Published on May 14th, 2008
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How many heroes can create a revolutionary gadget that has changed the lives of poor farmers and costs only $28 and refuses to get rich from it? In the life of Jock Brandis, just a cursory look at the bloody fingers of women peanut shellers in an impoverished village in Africa is all it took to create the universal nut sheller from locally available sustainable materials.
A Canadian of Dutch descent, he has since passed on the skill to local farmers in Mali, where he first presented his model, and elsewhere on the continent where he trains them for free and still refuses to patent the cheap gadget which has impressed even infamous peanut farmers like Jimmy Carter. A Gift to the World, he calls it.
Mama, I promise to look this Brandis guy up for you and bring him to our village. My mama, in her 55 years, still finds time from her teaching job in the village school to employ farm hands to shell peanuts for her. And she reaps an impressive twenty 50 kg sacks a year. Not bad for her agrarian moonlighting, hmm…
Feted as a CNN Hero for his innovation, Brandis has worked with communities in 17 countries across four continents through his Full Belly Project to make hundreds of machines locally at minimal cost resulting in health benefits and increased family incomes.
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Published on May 12th, 2008
The people of an impoverished southern African nation have everything to thank the Sun for; because a new revolution is sweeping across rural Malawi, lighting up village communities with cheap solar lamps that almost everybody is now able to afford.
The problem has been that access to modern electricity is but a privilege for the few who can afford it, and the majority are burning kerosene for lighting, a practice known to be expensive, dangerous and harmful to health.
An initiative run by Solar Aid, in partnership with the UK non-profit, TRAID, the project is geared toward protecting the environment and reducing poverty by introducing simple, locally assembled, affordable LED solar lanterns to the poorest communities, providing residents with a cheap alternative to kerosene while also generating employment opportunities for the underprivileged and ill.
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Published on May 9th, 2008
A safari adventure to Africa to view corals? This might sound interesting to many people including eager adventurers like myself.
I have always marveled at the wonders of the sea; beautiful marine creatures that are awe-inspiring to watch. But one trip on a glass-bottom tourist boat a few months ago made me promise to go back for more, and I hadn’t found the time until now. I wanted to see the coral bed under the cool waters off the Indian Ocean coast again.
Coral reefs are among Earth’s most diverse, productive, and beautiful ecosystems, and have become exciting spots for tourist who admire water life and sports. Its now not uncommon to see tourists in glass bottomed boats being ferried to coral gardens for viewing.
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Published on May 7th, 2008
Conservationists in Kenya are opposing a multi-million dollar biofuels project citing threats to bird life abundant in a riverine delta area. The 50,000 acre sugar cane project was meant to provide raw cane for a giant sugar milling company too but it is believed its vision was more for biofuel than food.
But another team of UK environmentalists recently commissioned a report that highlighted a possible loss of livelihood for local peasant farmers, chemical pollution and interference with the ecology in turn threatening tourism and wildlife in the area.
The miller, however, has not publicly responded to these concerns and may as well go ahead with the plans, earlier also opposed by local political leaders. Instead of sweet smell of sugar, the miller, Mumias Sugar (which has no functional website!), also smells a whiff of politics in the air.
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Published on May 5th, 2008
There should be a new travel advisory if you are traveling to Africa these days. Not that it has been cutely tucked somewhere in the hundreds of travel advisories issued by the US State Department or EU on terrorism or politically unstable nations of Africa each year.
It is not about biting food shortages either; you’d still blissfully load your favorite McDonald’s double cheeseburger or quarter pounder but take care where you fling away that annoying packaging on your safari.
Speaking of a safari, you’d definitely want to see the wildlife, and that includes some endangered species too. But you may be stung all the way to a crumpled jail house literally if you dare to “disturb” their natural habitat. And this may include doing business too.
“Protect the Environment. There are Green Scorpions roaming around who will sting you if you don’t.”
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Published on May 2nd, 2008
They couldn’t have chosen a more fitting name because the development of an eco-city in Kenya’s tourism hub of Mombasa is the country’s first and probably the boldest in this part of the world.
Mimicking the beautiful haciendas of the Spanish countryside, the developers are looking to something even more spectacular - the design of the buildings will make best use of the sun, wind and rainfall to supply the energy and water needs of the residents and will also involve planting of more than 10,000 trees to complete the picture.
Works have already begun and hacendados (or hacienda owners) are buying into the prime real estate, having seen a sample house in this complex that will consist of a hospital, school, playgrounds and recreation facilities, a police station, commercial centers and office blocks, among others.
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Published on April 30th, 2008
Almost nine in ten Americans or 89% use the cell phone, and this can translate into lots of “junk” that needs throwing away, because the average American is not known to own a handset for more than two years at least.
And according to a survey just released, only 40% of the US population actually recycle their cell phones while another 10% simply toss them into the bin while singing away…
But recycling your old cell phone could also be more than a green thing to do. You could be saving the highly endangered and rare Eastern lowland gorillas, also called Grauer’s gorillas.
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Published on April 23rd, 2008
In the midst of the global food crisis, biofuels have been named as a probable culprit in driving the cost of food high up out of the reach of the world’s poor. New laws have just come into force in the United Kingdom requiring that all petrol and diesel be at least 2.5 per cent biofuel.
That target is expected to increase to five per cent by 2010 as part of efforts to make transport fuels more environmentally friendly. United States has just surpassed Brazil as the world’s largest producer of ethanol fuel.
The increased demand for biofuels from the world’s richer nations is being partly blamed for the skyrocketing food prices. Farmland that was once used to grow crops to feed people is now growing fuel for cars.
Here are (some of) the world’s biggest biofuel plants, including those in the pipeline, by production:
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Published on April 22nd, 2008
Africans were colonized for hundreds of years. In the process they have lost their culture and religion. There are deep wounds in the collective consciousness of the African continent. Colonization has dismembered people’s culture and religion. Africans went through a lot of the suffering that has ever existed in this world.
Let’s put an end to human suffering and racism by treating each other with respect and dignity. UBUNTU: I am because we are. No individualism. Let history be our teacher. When countries and leaders are fighting over natural resources, when they want to overpower another country, this has a huge effect on the ordinary people on the ground. There is a proverb that explains this very well. “When two bulls are fighting, what suffers the most is the grass.”
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Published on April 21st, 2008
The global food crisis. That is the big news item that makes it on to your living room via the media channels. Everybody has said something about the problem, and now everybody agrees it is a crisis. But at what cost? How does one separate the chaff from the wheat? How do we separate facts from myths? Who is throwing punches at the other? Who blames what as the cause of the massive food shortage?
The global food crisis is so gripping and serious that the World Food Programme is cutting food handout rations to some 73 million people in 78 countries.
This is a sample of what people have said about what makes the world’s hungry (3 billion are at imminent risk the last time I checked, and actually 850 million slept on empty stomachs last night) get so angry to violently knock at the gates of aristocrats demanding to be fed, or at least access to food, basically:
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