Afromusing

• BlogHer Conference - Live blog links

  Posted: July 28, 2007, 12:56 am by AfroMusing

  A live blog coverage of the session i participated in is available here,

  “… when people talk about africa they talk about poverty but africa would like to say there is a lot of growth and a lot of expertise in africa - linux chicks africa - (Jen says how do we connect linux chicks with the women Jen saw in africa) - have africa speakers talk about changing africa - african solutions for african problems - Ted Talks - TRADE with africans - partner and work with Africans support their ideas - trade, trade, trade - money and capital in the hands of women has a transformative power.”

  I then attended the multimedia lab for video -
  Editing video for web tips keep an eye on the main blogher site for more entries.

• BlogHer Conference - Women and blogging

  Posted: July 28, 2007, 9:17 am by AfroMusing

  I was fortunate to attend one of the sessions today at the BlogHer conference in Chicago (Thanks KenyanPundit!) BlogHer brings together women bloggers to talk, share, learn and network.
  You can follow along with the bloggers writing, taking pictures, and uploading videos by visiting the event site for live blog URLs.
  The session was on how to use the internet to support your cause. It was titled “Getting it on(line) for a cause part 2″ Raising consciousness.
  Rochelle Robinson -online campaign strategist had a wonderful presentation which you can have a look at here. Its a must read for anyone with a cause - Its concise, specific and has some great examples of how tech can be used effectively. One such example she pointed to is Hollaback. Women had gotten tired of street harassment, so they took pictures of their harassers and wrote about it on the blog.

  Green LA girl was next with a great idea of using del.icio.us for a cause. What she and another blogger were able to do was to collect and tag information relating to the starbucks challenge. The idea was to challenge people who visit starbucks to specifically ask for fair trade coffee since starbucks had stated they would be selling fair trade coffee at every location. Turns out it was a promise that was easier said than done…Green LA girl and others were able to prove that it was not the case in all locations. The information they gathered was used by another blogger to create a google map of the locations where people had reported succcess in getting a cup of fair trade coffee and locations where they werent so successful. Read more about the challenge here and the google map is here. It might be a great idea for tracking the elections in Kenya, tagging information regarding constituencies and perhaps mapping it onto Mzalendo’s growing database of information. Just a thought…either way get tagging!

  I will be participating on a panel tomorrow with Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices! and Amira Al Hussaini. I will carry the laptop and do a post after we are done with that.

• Clean Drinking Water pumped by Wind Energy!

  Posted: July 25, 2007, 5:43 pm by AfroMusing

  This installation in Chifiri, in North Eastern province Kenya is an example of how wind and solar installations can be used to provide the needs of marginalized communities in arid and semi-arid areas.
  
  Simon Mwacharo, TEDGlobal speaker and renewable energy innovator has written about it in wonderful detail and provided pictures. Read more about it here.

  The turbine also provides some power to the nearby manyattas (traditional samburu huts), Simon noticed a Japanese guy camped out near the turbine. That was the only place he could charge his laptop and phone!

  Do note that next week, the TEDGlobal talks will premiere on Ted.com. Subscribe in itunes by searching for tedtalks and also check the TED blog for a series of posts from bloggers who attended the conference. A piece i wrote is is alread posted on the TED blog, Like Emily said ‘This is the bloggers story to tell’, because there wasn’t as much coverage of it in the mainstream news. I hope you enjoy the talks.

• AIDS and the abstinence debate in Uganda - Video

  Posted: July 20, 2007, 5:23 pm by AfroMusing

  We truly live in a small world. Its no wonder Frontline on PBS has a tag line of ’stories from a small planet’. This short video [8:35] is one that explores how religion,
  
  sex,
  
  AID, and politics interplay between Uganda and the US.
  The strategy of ABC - Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condoms had been successful in reducing the AIDs infection rate, but a reversal of that strategy by President Yoweri Museveni perhaps directly or indirectly due to the strings that came with the aid money to combat aids appears to be counter productive. 1/3 of the 15 billion dollars allocated in PEPFAR - President’s [GW Bush] Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief be used to promote abstinence only programs around the world. That is 5 billion bucks.
  You can join the discussion on the frontline page for the video. Particularly welcome are thoughts from the Ugandan blogosphere.

  Images courtesy of Frontline World.

  On July 26 there will be a video about baseball in Ghana - so do keep frontline world bookmarked.
  (Thanks Charlotte for the heads up).

• If you dont like the network, make your own!

  Posted: July 20, 2007, 2:22 am by AfroMusing

  Well, i am paraphrasing Jim Forster’s line which in its entirety reads, “If you don’t like the network you have, go out and make your own“. This was one of my favorite quotables at TEDGlobal in Arusha.

  Jim Forster is the distinguished engineer at Cisco, the veritable maker of routers and switches that form the backbone of the internet, amongst other products and services. He is also one of the contributors to the invaluable free resource “Wireless Networking in the Developing World” - An in depth guide to planning and building low cost telecom infrastructure.

  In his 3 minute presentation at TEDGlobal he talked about the current state of telecom, likening it to a railroad system where everyone is a customer but it doesn’t reach all the areas ‘last mile’ as it were. The model that we should be considering is one that is composed of many private networks, similar to the model of the internet, or a ‘network of networks’. We need to encourage our governments to support the idea of many networks that are run either privately or as businesses providing network access to others. Please click on the graphic below to download the presentation that he has made available.
  

  There is also more information available on the site Network The World.

  While on the topic of wireless networks, Riyaz of skunkworks pointed me to Meraki’s june announcement of the first solar powered outdoor wifi access kit.

  Priced at just $99, Meraki Outdoor can send a signal up to 700 feet. Paired with Meraki’s existing indoor $49 Mini, the Meraki Outdoor repeater can power access for dozens of households sharing one high speed connection. Meraki Outdoor can be easily installed on a wall or even a pole outside the house. It marks another step forward in Meraki’s efforts to change the economics of Wi-Fi access, driving the cost per household of high speed connections to $1 to $2 a month.

  Adding the Meraki Solar accessory kit will allow the repeater to broadcast a signal without being connected to any electrical source, making it an ideal solution for any community, even emerging markets where electricity is scant or unreliable.

  The skunkworks crew and other wireless networking experts, you are very welcome to comment on whether you see any private networks being set up in Nairobi or other parts of Africa that utilize the ideas alluded to above. Meanwhile…no whining!

  
  Image from the internet superstar - Hugh Mcleod.

  **Tangential Digression - Weird Cell behavior on the border.

  On crossing the border from Tanzania into Kenya and vice versa, i got the following text message on my safaricom line…from Celtel. It stated “Welcome to Kenya & thank you for choosing Celtel.International access code is 000 or +.The tourist help line is +254733617499.Celtel. Making life better.”. Worrisome to say the least. Is celtel just broadcasting a signal to all and sundry? How did they get the safaricom number? What expectation of privacy should safaricom customers have? I later found out that everyone gets that sms whether they are on a celtel line or safaricom. I mentioned it to Mr. Forster and he pointed out that some networks do play nice and share infrastructure even base stations. Its quite curious…Do chime in if you’ve experienced something similar, even weirder, or if you can shed light on how and why this occurs. Does the same thing happen on crossing into Uganda?

• Brain Drain - Reverse! Reverse!

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 1:27 am by AfroMusing

  Sorry if you thought this was a new dancing fad like the cha cha slide (video)
  This is my little corny way of passing along information about a recruitment initiative which brings together internationally oriented African graduates and professionals who are seeking careers in Africa with multinational corporations, intergovernmental organizations and leading African companies.

  Date: November 16-18th 2007
  Place: Houston Texas
  More Info: Global Career Company It is invitation only event so you would need to apply online first.

  Companies confirmed to attend the Summit include: Anglo Platinum, Barloworld, Chevron, Coca-Cola SABCO, Cisco, Eskom, Heineken, Intercontinental Bank, Lafarge, OPS, Orascom, SAB, Shell, Toyota and United Bank for Africa. Available career opportunities range from entry-level graduate openings to senior management appointments and cover a variety of functions.

