Results for “south africa”
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Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, fourth cohort

Sokhar Samb is a Data Scientist from Senegal. Her EV grant supports her work of drone mapping Senegalese cities and towns such as Dakar and Semone by capturing high-resolution aerial imagery and Light Detection.

Cesare Adeniyi-Martins is from Nigeria and founded Abelar to promote the special jurisdiction economics charter cities in Africa. His EV grant is for general career support.

Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican author currently residing in France. Her EV grant supports her work at the Caribbean Translation Project to translate Caribbean literature (originally written in English, French, Spanish, or Dutch) into Mandarin Chinese.

Lorenzo Gonzalez is a Belizean currently residing in Canada. Lorenzo has a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Waterloo. His EV grant is to support his writing on tourism on Belize Adventure to promote economic growth in the country.

Keeghan Patrick, Graduate student at MIT; Shergaun Roserie, Mechanical Engineer at FAANG; and  Dylan Paul, current MBA student at Harvard Business School. All three are from Saint Lucia. Their EV grant is to support their work through their organization, Obtronics, which, among other activities, offers robotics engineering educational programs to students in St. Lucia.

Raymer Medina is from the Dominican Republic. His EV grant supports his work on low-cost robotics design and development.

Thomas Aichele is multi-based in Chicago, Dakar, and Abidjan. Thomas works in the FinTech industry in West Africa. His EV grant supports his writing on technology infrastructure progress in West Africa.

Marla Dukharan is a Trinidadian Economist. Her EV grant is to support the production of a documentary on the causes and effects of the EU taxation blacklisting of Caribbean countries.

Mary Najjuma is a Ugandan Engineer and current PhD candidate at the London South Bank University. Her EV grant supports her research on rural efficient and optimal cooling hubs.

Andrew Ddembe, Ugandan social entrepreneur. This follow-on grant is to help support the work of his organization, Mobiklinic, in promoting medication care and education in rural Uganda.

Farai Munjoma was born and raised in Zimbabwe and resides in Edinburgh.  He founded the Sasha Pathways Program, a virtual career accelerator for African youth. His EV grant is to support the career development program.

Stéphanie Joseph, originally from Haiti, is currently residing in the US. Stéphanie is a current MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Her EV grant supports her project on land-mile financial inclusion in the Greater Caribbean.

Evalyn Sintoya Mayetu is a Kenyan guide on the Greater Maasai Mara. She is the country’s first female safari guide to achieve Silver Level certification. Her EV grant is for general career development.

Dr. Collin Constantine, born and raised in Guyana, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge. His EV grant supports his research on integrating income distribution and the balance of payments constraint into macroeconomics, focusing on the Caribbean.

I am very thankful for the leadership of Rasheed Griffith here, he also wrote those descriptions.

Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, third cohort

Dr. Keabetswe Ncube is a Geneticist from South Africa. Her EV grant is for her work in using statistical and genetic inferences to help rural farmers maximize yields.

Frida Andalu is a petroleum engineer by training from Tanzania and a Ph.D. candidate. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing plant-based volatile corrosion inhibitors to mitigate top-of-line corrosion in natural gas pipelines.

Desta Gebeyehu is a biochemical researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing bioethanol-gel fuel from organic waste.

Bobson Rugambwa is a software engineer from Rwanda. After graduating with a master’s from Carnegie Mellon University he co-founded MVend to tackle the problem of financial inclusion in Rwanda.

Sylvia Mutinda is a Chemist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist with her search on strigolactone biosynthesis focusing on countering striga parasites in sorghum farms in Kenya.

Dr. Lamin Sonko, born in the Gambia and raised in the U.S., is an Emergency Medicine physician and recent Wharton MBA graduate. He is the founder of Diaspora Health, an asynchronous telemedicine platform focused on patients in the Gambia and Senegal.

Cynthia Umuhire is an astronomer from Rwanda and Ph.D. researcher. She works as a space science analyst at the Rwanda Space Agency. Her EV grant is to assist her in establishing a knowledge hub for junior African researchers in space science.

Brian Kaaya is a social entrepreneur from Uganda. He is the founder of  Rural Solars Uganda, a social enterprise enabling rural households in Uganda to access electricity through affordable solar panels.

Shem Best is a designer and urban planning enthusiast from Barbados. His EV grant is to start a blog and podcast on urban planning in the Caribbean to spur discourse on the built environment in the Caribbean and its impact on regional integration.

Susan Ling is an undergraduate researcher from Canada. Her EV grant is to continue her research on biodegradable, long-acting contraceptive implants with a focus on Africa, and general career development

Elizabeth Mutua is a computer scientist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on an efficient deep learning system with the capacity to diagnose retinopathy of prematurity disease.

