Too Afraid to Vote in Uganda

Homophobic comments by Uganda’s president and other politicians are making some LGBT+ Ugandans too scared to vote in elections scheduled for January 14, gay rights campaigners said on Tuesday. LGBT+ people face widespread persecution in the East African nation, where gay sex is punishable by life imprisonment, and gay activists fear politicians exploiting homophobic sentiment to win votes could stoke fresh attacks on the community. Real Raymond, head of LGBT+ charity Mbarara Rise Foundation in western Uganda, said politicians were also making “hate speeches” on the campaign trail, such as pledges to eradicate homosexuality in Uganda, if they were to be elected. Campaigners also said December’s arrest of Nicholas Opiyo — one of Uganda’s most prominent human rights lawyers, known for representing sexual minorities — was also contributing to an increasingly tense environment for LGBT+ Ugandans. Opiyo has been charged with money laundering and released on bail. His organisation, Chapter Four Uganda, said the charges were “fabricated and malicious” and aimed at obstructing his work as a human rights attorney.

SOURCE: BUSINESS DAY LIVE

Togolese Start-up Develops the First African Solar Sizing Software

After 5 years of studies, they discovered that the classical photovoltaic sizing calculation system had several inconsistencies that their software aims to correct. Alain Tossa, the technical director of KYA-Energy Group, says “We have noticed three concrete shortcomings. First, the energy balance. In the classical sizing method, there is no certain classification according to the use of energy. These elements have reinforced our analysis that we are now in the process of doing and so all this has enabled us to implement it to design a new method that we call “The KEG method” of sizing which is embedded in KYA SOL DESIGN the 1st African software of size calculations.” With their tests enabling them to better understand how the systems function, they realise that as opposed to storing energy to power equipment i.e. large batteries, the real need is for short-term smoothing storage to regulate the energy supply. Hence reducing costs in terms of investment in solar energy.

SOURCE: AFRICA NEWS

Tanzanian Women Confront Stereotypes of What a Woman and Wife should be in Islam

The Pink Hijab Initiatives, launched by Khadija Omari Kayanda, is guiding hundreds of Muslim women in business careers, a daring act in Tanzania. A devoted Muslim, Kayanda says the Quran supports women’s rights, an interpretation at direct odds with that of traditionalists. Founded in 2016, Kayanda’s organization, Pink Hijab Initiatives, has approximately 800 members in Tanzania. Three hundred Muslim women attend regular seminars on growing their businesses. Pink Hijab Initiatives also sets up income-generating activities for Muslim women and distributes sanitary napkins, which are often unavailable to girls, to 1,500 young women in a district south of Dar es Salaam. Kayanda recently recruited 25 women on Pemba, an island off the Tanzanian coast, to start a production plant for beauty products made from seaweed. Divorced and unemployed, the women were left to provide for their children by themselves. In some divorce cases in Muslim communities, women receive next to nothing after settling in a religious court. As more Muslim women gain literacy in the Quran and challenge male interpretations, things are slowly changing. In Tanzania, Kayanda is one of the few Muslim women who are openly confronting stereotypes of what a woman and wife should be in Islam. As part of a global interfaith network, Kayanda works with other East African human rights activists. Starting in 2022, she aims to expand Pink Hijab Initiatives to other countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan.

SOURCE: OZY

Ferry Tragedy in the DRC’s Lake Kivu

At least two children and one woman drowned after a passenger boat sank on Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a local official said. The boat, bound for the regional capital, Goma, capsized overnight on Tuesday after having set off in the dark overloaded and from an illegal mooring, regional government spokesman Claude Basila said on Wednesday. Basila said the boat had 51 passengers on board, of whom 46 were rescued, three died, leaving two missing. However, survivors said the vessel was carrying at least 100 passengers. The DRC has long been plagued by disastrous boat accidents since vessels are often overloaded with passengers and cargo. In September 2019, 36 people were reported missing and feared drowned after a boat sank in the Congo River on the outskirts of Kinshasa. Earlier that year, at least 30 people died after a boat sank in a lake in western DRC. Travel by boat is one of the most commonly used methods of transport in DRC, with the vast country’s thousands of kilometres of waterways linking areas that are otherwise unconnected by roads.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