• Solar tech in the medical field - Salam cardiac surgery center sudan etc.

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 12:36 am by AfroMusing

  While at TEDGlobal I met Manuel Toscano, a gentleman who works for Emergency USA. We talked shortly about solar power being a great technology for use in remote areas. He filled me in on a hospital that was designed using the following guiding principles.
  -The idea of a “hollow” space and a pavilion-based system;
  -The choice of the best possible technology given the context;
  -The search for an ethical language for this type of architecture.

  The choice of solar power for a hospital in an oil rich country might seem a bit ironic, but there is more to this. The specific details of how the energy produced by the panels is used is particularly interesting.

  Solar panel: free healthcare, free energy
  The average temperature in the Sudan is 29°C, and in the hottest months it can reach 45°C. In order to cool down the hospital, a number of measures were taken during construction. In addition to this, air conditioners were installed after the building was constructed. In the first case, a series of insulating techniques were used. The external walls for example are 58 cm thick and contain an insulating cavity that prevents the building from heating up. The use of traditional cooling systems would have implied high levels of electrical energy or fossil fuel consumption (the needs in terms of volumes of air to be cooled down are hefty: 28,000 m3). In a country rich in oil resources, EMERGENCY has sought out alternative sources of clean energy: the sun. Nine containers left Italy for Khartoum with 300 solar panels, bringing to the country an almost unknown technology, and one that is very seldom used in Europe. Today a plant that contains 288 solar collecting items (for an equivalent of 900 m2, or the area of 10 houses) produces 3,600 KW- as much as burning 355 kg of gas – without producing one gram of CO2. Each collecting item is made up of a number of copper tubes that contain water; these are themselves placed in insulated glass tubes that allow the water inside the copper tubes to heat up. The water transfers the accumulated heat to an insulated 50 m3 tank that keeps the water between 80-90°C. The heat is then cooled down to 7°C in two “chilling” machines. Solar power thus allows the center to produce cold air without discharging any particles into the atmosphere, and limits the use of electric power to water circulation pumps. Two regular boilers have also been installed in case the solar power is not sufficient to run the two “chilling” machines. The cold water is used to lower the levels of heat in the rooms that need to be chilled for medical or other purposes. The machines used for this last part of the cooling circuit are called UATs (Units of Air Treatment). There are 8, each one designed for a specific area of the hospital (CPR, surgery, administration, etc). The UATs draw air from outside and “force” it into a 7°C tube that cools it down. A second system of tubes subsequently transports the cool air to various hospital rooms according to need.

  In short, the surgery center is kept cool using a combination of the water from the Nile and the Solar panels. For more detail on the design guidelines of the salam center please click here [pdf]. (Thank you Manuel).

  It is becoming increasingly clear that solar tech is flexible enough to allow for innovation in any field. Another example of solar being especially useful in the medical field is the ‘Hospital in a box’ invention by Dr. Seyi Oyesola, a TED Global Speaker and innovator.
  
  Jason Pontin of TR summarized his invention as

  It was a simple, portable (well, 150-pound), resilient set of medical devices that makes surgery possible even in the worst parts of the world. The hospital in a box has anesthetic equipment, a defibrillator, a burn unit, plaster-making tools, surgical tools, and an operating table.

  In my post on tales of invention, i noted that the ‘Hospital in a box’ can be charged using a truck battery or a solar panel.

  Note: TED fellows Dr. Chikwe Iheakweazu and Dr. Ike Anya from Nigeria started the blog ‘Nigeria Health Watch’ to discuss and bring to the fore health care issues in Nigeria and Africa in general. Do visit them and subscribe to their feed if you are in the medical field and want to be in the loop.

  Back to architecture: This ted talk from Cameron Sinclair is very inspiring.
  

• Live Earth in South Africa - Videos available online

  Posted: July 17, 2007, 5:50 pm by AfroMusing

  Videos from Live Earth in South Africa and around the world have been posted online. Watch them here.