Youhana Nassif is the founder and director of Animatex, the biggest animation festival in Cairo, Egypt. His EV grant is for the expansion of the festival and general career development.

Esther Matendo is a Ph.D. candidate in food science from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on plant-based treatments of mycotoxin contamination on maize in South Kivu (one of the main maize production zones in the DRC).

Alex Kyabarongo is a recent graduate of veterinary medicine from Uganda. He is now a political affairs intern at the Implementation Support Unit of the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. His EV grant is for general career development.

Margaret Murage is a Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing new photosensitizing agents for photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment.

Kwesiga Pather, for design and development of low-cost drones for agricultural uses in Uganda and general career development.

Dr. Sidy Ndao is a materials engineer by training from Senegal. He is the founder and President of the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST). The university provides a rigorous American-style English-based engineering education to African students.

Chiamaka Mangut is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University from Nigeria. Her EV grant is to fund new field research using archaeobotanical methods to study ancient populations in the Jos Plateau.

Dr. Yabebal Fantaye is Cosmologist by training from Ethiopia. He is the co-founder of 10 Academy, a training bootcamp to assist recent graduates of quant fields to acquire remote data science-related jobs.

For his very good work on these award I wish to heartily than Rasheed Griffith.  And here is a link to the previous cohort of Africa winners.

Emergent Ventures Africa and African diaspora, second cohort

Winnie Nakiyingi, a Ugandan Statistician living in Rwanda, works as a graduate teaching assistant at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Kigali campus). She is the founder of an organisation (Words That Count) which promotes STEM careers to girls in Africa. The grant is to further expand the organisation and help to create more content.

Gosiame Siwawa is a Motswana medical doctor in South Africa studying specialization in Nuclear Medicine. The grant is for career development. He intends to open a nuclear medicine practice in Gaborone. He did his medical studies in Trinidad and Tobago (with a scholarship from the government of Botswana).

Olayemi Olaniyi, a Nigerian social commentator. He has a podcast/youtube called The Disaffected Nigerian. He discusses political economy topics and wants to promote Libertarian ideas applied to Nigerian governance issues. The grant is to upgrade the podcast.

Anne Chisa, a Malawian living in South Africa, is a PhD candidate in crop science. She has a podcast (over 100 episodes) called Roots of Science in which she interviews African scientists and promotes science discussion in South Africa. The grant is for her to expand and upgrade the podcast.

Again, I thank Rasheed Griffith for his leadership in this project.

The greatest book(s) on Africa ever written?

Yes, I am talking about the new seven-volume set Architectural Guide to Sub-Saharan Africa.  I am now about halfway through volume II, and will read the rest, albeit slowly.  The books have plenty of text and also a lot of quality photographs.  While they are easy to read, they are not actually fast going.

These books have dozens of authors, so a systematic review misses the point. But just think: do you need to read yet another largely political history of Africa, detailing the conflict in Biafra, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, and the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe?  At what I hope are your current margins, what exactly are you going to learn?

Should you instead read seven volumes about how Africans (and sometimes non-Africans) have built Africa?  Its homes.  Its businesses.  Its government buildings and non-profit centers.  Its churches and mosques.  What Africa looks like and why.  Every significant discussion is accompanied by a relevant photograph.

Is that not a more important learning?

Where else can you find a sub-chapter “Beyond Design: Finnish Architects in Senegal”?  Which are in fact the most notable vistas in the Nouakchott fish market?  Why does it seem that no building in Mauretania is next to any other building in Mauretania?  (I am reading the West Africa volume, obviously.)

Definitely recommended, a notable achievement.

Is Africa losing its growth window?

The macro side of the story here is underreported, alas:

One of the saddest stories of the year has gone largely unreported: the slowdown of political and economic progress in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no longer a clear path to be seen, or a simple story to be told, about how the world’s poorest continent might claw its way up to middle-income status. Africa has amazing human talent and brilliant cultural heritages, but its major political centers are, to put it bluntly, falling apart.

Three countries are more geopolitically central than the others. Ethiopia, with a population of 118 million, is sub-Saharan Africa’s second-most populous nation and the most significant node in East Africa. Nigeria has the most people (212 million) and the largest GDP on the continent. South Africa, population 60 million, is the region’s wealthiest nation, and it is the central economic and political presence in the southern part of the continent.

Within the last two years, all three of these nations have fallen into very serious trouble.

And:

Based on size and historical and cultural import, Democratic Republic of the Congo ought to be another contender as an influential African nation. But the country has been wracked by conflict for decades. It is not in a position to fill the void created by the failings of Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa.

The last few decades have been a relatively propitious time for Africa. There have been a minimum of major wars in the world, and a dearth of major new pandemics (until recently). China was interested in building up African infrastructure, and across the continent countries made great advances in public health.

