23 October 2022
Uganda/Drug addiction: In Kisenyi, a slum in Kampala, the so-called Street Uncles, themselves (ex-)drug users, have opened a centre to rehabilitate young drug addicts. Around 500 live there or visit regularly. This The Guardian photo essay of November 2020 also discusses criminalisation and the unconstructive role played by Uganda’s draconian drug laws. Prison does not reform drug users…
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/04/ugandas-street-uncles-transform-young-lives-in-the-slum-a-photo-essay
Nigeria: The discovery sent shock-waves nationally and internationally. A 4km-long pipeline to the Atlantic where the stolen oil was loaded “from a 24-foot rig visible from miles on the open waters”. The pipeline ran through “heavily guarded creeks”. Yet it was in operation for years – until its recent discovery – “by a private security firm and not the authorities”. With the amount of theft and corruption thus revealed, no wonder that official production cannot even meet the OPEC quota and is more than half below the output of 2011. Many of the security people (even including high-ranking army and navy officers) are allegedly involved (through bribes) and much of the oil has allegedly been “stolen from precisely those areas where there were army and navy checkpoints”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63314545
22 October 2022
Richard Leakey: An homage to the Kenyan anthropologist, conservationist, politician, who was director of the National Museum of Kenya, amongst many other things, lived 1944-2022 and was responsible for many a fossil find related to human evolution in Kenya and Tanzania. The article’s author believes that he was one of the last Victorian scientists, when science was a public adventure, before it became specialized, bureaucratic, hierarchical.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/10/remembering-richard-leakey-1944-2022-the-last-victorian-scientist/
Tanzania/ Kilimanjaro: A fire has broken out Friday night on the slopes of Africa’s highest mountain. It broke out “along one of the mountain's most popular climbing routes”. For the time being, the reason and extent of the fire are unknown and there are no known casualties.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63359145