East Africa’s New Giraffe Species

When colleagues from the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute came across a Nubian giraffe in Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park in 2015 that was just 9 feet, 4 inches tall, they did a double-take. The neck on the giraffe — nicknamed Gimli — was characteristically long, but its legs weren’t. It looked like someone had put a giraffe’s head and neck on a horse’s body. Then, just three years later, an 8-1/2-foot-tall Angolan giraffe — nicknamed Nigel — was found living on a private farm in central Namibia. After measuring and analyzing the dimensions of the two giraffes, the researchers could come up with only one explanation: dwarfism. The researchers who discovered Gimli and Nigel photographed the creatures extensively and used digital photogrammetry techniques to measure the length of their appendages. After comparing the dimensions of the dwarf giraffes, both mature males, to those of similar age from the same populations, they found that the dwarves had much shorter legs; more specifically, they had much shorter radius and metacarpal bones.

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

Traffic Delays Add to Lagosians’ Woes

Residents of Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria – and Africa – have been dealing with even more traffic problems than usual because of the partial closure of the crucial Third Mainland Bridge. From 25 July last year, only one side of the bridge has been open to vehicles while essential maintenance work was carried out. It is the longest and busiest of the three bridges connecting the mainland to the islands, which form the commercial heart of the city and where some of the wealthier neighbourhoods are located. The bridge was due to re-open at the end of January, but this has now been put back by a month. The delay was blamed on the protests against police brutality, organised under the EndSars hashtag, which swept the country in October.

SOURCE:BBC

Why is China Bugging the AU?

A recent report that Chinese hackers secretly redirected surveillance footage from the African Union headquarters so it could be viewed abroad is part of a larger pattern by Chinese networks to electronically infiltrate key communication channels in Africa, experts say. The report in December by the Reuters news agency alleged that prior to the 33rd AU Summit last February, a Japanese cybersecurity firm alerted AU technicians of the security breach. There have also been recent reports of governments such as Uganda and Rwanda targeting dissidents and their supporters by hacking into their WhatsApp and Skype accounts with the help of Chinese tech giant Huawei. China has been accused of spying on the AU before. In 2018, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that China had installed listening devices in the headquarters. The report alleged that servers in the AU headquarters were secretly sending data to a computer system in Shanghai each night between midnight and 2 a.m.

SOURCE: VOA

Growing Africa’s Delivery Services

Egyptian logistics startup Sprint has plans to expand to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and other countries in the MENA region after signing up almost 500 merchant customers at home. Founded by Mohamed Deif in 2019, the Cairo-based Sprint offers last mile delivery solutions to e-commerce merchants, with a focus on micro-merchants with monthly volumes as low as 30 orders a month. The startup has operations hubs all over Egypt, and its delivery network covers 24 governorates. Customers have access to a web portal where they can upload all their shipments, track shipment status, view inventory stored at Sprint warehouses, and see a complete overview of their financials. Sprint, whose technology can be easily integrated with major e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce, currently serves 460 active customers, ranging between micro-merchants with one or twp daily orders up to mega accounts with 900-1,200 shipments per day.SOURCE: DISRUPT AFRICA

Balancing South Africa’s Wind Energy and Conservation

In South Africa there are at least 23 fully operational wind farms producing almost 2 gigawatts, and several more are about to come online. The country aims to produce around 14.4 gigawatts a year from wind by 2030, which would be around 20% of the country’s energy demand. This is good news in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and ensure a more consistent power supply. But these developments can have other less positive impacts which also need to be addressed. One of these impacts is that wind turbines can kill birds when they collide with the moving blades. This problem is known worldwide, and some types of bird are more vulnerable to this threat than others. Birds of prey, such as eagles, buzzards and vultures, use the same wind resources that turbines need to operate. In South Africa, recent research found that 36% of birds killed by wind turbines were birds of prey. These birds have long lifespans and produce relatively few young each year, which means that even a small increase in deaths can cause their populations to decline. This wind-wildlife conflict has been termed a green-green dilemma: more clean energy and healthy bird populations are both desirable environmental goals, yet with detrimental counter effects.

SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION