Boing Boing » africa

How clay water filters for Ghana are made

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 13:00:11 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Susan Murcott and her team's factory making clay filters for Pure Home Water in Ghana. Over 100,000 served, so far."

They're shooting for 1,000,000.

Pure Home Water, Ghana: AfriClay Filters

Akissi: kids' comic about a mischievous girl in Cote D'Ivoire

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:14:30 +0000

Akissi is a French-language comic about the adventures of a little West African girl, now available in English translation thanks to the astoundingly excellent Flying Eye, a new kids' imprint of London's NoBrow. It was created by Marguerite Abouet, whom you may know from Aya, a series of comics for adults set in Cote d'Ivoire, widely available and appreciated in English translation.

Akissi's adventures are both universal and absolutely particular to her milieu. My young daughter -- born and raised in London -- has never kept a pet monkey, had a tapeworm come out of her nose, or had to contend with an older brother who wouldn't take her pigeon hunting; but Akissi's struggles with authority, her close friendships, and her misunderstandings are immediately recognisable to my daughter and her friends when they come over, and I've read the book aloud to them a good half-dozen times since I brought it home last week. It's the perfect combination of gross-out humour, authority clashes, and general mischief to capture a kid's interest.

Akissi comprises seven short stories, each of which stands alone, and, as with all of the NoBrow titles, it is a beautiful package -- great binding, endpapers, paper stock, and spine -- suitable for both your own library and as a handsome gift. It's on sale in the UK now, and will be out in the USA in June.

Akissi [Amazon UK]

AKISSI [Flying Eye]

Report: Salaries of mining union leaders in South Africa paid by mining companies

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:13:38 +0000

Just one year after the "Marikana massacre," an investigative report in South Africa's Daily Maverick reveals "a furtive conflict of interest, with mining houses footing the bill for top National Union of Mineworkers office bearers’ salaries...unionists are being paid high salaries by the very people from whom they are supposed to protect their members. The 'arrangement' is just about to end, in spite of union leaders' unhappiness and an unpredictable labour and political backlash."

Akata Witch: young adult hero's journey of a Nigerian witch

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:51:57 +0000

World Fantasy Award-winning novelist Nnedi Okorafor's debut young adult novel is Akata Witch, a beautifully wrought hero's journey story about Sunny, a young girl with albinism born to Nigerian parents in America, and then returned to Nigeria, where she discovers that she is a Leopard Person -- a born sorcerer.

The structure of Sunny's journey to mastery of her wild talent is familiar enough, the stuff of much-loved Rowling and Duane novels. But the world of Leopard People, beautifully presented by Okorafor, makes it sing with freshness. The increasingly difficult challenges that Sunny and her three friends -- a coven predicted in legend and come to Nigeria just in time to save the world from a murdering sorcerer bent on apocalypse -- are each more fascinating and pulse-pounding than the last, and the magic they practice has that dream-logic plausibility of the best fantasy.

Young readers and adults who try Akata Witch will find it a marvellous and uplifting read, heartwarming in its portrayal of true freindship, heartbreaking in its portrayal of headstrong youth and the perils of pride. Woven throughout is an implicit commentary on America's relationship to Africa, the distinct identities of African Americans, Nigerians, and other West Africans, and the adolescent pain of trying to please your family even as you are discovering yourself. Highly recommended.

Akata Witch

Zambia's fictional 1960s space programme

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 16:47:09 +0000

Rick sez, "Spanish photographer Cristina De Middel's fictional documentation of a failed 1960s space programme in Zambia - The Afronauts - has just been nominated for the 2013 Deutsche Borse photography prize."

Zambia's first (unofficial) space programme

Twitter suspends account of Somali Islamist militants linked to Al-Qaeda

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 04:50:01 +0000

Two days after a group of Somali islamist militants vowed to execute Kenyan hostages, and tweeted a video of a captive pleading for the Kenyan government to help free them, the Al-Shabaab Twitter account @HSMPress was suspended. A Google cache is visible here. Warning: includes gruesome photos. The group took a French intelligence officer hostage, then apparently murdered him after an unsuccessful attempted raid by the French military which the US assisted). An @HSMPress press release about that killing is available on Twitlonger.

The Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen Twitter account has been around since 2011, promoting the group's vision of strict sharia law in Somalia, 140 characters at a time. The US State Department was reportedly looking in to shutting it down ages ago. Wonder what took them so long?

For its part, Al Shabaab blames its "Christian enemies" for suspending its Twitter account. And they do sound rather miffed about being blocked on the popular social networking platform.

From Reuters:

"The enemies have shut down our Twitter account," al Shabaab's most senior media officer, who refused to be named, told Reuters. "They shut it down because our account overpowered all the Christians' mass media and they could not tolerate the grief and the failure of the Christians we always displayed (online)."

