Category Archive For "African issues"
To thrive, professionals must go rural
This week I took interest in seeing a tweet by an engineer who I understood to express tongue-in-cheek, her frustration in being unable to find “innovative engineering” work. This, she said, despite having gone to university for 5 years. I took a moment to ask her what she meant by “Innovative engineering” and she defined …
These are ways to make people count
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about Mama Furaha, a woman that I met that does not officially exist and how many people don’t count. I have so many more stories of real people and I will be telling you about them. One of the people I will often tell you about is …
There are people who don’t exist (Story 1)
The story of Mama Furaha and her group (Kilifi County). There are people who live in Kenya but don’t exist. Mama Furaha is 40 years old this year – at least that is her estimate because she is not exactly sure which day she was born. She doesn’t look 40 – more like a spry …
Living Memories: I married a paramount chief when I was a teenager.
I am passionate about learning from the past and I have spent years talking to people who were alive in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. I just wanted to know how ordinary people lived in those extraordinary times. I wrote a book called Living Memories with some of those stories but I continued talking to …
The 77%: This is your month
About 770 million people in Africa are aged below 35 years old. Thats 77% of Africans who are potentially the generation who are responsible for the change and progress that Africa needs. On August 12th, the world will commemorate International Youth Day. What will this mean for Africa? How shall we commemorate this day? Shall …