• VFT, Toumani Diabate and Diaspora World Music Tour Dates.

  Posted: July 13, 2007, 1:02 am by AfroMusing

  Tags:   

  Yesterday i was very fortunate to attend a concert by Vieux Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s symmetric Orchestra. They were performing at the Frank Gehry designed Pritzker pavilion in Chicago, as part of the music without borders series.

  Vieux Farka Toure is the son of Ali Farka Toure, famed Malian musician who passed away last year. We were all sad to hear of his passing; Jke had a tribute to AFT. Malian music, especially the likes of AFT and Toumani diabate have always left an indelible impression to most who’ve heard it. It definitely did for me in 2005 when i wrote this post.
  As the universe works in wonderful ways…Vieux Farka Toure is carrying on the legacy of his father’s desert blues without missing a beat.

  I arrived a little late to the concert so i missed about half of Vieux’s set, though from the 3 songs i heard, the man is indeed a sensation. The blues rag says of him… “Mali has a new guitar god, and his name is Vieux Farka Toure”. I quite agree. Listening to him play was special. He is hyper skilled on guitar. That is the simplest way i can put it without resorting to phrases like “Oh my god he was. like. totally. amazing!”.

  Click on the image below for the set of photographs i took. I also twittered it a bit.

  
  
  

  Toumani Diabate is a grammy award winning Kora player whose discography you can browse on Afropop.
  He is the gentleman with the Kora in this picture.
  
  He had reunited with Ali Farka Toure before AFT passed away and had played together in the highly acclaimed CD ‘In the Heart of the Moon’.
  He took a break during the performance and explained that he is from 71 generations of griots He also pointed out the Kora, which is a 21 string instrument, made of fishing wire, calabash and antelope skin. He played with 4 Chicago jazz musicians, melding the polyphonic sounds with the jazzy in such a beautiful mashup. Its a shame the concert wasn’t streamed, it was probably recorded though, so it might show up on the world music circuit soon. I was rapt in the music the whole time, it was very cool.
  Music to share (For a limited time - I will take them down in a week):
  Toumani
  Boulevard De’ Independance

  Very short Video clip:
  Lead singer of Symmetric orchestra gracefully entering the stage

  The remaining tour dates for Vieux:
  Jul 15 2007 Old Town School Folk Music Fest, Chicago, Illinois
  Jul 16 2007 TRAVEL to CA/ Villa Montalvo, Saratoga, California
  Jul 18 2007 Nuits d’Afrique Festival, Montreal, Quebec
  Jul 19 2007 Grassroots Festival, Trumansburg, New York
  Jul 20 2007 Institute of the Arts, Detroit, Michigan
  Jul 21 2007 W. Kortwright Center, E. Meredith, New York
  Jul 23 2007 Newport Towers, Jersey City, New Jersey
  Jul 24 2007 Grace Building, New York, New York
  Jul 25 2007 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
  Jul 26 2007 Strand Theater, Rockland, Maine
  Jul 29 2007 Hillside Festival , Guelph, Ontario
  Aug 3 2007 Providence Parks, Providence, Rhode Island
  Aug 9 2007 Skirball Center, Los Angeles, California
  Aug 10 2007 Grand Performances, Los Angeles, California
  Aug 10 2007 Temple Bar, Los Angeles, California
  Aug 11 2007 TRAVEL to Canada/Edmonton Folk Festival, Edmonton, Alberta
  Aug 12 2007 Edmonton Folk Festival, Edmonton, Alberta
  Aug 18 2007 ONE WORLD InnerNational Music Celebration, Horseshoe, North Carolina

  Remaining tour dates for Toumani Diabate
  Jul 14 2007 8:00P Vancouver Folk Festival, Vancouver
  Jul 15 2007 8:00P World Festival, Grass Valley, California
  Jul 16 2007 8:00P Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, California
  Jul 18 2007 8:00P Hudson Festival, New York, New York
  Jul 19 2007 8:00P BAM Festival, New York, New York
  Jul 20 2007 8:00P New Mexico Jazz Festival, Santa Fe, New Mexico
  Jul 21 2007 8:00P New Mexico Jazz Festival, Albuquerque, New Mexico

  For other african artists touring please click here. (Thanks Mweshi for the link).