You know what's most surreal about their (now-suspended) account? Not the Christian infidel media stuff, or the terror-threat-y stuff, or the images of bloated corpses and prancing soldiers with Kalashnikovs. One expects all of that from an al Qaeda-linked Somalian terror organization.

No, what's weirdest are the tweets that sound like they were lifted from a j-school ethics debate.

How much of the gruesome details of war should be published without detracting from the accurancy and credibility of the event?

Why is it that questions and ethical concerns are usually raised only when the Mujahideen publish images of their enemy combatants?.

A photojournalist wins the Pulitzer Prize for a blood-spattered shot of an Afghan girl, but the fairly clean shot of the French is "graphic"

Noted.

China's health aid in Africa leads to flood of fake drugs

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:45:54 +0000

At The Pulitzer Center website, a feature on the work of investigative journalist Kathleen E. McLaughlin, an American reporter working in Africa whose current work focuses on how China’s health programs, hospitals and medical teams in Africa affect the health landscape. While they do "provide access to life-saving drugs, vaccines and medical care," supply chain problems affect the patient population negatively. One of the biggest problems? Fake drugs, which can in fact kill people.

Focussing on fake malaria pills, Kathleen McLaughlin traveled to Tanzania and Uganda, two of the countries worst-plagued by the parasite, given their borders on Great Lake Victoria – the world's second-largest lake and home to some of the world's deadliest mosquitoes. The fake pills are, quite simply, everywhere. Nearly everyone has a story about fake medications, mostly malaria pills. Because government hospitals are overloaded and corruption makes drugs go missing from official supplies, thousands of people turn to the local pharmacy and buy potentially life-saving drugs when they get the hallmark malarial fever. But in many cases – up to one third of the time – those drugs are fake. The parasite lives on and, when the drugs contain half-strength of partial active ingredients, the parasite can potentially become resistant to real treatment.

More here.

African sf anthology

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 03:38:35 +0000

Liam sez, "On the tail of the CC-licensed Muslim SF Anthology: there's a recently-released collection of African SF stories, called Afro SF. It's a collection of stuff written by folks in and around the African continent, so there's a fairly wide spread of content and focus. It's pretty new, and pretty neat, although it isn't CC and it is, at present, only available as a slightly-pricey e-book. Still, SF, some of it quite good (writers like Sarah Lotz, Biram Mboob) marginal voices, and all." (Thanks, Liam!)

Hip Deep Angola radio series, part 3: A Spiritual Journey to Mbanza-Kongo

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:50:53 +0000

ANTONIO MADIATA, player of the lungoyi-ngoyi, the 2-stringed Kongo viola.

Ned Sublette writes, "This summer I had the tremendous experience of going to Mbanza-Kongo, in the north of Angola, where I recorded material for an episode of Afropop Worldwide Hip Deep and a still unfinished piece of writing."

You can hear it on Soundcloud, and it has also been broadcast on PRI affiliate stations around the US.

"Meanwhile, it's being broadcast against a background of turmoil in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo," Ned adds. "See this and this."

I've written about the earlier installments in the series, and encourage you to listen and enjoy. More about this chapter, below.

HIP DEEP ANGOLA 3: A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY TO MBANZA-KONGO (distribution date November 22). Today Mbanza-Kongo (Kongo City) is part of Angola, in the north where the Congo River divides Angola from the Democratic Republic of Congo. When the first missionaries arrived there in 1491, it was the seat from which the Manikongo (king) ruled over a large area that reached to south of Luanda. It was a city of luxury, with perhaps as many as 60,000 people at its peak. To make this unprecedented program, producer Ned Sublette traveled to Mbanza-Kongo to rendezvous with Dr. Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz, professor of art and art history at Stanford.
We’ll learn about the simbi, the spirits that Martínez Ruiz describes as “the multiple power of god”; hear Antonio Madiata play the lungoyi-ngoyi, the two-stringed viola of the Kongo court; attend a session of the lumbu, the traditional tribunal of elders; listen to the voice of a deceased singer who took 500 years of genealogical knowledge with him when he departed; talk to traditional healer Pedro Lópes; and with the help of historian C. Daniel Dawson and with Angolan composer and musicologist Victor Gama, we’ll examine Kongo-Ngola culture in the diaspora – in Brasil, Haiti, Cuba, and more.

Hip Deep Angola: 4-part radio series exploring music in southern ...

Self-taught 15-y-o from Sierra Leone is a king-hell maker

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:15:29 +0000

This short documentary about a teenager from Sierra Leone who taught himself electronics and got a residence at MIT is inspiring and humbling -- what a kid!

15-Year-Old Kelvin Doe is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus.
Kelvin became the youngest person in history to be invited to the "Visiting Practitioner's Program" at MIT. THNKR had exclusive access to Kelvin and his life-changing journey - experiencing the US for the first time, exploring incredible opportunities, contending with homesickness, and mapping out his future.

Self-taught African Teen Wows M.I.T.

Africa for Norway: raising money in Africa to help poor Norwegians struggle through the frozen winter

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:20:06 +0000

Ntwiga wries, Who says Africa can't contribute: Radi-Aid has Africans singing and working together to send radiators to our cold brethren in Norway in this their time of Christmas need. Choice tidbit: 'It's kind of just as bad as poverty if you ask me... Frostbite kills too.'"

Africa For Norway - New charity single out now! Official christmas video

Improvised footballs from Africa

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:30:26 +0000

Photographer Jessica Hilltout travelled Africa documenting homemade footballs/soccer balls improvised across the continent. Shown above, a ball from Mozambique, made by Domingo. Left, a Ghanian ball from the Anokye Stars.

Balls (via Kottke)

Illiterate kids given sealed boxes with tablets figure out how to use, master, and hack them

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:16:58 +0000

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child presentation at the MIT Tech Review EmTech conference recounted an inspiring experiment in which illiterate Ethiopian village-kids were given solar-charging laptops in sealed boxes, and quickly taught themselves how to operate, then master, then hack, these devices, acquiring basic literacy and technological literacy at the same time.

MIT Technology Review's David Talbot reports in a piece reprinted on Mashable.com:

The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.
Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”
Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”
“If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn.”
In an interview after his talk, Negroponte said that while the early results are promising, reaching conclusions about whether children could learn to read this way would require more time. “If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept,” Negroponte said. “We’d have to start with a new village and make a clean start.”

Given Tablets But No Teachers, Ethiopian Kids Teach Themselves (via Reddit)

UK government spent millions arming and training Congolese and Sudanese soldiers

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:16:23 +0000

The UK government has spent £2.4m on training and arming the military forces in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- two places where soldiers are known for atrocities, gang-rape, torture, electoral fraud and vote suppression, and gross human rights abuses. The Guardian's Diane Taylor and David Smith report:

The Enough Project, which works with the American actor George Clooney to expose human rights abuses in both Sudan and Congo, says the two countries are the scene of some of the world's most serious mass atrocities.
In information revealed in a freedom of information response from the Ministry of Defence a total of £75,406 has been spent on providing 44-week courses at the elite Royal Military Academy Sandhurst for Sudanese and Congolese forces. Other support includes military logistics, advanced command and staff courses, strategic intelligence and evaluating challenges to state sovereignty.
A total of £952,301 was spent on international peace support, which includes border security and stabilisation.

As the Sudanese opposition leader Dr Gebreil Fediel said from London, "If it was and is the intention of the UK authorities to teach Sudan's police and security officers how to conduct these matters in a democratic manner, it has failed. The brutality and genocidal activities of government of Sudan state organs against its own citizens is widely documented."

UK spent millions training police from oppressive regimes

Chinese-built ghost town in Angola - the first of many to come?

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:40:11 +0000

The BBC's Louise Redvers reports on the ghost town of Kilamba, Angola, a horrendously expensive high-rise enclave built by Chinese companies on a line of credit secured with Angolan oil, which has only seen 220 apartments out of 2800 sold. Kilamba is the most ambitious of several new towns being built outside of existing Angoloan cities by Chinese firms.

It's like a bizarro-world version of the Keynsian idea of getting the economy going by paying one group of laborers to dig holes and another to fill them in. But in this case, one group of workers are paid to pump oil, which is offshored to China. In exchange, a group of Chinese workers is paid to build a gate-guarded enclave for a non-existent pool of mega-rich locals that no one can afford to live in, and which gradually turns into a massive liability. Profit!

The place is eerily quiet, voices bouncing off all the fresh concrete and wide-open tarred roads.
There are hardly any cars and even fewer people, just dozens of repetitive rows of multi-coloured apartment buildings, their shutters sealed and their balconies empty.
Only a handful of the commercial units are occupied, mostly by utility companies, but there are no actual shops on site, and so - with the exception of a new hypermarket located at one entrance - there is nowhere to buy food.
After driving around for nearly 15 minutes and seeing no-one apart from Chinese labourers, many of whom appear to live in containers next to the site, I came across a tiny pocket of life at a school.
It opened six months ago, bussing in its pupils in from outlying areas because there are no children living on site to attend.

Angola's Chinese-built ghost town (via Super Punch)

Science fiction in Africa

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:14:35 +0000

Here's a 23-minute BBC World Service documentary about science fiction in Africa, hosted by Zoo City author Lauren Beukes, who speaks to various luminaries, writers and commentators, including District 9 creator Neill Blomkamp.

