Here’s the latest edition of Africa Update. I’m going to guarantee you a nearly coronavirus-free edition, because I collect links for the newsletter over the course of roughly a month and can’t put it out fast enough to keep up with the pandemic news. So here are some other notable things that have been happening recently, plus a few coronavirus links covering underdiscussed aspects of the crisis.
West Africa: Cameroon has introduced new ID requirements for making mobile money payments after the services were used to pay ransoms. Here’s how colonial understandings of the gender binary erased Igbo traditions with a very different relationship to gender. Meet the Nigerian judge who’s liberating people in jail who have spent more time waiting for a trial than they would have served if convicted. In Ghana, the question of whether people who are dual citizens with neighboring Togo can vote is hotly contested. Ghana has legalized marijuana for health and industrial purposes.
Central Africa: Religious conservative organizations from the US have begun setting up “crisis pregnancy centers” which discourage contraception in Uganda. In the DRC and Uganda, colonial-era understandings of the role of local chiefs are skewing policy interventions. The DRC is about to pass its first law protecting the rights of people with disabilities.
East Africa: Meet the young Somalis who are changing the fact of the country with online shopping and ambulance services. Kenya’s flower industry had a bad track record on workers’ rights even before the pandemic basically ended exports. Also in Kenya, a 2015 program to import medical equipment has been criticized after over 1/3 of the equipment ended up in hospitals without staff trained to use it. East Africa is bracing for another locust invasion in May, even worse than the one in January.
Southern Africa: In South Africa, the Gautrain project which serves the middle class receives state subsidies, but the minibuses which mostly serve poorer people don’t receive any. Some women in Zimbabwe are finding new opportunities as bus drivers, while others are moving back to rural areas in order to escape the country’s long-lasting economic crisis. Why is the insurgency in northern Mozambique getting worse?
Economics: By joining the proposed new eco zone, West African countries might give up control over their currencies in ways that are bad for growth. Dollar Street is a fascinating new project which shows how families all around the world, including many in Africa, live on different levels of income. In Uganda, big infrastructure projects have benefited foreign investors while sometimes literally walling off local communities from accessing them.
Climate + agriculture: Here’s how women in Kenya are re-introducing traditional crops to promote food security. How are drought in Australia and floods in Kenya connected? An American tractor company is working on a plan hailed as “Uber for tractors” in Kenya. If plans to drill for oil in central DRC go forward, the destruction of the peat bog on top of the oil could release as much carbon as Japan produces in a year.
Research + education: Ugandan kids could learn to read more quickly if they were taught using local plants and animals for phonics lessons, rather than “A is for apple.” Here’s how to use Shaka Zulu to decolonize the teaching of math in South Africa. Check out this list of free online academic journals about African issues.
Art + culture: I’m excited to read about all the inspiring women on OkayAfrica’s 100 Women 2020 list. Did you know that the Senegalese national archives are an unusually good resource for historical research? Somaliland’s informal national archives started with a crumpled napkin. Once we can all leave our houses again, do check out the new Yemisi Shyllon Museum for African art just outside Lagos.
Coronavirus: Meet the leader of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, who’s dramatically scaled up public health capacity across the country after just two years in office. One important lesson from the Ebola epidemic in Liberia is that door-to-door canvassing makes people more likely to comply with public health rules. Research in Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic shows that governments are likely to see much lower tax revenues as economic activity drops. In East Africa, coronavirus has driven gambling revenues down by 99% as people save their money for immediate needs. Here’s a great list of articles on the pandemic from African authors.