  The African renaissance has a soundtrack playing globally. Enjoy!

• Cellphone Tales

  Posted: July 13, 2007, 7:49 pm by AfroMusing

  You know wireless technology has truly become part of Kenyans’ culture when you receive a story like this in your email.

  This is a story of a young college girl who passed away last month in Mombasa. Her name was Maria. She was hit by a truck in the Mombasa-Nairobi Road . She has a boy friend named Juma. Both of them are true lovers. They always hang on the phone. You can never see her without her mobile phone. In fact she also changed her phone from Safaricom to Celtel, so both of them can be on the same network, and save on the cost.
  She spends half of the day talking with Juma. Maria’s family knows about their relationship. Juma is very close with Maria’s family.
  Before she passed away she always told her friends “If I pass away please bury me with my mobile phone” she also said the same thing to her parents.
  After her death, people can’t carry her coffin. A lot of them tried to do so but still cant. Everybody had tried to carry the coffin; the result is still the same. Eventually, they called their neighbor, a Mganga (witchdoctor) from Likoni , who is a friend of her father. He took a stick and started speaking to himself slowly. After a few minutes, he said “this girl misses something here”. Then her friends told about her intentions to bury her with her cell phone. They opened the coffin and place her phone and SIM card inside the casket. After that they tried to carry the coffin. It could be moved and they carried it into the van easily. All of us were shocked.
  Maria’s parents did not inform Juma that Maria had passed away. After 2 weeks Juma came back from vacation and called Maria’s mom.
  Juma…”Aunty, I’m coming home today. Cook something nice for me.
  Don’t tell Maria that I’m coming home today, I want to surprise her.”
  Her mother replied….. “You come home first, I want to tell you something very important.” after he came, they told him the truth about Maria.
  Juma thinks that they were playing a fool. He was laughing and said “don’t try to fool me - tell Maria to come out, I have a gift for her Please stop this nonsense”. Then they show him the original death certificate to him. They gave him proof to make him believe. (Juma started to sweat)…
  He said… “It’s not true. We spoke yesterday. She still calls me.
  Juma was shaking. Suddenly, Juma’s phone rang. “See this is from Maria, see this…” he showed the phone to Maria’s family. all of them told him to answer. He talked using the speaker mode. All of them heard his conversation. Loud and clear, no cross lines, no humming. It is the actual voice of Maria & there is no way others could use her SIM card since it is nailed inside the coffin they were so shocked.
  They called their neighbor again He in turn, called his Chief Mganga to solve this matter. Both worked for 5 hours. Then they discovered one thing really creepy… (Click here)

• Africa RE News - Brief Roundup

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 5:57 pm by AfroMusing

  From the Kenya Gazette last week,
  The Oserian Development Corporation has been licensed (by the Minister for Energy) to operate two geothermal power plants at oserian farm, Lake Naivasha area for a period of for 15 years.
  There isn’t a link online but this story on the bbc offers some great background info.

  From M&G Online - South Africa
  Increasing use of renewable energy can be encouraged using an energy policy directive. That is how Denmark did it. South Africa appears to be heading in a positive direction.

  Under the proposed by-law — the first of its kind in South Africa — most new buildings (and those undergoing renovations) with a value of more than about R490 000 will be required to meet at least 60% of their water-heating requirements with solar heaters.

  The city’s 2005 Energy and Climate-Change Strategy has set a target of having 10% of all city households using solar water heating by 2010. Official estimates put Cape Town’s population at 3,23-million

  An update from Timbuktu Chronicles on Ashden award winning companies, Zara Solar of Tanzania and Deng Ltd of Ghana.

• The Nest Home Limuru - An appeal to all bloggers.