Beukes hears from film-makers Neill Blomkamp (South Africa - director of the international hit District 9), Wanuri Kahiu (Kenya), blogger Jonathan Dotse (Ghana), writer Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria/USA) and others on how their particular experiences have influenced their work.
Science fiction often explores the interaction between people and technology. In Africa that theme plays out in surprising ways, from making an appointment with a traditional healer over email, to women in remote villages collecting water while chatting on their mobiles.
It’s this mix of magic and technology, challenge and innovation that shapes the science fiction coming out of the continent.
Leaving behind the traditional visions of a high-tech Tokyo, futuristic LA or dystopian New York, and challenging clichéd views of the entire African continent, this is a science fiction being told by the people who live there.

Is Science Fiction Coming to Africa? (via Afrocyberpunk)

African bootleg MP3 street-market

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:53:38 +0000

3bute's comic has adapted Chris Kirkley's blog post about an MP3 street-market in Nouakchott, Mauritania. It's a fascinating look at the intersection of traditional developing-world counterfeit/bootleg markets and the digital world:

The market itself is a labyrinthine of stalls, glass display cases filled with “fake” Nokia/Samsung cellphones, sporting two or three SIM cards, cameras, mp3 players, and speakers. Deeper into the market, past the fancier shops, the stalls are simpler. In concrete boxes plastered with glossy hip hop posters and homemade montages, young men lounge behind computers, blasting music from pairs of speakers directed outwards, in an arms race of sonic amplitude. This is Nouakchott’s mp3 market.
This is no amateur operation. Every computer trails a variety inputs: USB multipliers, memory card receivers, and microSD adapters. A virus scan is initiated on each new connection. Each PC is running some version of a copy utility to facilitate the process. The price is a standard 40 ougiya per song, about $0.14; like every market, discounts are available for bulk purchases. The music on the computers is dictated by the owners. Hassaniya music is most often carried by young Maurs, Senegalese Mbalax and folk by Pulaar and Wolof kids. While I’m searching for Hausa film music, I’m directed to the sole Hausa man in the market, a vendor from Niamey. I sit with the vendors, scrolling through the songs on VLC, selecting with a nod or a pass, the files copied to a folder, tallied, and transferred to my USB.

The original post included an MP3 of the street-sounds in the market, which makes for good listening (I've proxied that link through CoralCache to avoid nuking the server).

#5: Down and Out in the MP3 Market (via AfroCyberPunk)

Associate editor of Elsevier's Genomics resigns, vows to devote energies to open access

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:00:51 +0000

Winston Hide, is an associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was also -- until recently -- the associate editor of the prestigious (and expensive!) Elsevier journal Genomics. In a column in The Guardian, he explains why he resigned from Genomics: people are dying because scientists in poor companies can't afford proprietary journals. He will devote his efforts to open access alternatives to Genomics from now on.

My work on biomedical research in developing countries has shown me that lack of access to current publications has a severe impact.
The vast majority of biomedical scientists in Africa attempt to perform globally competitive research without up-to-date access to the wealth of biomedical literature taken for granted at western institutions. In Africa, your university may have subscriptions to only a handful of scientific journals.
In reality, the modus operandi is "please can you send me a pdf". Alternatively some researchers spend part of their research grant to buy a subscription to the journal they need.

The majority of the science in Elsevier's journals is conducted at public expense, or with a large public subsidy. The peer reviewing process is also undertaken by publicly subsidized scientists whom Elsevier does not pay. The institutions that these scientists work for have to pay very large amounts of money in order to receive the journals their work contributes to.

I can no longer work for a system that puts profit over access to research (via Copyfight)

Raising money to free classic volume on Africa's oral literature

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:57:35 +0000

A campaign on Unglue.it is seeking to raise $7,500 to pay for a Creative Commons Attribution-only licensed edition of Oral Literature in Africa, an out-of-print classic on the subject that is widely sought by African libraries. Once the money is raised, they will produce the new edition and make it widely available.

First published in 1970 by Oxford University Press, this classic study has been hailed as "the single most authoritative work on oral literature”. It traces the history of story-telling in Africa, and brings to life the diverse forms of creativity across the African continent. Author Ruth Finnegan is thought to have “almost single-handedly created the field of ethnography of language” with this book, and it continues to be a go-to text for anyone studying African culture.
However, despite its enormous scope and popularity, Finnegan’s book is now out of print. It is particularly hard to find in Africa, where its original retail price was beyond the budget of most university libraries. The non-profit organization Open Book Publishers is endeavoring to make this definitive book freely available to African students and scholars — and indeed to any interested readers around the world. The Unglued Ebook will be particularly friendly to people in places with slow Internet connections: once a copy is downloaded, the book can be read offline.
This edition, developed in conjunction with Cambridge University’s World Oral Literature Project, will include a new introduction and extra digital material. When Finnegan’s book was first published forty years ago, the technology did not exist to include audio clips. Part of this Unglue campaign will involve the creation of a free online repository of Finnegan’s audio recordings of African story-telling, carefully collected during her fieldwork in the late 1960s. These clips, together with original photographs taken during her research, will become available for the first time to researchers everywhere — an invaluable resource to scholars of African literature and culture.

Oral Literature in Africa (via Copyfight)

Bones of Turkana: Meave and Richard Leakey on human ancestors and the Leakey legacy

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:30:45 +0000

The Leakey family is like the Kennedys, but for paleoanthropology instead of politics. Think about any hominin fossil or artifact you can name. Chances are, there was a Leakey involved in its discovery. Louis Leakey was one of the first scientists to champion the idea that humans had their origins in Africa. For three generations now, his family has carried out active paleo excavations in eastern Africa, especially the countries of Tanzania and Kenya.

The first generation—Louis Leakey and his wife Mary—were most associated with Tanzania's Oldupai Gorge. But their son Richard, his wife Meave, and their daughter Louise have all spent their careers focused on Lake Turkana, on the border between Kenya and Ethiopia. The site is the world's largest, permanent desert lake. Undisturbed by modern development, in a spot where millions of years of flowing water have washed deposits and fossils down from the rift valley—Lake Turkana is an excellent place to search for human ancestors and our ancient relatives.

On Wednesday, PBS will air an hour-long documentary on the Leakeys' work at Lake Turkana. Part biography of Richard Leakey and part exploration of human history—Bones of Turkana will air May 16th at 9:00 pm central and again on May 21st at the same time. Yesterday, I got the opportunity to speak with Richard and Meave Leakey. We talked about human evolution, the scientific promise of Lake Turkana, the process of paleo fieldwork, and the lasting impression of the Leakey legacy.

First, a bit of context. Although he's the more famous of the two, Richard Leakey hasn't really been doing paleoanthropology for 20 years. Instead, he's worked in wildlife conservation—especially with elephants. He's also participated in Kenyan politics, including helping to found a new political party there in the late 1990s. Currently, he's focused on fundraising for the Turkana Basin Institute, an organization aimed at providing logistical and financial support to researchers from many disciplines working in remote parts of Kenya. Previously the site of a base camp for Leakey work at Lake Turkana, the Turkana Basin Institute will soon be home to a permanent building. "Now it’s a place where scientists can do research without having to live in tents and eat sand," Richard Leakey told me. "And we can give local nomadic people permanent jobs in curatorial duties with collections on site. Traditionally, people found fossils and took them away. We’re turning that around now, so that the local economy gains as well."

Maggie Koerth-Baker: Richard, what drew you to Lake Turkana in the first place?

Richard Leakey: I had been working in southern Ethiopia representing my father in 1968 and 1967 [He would have been around 24 at the time—MKB]. I didn’t really enjoy it, I was very much the junior person on the expedition. But I had dropped out of high school and didn’t have any credentials except my experience. I knew that to go any further in my career I'd either have to go to university or I’d need a to find a really good site and build team around me. So that’s what I chose to do. I happened to notice that Lake Turkana looked very promising geologically—there were formations suggesting that the lake had fluctuated in depth and size over millions of years. There was sediment from river systems that often contains fossils. You had exposure through modern erosion, and there was very little vegetation. In 1968, I went in to check it out more closely. Immediately, we started finding fossils and lots of them.

What’s important about Lake Turkana is that it’s been there, growing and shrinking, for four million years, if not longer. There's this continuous record that exists in other places, but perhaps not as broad and rich. The work that’s been done so far suggests that other places aren’t as extensive. That’s what makes Turkana different from other sites we know of at the moment. But that's not to say that the other sites don't matter. It’s the combination of work done in South Africa, Tanzania, work being done in Ethiopia. It all adds up to a comprehensive picture. We’ve accumulated a huge amount of data at Lake Turkana but it would be less important than it is without that bigger continental sample.

MKB: Meave, you married into this family that had already been doing paleontology work for years. How has joining the Leakeys affected your work over the decades? Did the family business alter the course of your research?

Meave Leakey: It did entirely. I was doing marine zoology in university. I can’t think of anything further removed from paleontology. But my initial contact with Richard’s father led to me getting a job in his primate research center. I ended up doing my Ph.D. on modern monkey skeletons, and I got so interested in that that I left marine sciences behind entirely.

Then I met Richard and he invited me up to Turkana to look at fossil monkeys. It was entirely Richard who got me started in the field work. As soon as I got there I really loved it. In that sense, the Leakeys directed the opportunities that led to what I do today. Being married to Richard led to my interest in fossil human ancestors. I was mostly interested in monkeys for years, that was what I studied. But in 1989 he went into wildlife conservation and that left me in the position of leading the fieldwork.