Could it be that this window has shut, and the time for major gains has passed? And that is not even reckoning with the likelihood of additional damage from Covid on a continent with a very low level of vaccination.

These sub-Saharan political regressions might just be a coincidence in their timing. But another disturbing possibility is that the technologies and ideologies of our time are not favorable for underdeveloped nation-states with weak governments and many inharmonious ethnic groups. In that case, all this bad luck could be a precursor of even worse times ahead.

Here is the link to the full Bloomberg column.

A Behavioral Interpretation of the Origins of African American Family Structure

That is a new paper by Gerald D. Jaynes, Department of Economics, Yale University.  The abstract is difficult to read, so here is an excerpt from the paper:

The hypothesis underlying my reinterpretation of the origins of contemporary black family structure is, through the late 20th Century, throughout American history, structural differences in the race relations and economic discrimination confronting blacks in rural versus urban locations produced distinct childhood socialization experiences. These distinct socialization experiences exposed urbanized black children (north and south) to large numbers of recusant adults — men and women socially alienated by urban job ceilings and truculently refusing to acquiesce to race relations based in white supremacy. Observation of and interaction with recusant adults and discriminatory economic institutions put urbanized black children at great risk of early projection of a failure to achieve self-verification of an acceptable social identity. The developmental outcome was early adoption of recusant identities and oppositional agencies leading to a polarized choice: either seek self-verification elsewhere by avoiding institutions such as schools, labor markets, and marriage (causing high rates of single parent families), or (attempting to alter one’s reception in such institutions) intensely engage them leading to civil rights activism and a rising black middle class. In contrast, rural black children were more likely exposed to adults seeking self-verification by striving to climb the agricultural tenure ladder a life goal requiring conforming to behavioral norms based in the era’s white supremacist race relations. Failure to self-verify a positive self-image by achieving land ownership or rental tenancy occurred later in life when the adoption of oppositional agencies was greatly mitigated.

Speculative and uneven, but nonetheless of interest.

*The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay*, by Christopher Clapham

A splendid book, why can’t the rest of you ****ers write books this good?  Here is one bit:

…the dynamics of clan works in a significantly different way in Somaliland from the way it does in south-central Somalia.  A single clan-family, the Isaaq, occupy the central areas of the territory, and account for by far the greater part of its population.  Though the Isaaq clans, inevitably, are divided both between and within themselves, they provide a reasonably solid ethnic core, that contrasts with the far more mixed and complex composition of southern Somalia, with its two major clan-families, Darood and Hawiye, and the further problems created by the presence of the Digil-Mirifle and other minority groups.  Somaliland is by no means entirely Isaaq…but its demographic structure means that other clans must either accept Isaaq hegemony and work within it, or else reject the Somaliland state altogether.  They cannot expect to control it.  At the same time, the fact that the Isaaq clans — characteristically of Somali clan politics — do not form a single united bloc provides other clans with the opportunity to build alliances with one or another group of the Isaaq.

Have you ever wanted to read about how ethnic groups in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti fit into this same broad picture?  Just exactly how Somalian and Ethiopian history intersect, from the 1970s onwards?  This here is your book.  I’m running to Amazon right now to buy more from this wonderful author.  You can buy it here.

China Africa fact of the day America step up to the plate

Chinese travelers are the world’s top tourism spenders, shelling out almost $260 billion in 2017 alone. A growing part of that spend is now happening in Africa, encouraged by relaxed visa rules, increased interested in the continent’s cultural and historical sites, and a initiatives that seek to appeal to Chinese tourists.

Last week, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China launched a joint loyalty program with Kenya’s Stanbic Bank, aiming to create incentives for travel, shopping, and leisure to tourists visiting the two nations. The “I Go Kenya—I Go China” scheme follows the bank’s similar program in South Africa last year, which rewarded its cardholders by offering a range of discounts and special offers from merchants across the travel, hospitality and lifestyle sectors. The state-owned financial behemoth is doing this as part of its plan to internationalize, and push its banking card product abroad.

Meanwhile, Africa is becoming increasingly attractive destination for Chinese tourists. A recent survey by the global travel platform Travelzoo found that the continent was the top destination of choice for Chinese tourists seeking more adventurous holidays in 2018, beating Japan and Australia. Visitors were especially drawn to Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa, Namibia, Madagascar, and Tanzania.

Here is more from Abdi Latif Dahir.

Africa fact of the day

Sub-Saharan Africa is slipping into a new debt crisis, with 40 per cent of the region’s countries now at high risk of debt distress — double the proportion of five years ago.

Chad, South Sudan, the Republic of Congo and Mozambique moved into “debt distress” in 2017, the IMF said, which means they have defaulted or cannot service their debts. A much higher number have breached one of the fund’s thresholds for debt or servicing burdens, putting them into the IMF category of highly vulnerable to default.

That is from Chris Giles and David Pilling at the FT.