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 6:18 pm by AfroMusing

  Please take a look at this baby. Her name is Lucy. The story of how she came to nest home home is one that is not easy for anyone to read, but read we must.
  

  She was a few months old when she was raped. Defiled. Mangled.
  The horror of what happened to this little baby is indescribable. I only ask that you look at this picture of her,

  
  

  and think of what good we can all do to counter the evil that could befall her.

  She is being cared for by the wonderful caretakers at The Nest Home in Limuru. Please keep her in your thoughts and if you have the means please donate to the Nest.

  Bank Account in Kenya:
  The Nest Home Charitable Trust
  Kenya Commercial Bank-Village Market
  Account No. 260760292
  Swift Code : KCBLKENX 011

  or by sending a check to

  The Nest
  P.O. Box 605 - 00621
  Nairobi/Kenya
  Director:
  Irene Baumgartner in Kenya - Tel: +254 (0)721-437893

  Whenever you are in Kenya, please visit her and the other wonderful children at the Nest.

  As she grows, may she be able to dance and sing with the other children like this.
  

  We can counter the bad in our world, one person, one blog, one link at a time.

  To see an overview of the Nest Home compound, please click here for a video taken by JKE (who told us about the nest home)

  Thank you kindly, on behalf of Afrigadget authors.

• Live Earth in South Africa

  Posted: July 8, 2007, 3:55 am by AfroMusing

  Live Earth concert in South Africa is being streamed online. Watch it here! Soweto Gospel choir is on now with Danny K.

  The line up in SA includes:

  Angelique Kidjo

  Vusi Mahlasela

  Zola

  Joss Stone

  UB 40

  Baaba Mal

  The Parlotones

  For American fare, its on the Bravo channel.

  Live Earth’s theme is SOS - Save Our Selves. The success of such Live 8 type concerts is debatable, but for a world music lover…i am bobbing my head and soaking in all the music.

  See what Dan Deluca at Pop Matters has to say about Live Earth…gem of the day IMO, climate change and Nelly in one paragraph!

  …Live Earth will include concerts on every principal land mass on the planet, including Antarctica (the ninth site), where a low-down house band of British scientists called Nunatak will no doubt prove themselves to be a bunch of supremely chill dudes.

  Which all sounds pretty cool. But Live Earth - subtitled the Concerts for a Climate in Crisis - exists, of course, to highlight the opposite.

  Namely, that it’s getting hot in herre - though, for some reason, Nelly is not on the list of performers. And that, as Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” argues, global warming - or if you prefer, climate change - is leading the planet to all but certain environmental disaster.

• Wireless in Laisamis - Remote Cell Phone Base Stations by WinAfrique

  Posted: July 2, 2007, 9:44 pm by AfroMusing

  Cross posted on Afrigadget

  Coolest picture of the month! (IMO)
  

  Photo courtesy of Bergey. Oct 26 2006 Dedication of the cell phone base station site in Laisamis, Kenya Africa.
  The company WinAfrique designs and builds hybrid wind and diesel turbine systems for powering cell phone base stations, and it also offers solar solutions for off grid power generation. Kenya’s biggest wireless companies Safaricom and Celtel have contracted with WinAfrique.

  In 2005 Safaricom contracted with Winafrique Technologies in Nairobi to design and supply pilot wind/diesel hybrid systems at three very remote base stations. The systems consisted of a Bergey 7.5 kW turbine on a 24 m (80 ft) SSV tower, sealed batteries, and an inverter. These sites were installed and monitored for one year. The results showed excellent reliability and diesel fuel savings of 70-95%. Based on these positive results, Safaricom has contracted for six more sites, and has many other wind/diesel sites in the planning stage.

  Where is Laisamis? click here for a google earth placemark.

  Be sure to check out Russell Southwood’s modest proposition - Africa: Power to the Base Stations. In it he presents the opportunity for an independent power producer to supply the energy needs of telecoms, energy hogging hotels and he did not mention this…but i am sure African telecentres of the future. Hat Tip Bankelele.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes