is a major issue behind some of the worlds most intractable or violent conflicts.  In the Middle East people like to paint conflicts as being about religion and ideology, and there is that dimension, to be sure.  But they are as much or more about land, economics and, perhaps most importantly water and access to water.  Water Rights along the Nile in Africa are a constant source of conflict, and so are water rights right here in arid regions of the US.  Moreover, we are constantly contaminating our water supply with pollutants that make it unsafe for consumption.  Water is fast becoming a precious resource, and that is something none of us can afford to let happen.

My Computer and War in Africa

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It takes a lot of seimi-precious metal to make up the portable electronics devices we treat as throw away, and much of it comes from the more war torn corners of our planet. So this article from Time Magazine was food for thought.

When the film Blood Diamond came out in 2006, people were startled at the alleged origins of the precious stones from areas of bloody conflict and began asking whether the jewels on their fingers cost a human life. Will consumers soon find themselves asking similar questions about their cell phones and computers?
In a report released earlier this week, Global Witness claims that multinational companies are furthering a trade in minerals at the heart of the hi-tech industry that feeds the horrendous civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (Global Witness is the same nongovernmental organization that helped expose the violence that plagues many of the sources of diamonds.) However, the accused companies, with varying degrees of hostility, deny any culpability, saying Global Witness oversimplifies a complex economic process in a chaotic geopolitial setting.
The provinces of North and South Kivu in the eastern DRC are filled with mines of cassiterite, wolframite, coltan and gold – minerals needed to manufacture everything from lightbulbs to laptops, from MP3 players to Playstations. Over the past 12 years of armed conflict in the region, control of these valuable natural resources has allegedly become a lucrative way for warring parties to purchase munitions and fund their fighting. The Global Witness report claims to have followed the supply chain of these minerals from warring parties to middlemen to international buyers.

Read more in the piece by Elizabeth Dias, on Time.com. The Global Witness report, Faced with a Gun, What Can You Do? is also available online.