30 November 2022
Kenya: For 8 million “struggling yet willing and capable Kenyans” who have no access to commercial loans, the government will put in place a “Hustler Fund” which “will give personal loans of between $4 and $400m through phones, with a repayment period of 14 days”, no assets as security needed. Interest to be paid will amount to 8% annually.
BBC Africa Live 30 November 2022. 15:30
South Africa/San Rock Painting: An exhibition celebrating San rock art has opened at Origins Centre (Johannesburg) on Monday called “ǃke e꞉ Ç€xarra Çke – People who are Different: Come Together”. The article lets the director of the Origins Centre explain about the San, their art and how “how South Africa’s coat of arms got to feature an ancient San painting” from the famous Linton Panel.
https://theconversation.com/rock-art-how-south-africas-coat-of-arms-got-to-feature-an-ancient-san-painting-195297
Koos Prinsloo/Short stories: The author, who died in 1994, had published four collections of short stories in Afrikaans between 1982 and 1993. Last month, Fourthwall Books (Jo’burg) published Place of Slaughter and Other Stories, the most comprehensive translation of his work into English which “upends the long-held Afrikaner myths of heterosexual male identity, and speaks bravely for alternative identities.”
https://theconversation.com/koos-prinsloo-the-cult-afrikaans-writer-has-been-translated-to-english-heres-a-review-194091
29 November 2022
Sexual violence/South Sudan: A United Nations panel of experts on human rights in South Sudan says that “(n)owhere in the world do you find so many women who experience conflict by being repeatedly gang raped... while the men responsible are promoted and rewarded”. In the course of an international conference in London on preventing sexual violence in conflict, the panel thus calls on the country’s authorities to “immediately remove from office and investigate state governors and county commissioners linked to systematic rape.”
BBC Africa Live 29 November 2022. 10:20
Namibia: If all goes according to plan, the country’s next president (from 2024 onward) will be a woman: Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, so far minister of international relations and cooperation and Deputy Prime Minister, has been elected vice-president of Swapo, the party which has ruled the country since independence (if with a decreasing majority of late).
BBC Africa Live 29 November 2022. 15:08
Malawi: The world’s first-ever large-scale infant anti-malaria vaccination campaign has begun in Malawi (where over 4 million catch Malaria every year and over 2,500, most under the age of five, die from it) using the RTS,S vaccine, so far the only vaccine that WHO recommends. At 30%, the vaccine has a fairly low protection rate.
BBC Africa Live 29 November 2022. 13:05
Ethiopia: Addis has ruled out any negotiations or peace talks with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), maintaining that the OLA – which it had labelled a terrorist organisation in the past – “has no chain of command or political agenda”.
BBC Africa Live 29 November 2022. 15:48
Kenyan archeology: Especially in colonial times, but also afterwards, European scholars would take all the credit for work by teams which consisted mainly of Africans. Two exhibitions are about to try and set this right, one in Britain and one in Kenya. “Ode to the Ancestors” will open on 8th of December at London’s Horniman Museum. On 17th of December, the National Museums of Kenya will open an exhibition of the same photographs on the island of Mombasa – at “Fort Jesus, a 16th-century fortress that local African masons helped Portuguese settlers to build”.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/27/forgotten-photos-show-how-kenyan-archaeologists-unearthed-secrets-of-their-own-country