South Sudan sentences to ponder

Late last month, famine was declared in two counties of the civil-war torn East African country of South Sudan. With 100,000 people at risk for dying of starvation in that area alone and millions more on the brink of crisis-level food shortages throughout the country, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir promised “unimpeded access” to humanitarian aid organizations working there.

A few days later the South Sudanese government hiked the fee for work permits for foreign aid workers from $100 to $10,000.

Here is further information, via Tom Murphy.

African immigrant fact of the day

That’s African immigrants to the United States, here is the fact:

In 2009, 41.7 percent of African-born adults age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28.1 percent of native-born adults and 26.8 percent of all foreign-born adults.

The source is here, further information about African immigrants is here.  They speak good English at very high rates — close to three-quarters — and they are more likely than other immigrants to be participating in the labor force.  And their importance is rising:

Though African immigrants represented only 0.4 percent of all foreign born in 1960, this share grew to 1.4 percent in 1980, to 1.8 percent in 1990, and to 2.8 percent in 2000…

There is also this:

People born in the U.S. were roughly four times as likely to report engaging in violent behavior than immigrants from Asia and Africa…

The future of immigration to America is likely African, some south Asian, and Chinese, with Latinos continuing to have a presence as well.

How much is African poverty really declining?

I’ve never been convinced by extant treatments of this topic.  Here is one further stab at the problem, from Afrobarometer (pdf):

New data from Round 5 of the Afrobarometer, collected across an unprecedented 34 African countries between October 2011 and June 2013, demonstrates that lived poverty remains pervasive across the continent. This data, based on the views and experiences of ordinary citizens, counters projections of declining poverty rates that have been derived from official GDP growth rates. For the 16 countries where these questions have been asked over the past decade, we find little evidence for systematic reduction of lived poverty despite average GDP growth rates of 4.8% per year over the same period. While we do see reductions in five countries (Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe), we also find increases in lived poverty in five other (Botswana, Mali, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania). Overall, then, despite high reported growth rates, lived poverty at the grassroots remains little changed. This suggests either that growth is occurring, but that its effects are not trickling down to the poorest citizens in fact, income inequality may be worsening), or alternatively, that actual growth rates may not match up to those being reported. The evidence also suggests, however,that investment in infrastructure and social services are strongly linked with lower levels of lived poverty.

I am not suggesting that these are “the right” numbers, and you might object that they are based on individual responses to questions.  Still, the numbers do show a very definite poverty reduction in the case of Ghana and some other countries with good news, so the responses do not seem entirely unconnected to reality.  In any case I have long been suspicious about how much African growth has been resource-generated rather than based in ongoing gains in agricultural productivity.

If you would like better news from Africa, here are some figures from last year about declining child mortality.  Here are some new results comparing Africa to earlier stages in British history, the original paper is here (pdf).

Malaysia (Africa) fact of the day

Malaysia was the third biggest investor in Africa in 2011, the latest year for which data is available, behind France and the United States, pushing China and India into fourth and fifth positions.

There is also the stock rather than the flow:

France and the United States also have the largest historical stock of investments in Africa, with Britain in third place and Malaysia in fourth, followed by South Africa, China and India.

Note that much of the Malaysian FDI went to Mauritius and also that FDI is not the only measure of foreign economic involvement.  The article is here, hat tip goes to @viewfromthecave.

Is there a Peltzman effect from AIDS treatment in Africa?

Somewhat, it seems.  Plamen Nikolov, a job candidate from Harvard, reports (pdf):

AIDS treatment provides enormous mortality benets to infected individuals but because it immunologically insulates people from more risk-taking, it could, in theory, stir perverse behavioral responses. Therefore, the response of sexual behavior to AIDS treatment in Africa is an important input to predicting the path of the epidemic. Existing estimates from observational studies suggest limited behavioral response, but they fail to take into account possible differences across individuals seeking treatment. Using an encouragement design field experiment conducted in South Africa, I estimate behavioral responses subsequent to AIDS treatment. I find moderate negative responses to treatment for HIV + individuals and mixed results for HIV

Wikipedia knowledge deserts Africa fact of the day

Almost the entire continent of Africa is geographically poorly represented in Wikipedia. Remarkably, there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 53 countries in Africa (or perhaps more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas).

There are some countries that are crammed with a dense amount of floating virtual information, such as Germany (with an average of one article tagged for every 65 square km), while others remain as virtual deserts, such as Chad (with an average of one tagged article every 17,000 square km).

Sharp divides between the Global North and the Global South can likewise be seen when looking at the number of geotagged articles per person. Austria, Iceland and Switzerland all have around one geotagged article for every 1,000 people, while in China or Guinea there is just over one article for every 500,000 people.

Here is the full article, interesting throughout and with a good map.  For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.