MKB: From your perspective, is it reasonable to focus so much our research energy on this one place, on Lake Turkana? I’m curious about the trade offs we make here between looking for fossils in a location that we already know so much about, because it’s been so well studied versus looking for fossils in places that haven’t been explored yet, where we might find something we’re missing at Turkana.

ML: I think the thing to understand about Turkana is that it’s very huge. We work with many colleagues in different disciplines, looking at lots of different angles and that’s what makes it exciting. You have geologists interpreting the lake’s history. Geochemists looking at dominant vegetation. The main overall focus is how and why our ancestors evolved and how they became us. The big questions relate to that. But climate is important. Environments are important. Extinctions are important. There’s many different questions and aspects and approaches to the one main focus.

We have an enormous backlog of work that’s been done there, 45 years worth or so. We have a huge amount of information about the lake basin. On the other hand, when someone comes up with a new site in Africa, you have no idea what you’ll find and that gives you a better idea of what you’re seeing in Turkana. We tend to think that Turkana gives you the right picture of our past, but it doesn’t. It’s just a little pinhole view. The rest of Africa might have something entirely different going on. Personally, I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else because my expertise is in that specific lake basin. But I think we should be finding as many sites as possible all over the world. That's how you get the big picture.

MKB: You both have had a lot of experience finding new fossil specimens, so I wanted to ask you about a part of paleo work that's often very difficult for laypeople to understand. How do you go about distinguishing where a new specimen fits in the human family tree, whether it's part of an already identified species, or something new? That can seem like a really subjective thing from the outside.

RL: I would say that people have generally gone about explaining this backwards. The very earliest things that are our ancestors, quite frankly they don’t look like us at all. I think it’s much more important to look from the present and go back. When you find 10,000-year-old old skeletons they look just like us. In fact, modern looking goes back to 200,000 years. Then, I think we tend to go further and start really seeing the differences. At 1.5 million years ago, it’s not like us at all. If we presented it this other way, from present back, I think we’d have more understanding from the public.

ML: It really is a lot of work to establish that you’ve got something different and that it’s not just variation within the species. The main comparative example you use is to take the gorilla, which has a huge size and shape difference between males and females. Gorillas have the most variation within a species of all modern primates. You look at that very extreme variation and you assume you're unlikely get a much higher degree of variation within a species than that. Then you compare all the points on your new specimen with known species and you see if it fits within that range of variation. If it exceeds the gorilla level of variation you’ve got a pretty good case for a new species.

And the truth, with this method, is that you're likely missing species. If you were to take a series of modern monkey skulls and break them apart the way we find them in the fossil record, there’s no way you’d call them different species. But you know in the modern situation that they are different. If anything, we’re conservative on this.

MKB: One of the things that really stood out to me from your new documentary was the way the narrative associated tool making and tool use with an important step in non-humans becoming humans. How does that idea work with all that we now know about the many, many other animals who use tools. It's not even just primates, right?

RL: It’s quite subtle. We know birds use tools and chimps and insects and lots of mammals. But to take a block of very hard stone and to take another stone and fashion an object from it, that's something different. You have to "see within" the stone to know what you’re fashioning before you fashion it. You have to project an idea. That's a step that no other tool maker uses. It’s an almost soft science definition but I can see a fundamental difference.

ML: I'd agree. Kanzi is a chimp that humans tried to teach to make stone tools. But his hands were simply the wrong shape. They don’t have the precision of grip we have and they have less flexible grip. It wouldn’t have been possible for Kanzi to make a tool as professionally as our ancestors did. We haven’t found tools older than 2.5 million years old. I’m sure that’s not the last word on this. There might be ones found that are older, but as you go back, the hand then becomes less and less flexible. The limiting factor would be the morphology of the hand. It's more that and less the morphology of the brain, in my opinion. This aspect of being human very much depends on hand flexibility.

MKB: Meave, your team found the skull of Kenyanthropus platyops—a 3 million year old hominin—at Lake Turkana in 1999. (Other scientists argue that this skull doesn't represent a new genus, but is rather a species of Australopithecus.) Why do we find so many skulls and skull fragments? Shouldn't there be equal quantities of other ancient hominin bones?

ML: We do find more skulls than you’d expect. I think it has to do with the size of the brain, or rather the size of the actual skull. Other remains can get chewed up by carnivores. They aren’t as complete. But the skulls we do find in greater number than you might expect. Maybe it's becuase carnivores couldn’t get their mouths around the skull and cruch it up, because the brain was so big. I'm speculating, but when you get back to something like Lucy, you don’t find more skulls than other bones, maybe because the brain was smaller and the carnivores were bigger. We do find other peices but they’re usually pretty fragmentary. And we're missing lower jaws a lot, because those can be chewed up. Monkeys are another good example. There are fewer fossil monkey skulls as complete as hominid skulls, and that's even though we find far more monkey specimens.

MKB: Richard, you grew up in the field, doing fieldwork alongside your parents. You and Meave both raised your daughter in the field. What is that experience like? Why do you think that paleontology has become this very family-oriented job for the Leakeys in a way that other industries just aren't?

RL: If you have an opportunity to be involved in fieldwork it's hugely exciting and rewarding. You’re out in the open in nature, unbothered by emails and telephones. And once you enjoy fieldwork, paleontology is one of the professions where you can devote a lot of time to that. I think that's what draws you back into it as an adult. as A result of my childhood is that I always had a natural curiosity about origins, extinction, and evolution. It’s a natural part of my life. It’s not the only thing that interests me, obviously, but fully understanding why we are what we are—I think it adds to the whole human experience.

ML: You also have to understand that we're only three months of the year in the field and those months tend to fall within school holidays. Our children were in the field with us the entire time, from the time they were babies. They were in the camp or in the base. We'd take them out now and again and they'd get very excited about finding things. When they were older, they were able to start helping in camp, picking out bone fragments. The result of all of that exposure is that they say they definitely won’t get into the subject as adults. Of course, Louise said exactly that, but now she’s fully involved. Our other daughter said no and kept her word.

Watch the documentary Bones of Turkana on PBS

IMAGES:
Image 1: The Leakey family excavating a pelorovis skull. Our human ancestors once feasted on these ancient bovids (akin to cows). Courtesy National Geographic Television.
Image 2: Kenya 1987 Lake Turkana woman and dogs, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from wfeiden's photostream.
Image 3: Meave Leakey. Courtesy National Geographic Television.

South African 3D printing conference

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:14:55 +0000

Chris sez, "I'm helping to arrange a conference on 3D printing/additive manufacturing in South Africa. We have some world-renowned professors on the subject coming and its being held in a game reserve so it should be fun!"

Rapid Prototyping remains a key technology in the Rapid Product Development suite of technologies. However, over the past decade we have experienced growing acceptance of this powerful technology in the manufacturing industry, not only as prototyping tool, but increasingly as niche manufacturing technology. The inherent ability of the technology to accommodate part complexity and customization, coupled with an ever-increasing range of materials, has provided industry with unprecedented flexibility in design and production. Resulting from this, Additive Manufacturing has replaced Rapid Prototyping as internationally accepted terminology for this technology. Also in South Africa the uptake of Additive Manufacturing by industry has been breathtaking.
In the calm and pristine environment of the South African Bushveld, the conference programme will offer a variety of opportunities for participants from industry, R&D institutions, academia and government to listen to presentations, engage in discussions, visit exhibitions and just interact informally during the three days of the event.

Rapid Product Development Association of South Africa (Thanks, Chris!)

African Men, Hollywood Stereotypes (video)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:37:27 +0000

[Video Link] A new video for Mama Hope, by Joe Sabia and crew.

Wouldn't it be better if African men weren't always depicted as warlords or victims?
Written by Benard, Brian, Derrick, Gabriel and the Mama Hope Team
Directed and Edited by Joe Sabia
Executive Produced and Shot by Bryce Yukio Adolphson
Produced by Nyla Rodgers
Motion Graphics by Jason Chandra
Sound by Equal Sonics
Original Music by Michael Thurber

On Tweetbombing and the Ethics of Attention

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:49:39 +0000

Something weird happened on Twitter yesterday. It was annoying and upsetting at the time, but now it's meaty fodder for behavioral analysis discussions. Ethan Zuckerman wrote a blog post about it that extracts some of the more interesting questions raised about social media and activism.

* Postscript: I've since traded tweets with the two guys behind the stunt, and we're cool.

Blogger scoops news of Malawi President's death, is detained and harassed by police

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:30:59 +0000

Marilyn Terrell of National Geographic tells Boing Boing,

My pal Andrew Evans who blogs for National Geographic Traveler just happened to be in the capital of Malawi yesterday when the president was rushed to the hospital. The local media insisted he was in stable condition but people were saying he had died, so Andrew stopped by the hospital to see what he could find out. The hospital was oddly quiet, although it had been buzzing with police earlier. Andrew figured something was fishy and starting taking photos of the unprotected hospital until some plainclothes police noticed. They made him delete his photos and demanded that he hand over his iPhone but he refused and kept tweeting, and tweeted the first report of Bingu wa Mutharika's death, which wasn't officially admitted until 24 hours later.

Read Andrew's account, and view his photos, here.

(PHOTO: Andrew Evans. "At Lilongwe airport, Malawians listen to news of their president's death.")

Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:15:29 +0000

In The Atlantic today, a must-read piece by Teju Cole on some of the cultural issues raised by Kony 2012, and reactions to it in the media-blog-Twitter-opinion-sphere.

I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than "making a difference." There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

Read "The White Savior Industrial Complex" at the Atlantic.

Revealed! Kony 2012's sinister Musical Comedy roots

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:21:27 +0000

From the first time I watched "Kony 2012," I always sensed a link with the storyline of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Book of Mormon musical. But sweet fancy Moses, I did not know how closely linked the two truly were.

Aaron Stewart-Ahn tells us about the video above (which has been taken down by Invisible Children, but mirrored elsewhere):

Here's where the money has been going to: Invisible Children founder Jason Russell's vanity dance musical numbers which start off with exploitative footage of suffering children. How did no one else catch this? It makes the Kony 2012 video look subtle and sane. He's basically using this to fund his desire to make Glee.
This is where the millions are being spent: vanity musicals. Did Trey Parker write this??!! Russell has mentioned repeatedly how his ambitions were to make musicals. He intimated that he was going to make the musical popular again á la Glee, but this didn't work out—so he ended up in advocacy. It was that chat at the evangelical conference. So, here's a direct youtube link to 9m 10secs in the video where he talks about making musicals, and casually talks about his dream of documenting genocide.
That bit with the t-shirt with the African child on it is just... I'm speechless. Wonder why they've removed it from their YouTube channel, since it looks so damn expensive? It's insane, isn't it? I mean, seriously: it makes Scientology videos look charmingly naive.

UK funnyman Charlie Brooker has a bit of fun with Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 viral phenomenon, in the video embedded below.

Bonus round, below. Brooker asks, "Can ANYONE explain how this EPIC visual embarrassment helps Africa? OH GOD THERE'S MORE. Also: how much did this cost, did donations fund it, and what the TWIRLING FUCK does it mean?"

[Video Link]

(thanks, @maureenjohnson and others!)

Kony 2012 screening in Uganda results in anger, rocks thrown at screen

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:50:11 +0000

[Video Link to Al Jazeera report]

Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" video has been viewed by millions online around the world. By view counts alone, it is now the most viral video in history. It is now the first ever YouTube hit publicly screened in the northern Ugandan town of Lira—and it didn't go so well.

The screening was hosted by African Youth Initiative Network (AYINET), an NGO founded by Victor Ochen (LRA abductee turned peacekeeper) mentioned in this previous Boing Boing post. Ochen and AYINET thought Ugandans who had been personally affected by the LRA and Kony deserved an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire attended the AYINET screening of Kony 2012 last night, and tweeted that local radio stations heavily publicized the event in advance. "There were 5000+ people at the screening," she says, "Many rode bicycles from villages to see the #kony2012 video in Lira."

Malcolm Webb attended the event in the Mayor’s Gardens in the city center, and he reports for Al Jazeera:

Having heard so many great things about the film, the crowd’s expectations were high. People I spoke to anticipated seeing a video that showed the world the terrible atrocities that they had suffered during the conflict, and the ongoing struggles they still face trying to rebuild their lives after two lost decades.
The audience was at first puzzled to see the narrative lead by an American man – Jason Russell – and his young son. Towards the end of the film, the mood turned more to anger at what many people saw as a foreign, inaccurate account that belittled and commercialised their suffering, as the film promotes Kony bracelets and other fundraising merchandise, with the aim of making Kony infamous.
One woman I spoke to made the comparison of selling Osama Bin Laden paraphernalia post 9/11 – likely to be highly offensive to many Americans, however well intentioned the campaign behind it. The event ended with the angrier members of the audience throwing rocks and shouting abusive criticism, as the rest fled for safety, leaving an abandoned projector, with organisers and the press running for cover until the dust settled.

Kagumire adds this morning that AYINET has suspended further screenings, "not to further harm victims or provoke any violent response."

AYINET has published a statement on the screening here.

Invisible Children's bracelets and t-shirts aren't likely to receive a warm welcome in Uganda, either. Kagumire says "The Northern Ugandan people want the government to stop Kony 2012 tshirts from entering the country; the video sparked heated talks on 5 radio stations in Lira... one caller said #kony2012 t-shirts cannot cross Karuma. It would be too provocative."

(via @somebadideas)

Medical aid worker on Kony 2012: "The aid industry has just been Biebered."

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:35:21 +0000

(Photo: Joseph Kony, via Reuters)

On his personal blog, Marc DuBois of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors without Borders) writes about the impact of the viral Kony 2012 campaign on the work of long-established humanitarian efforts in Africa.

"Most madmen love the idea of fame, so Joseph Kony’s wet dream just came true," writes DuBois.

Many aid workers are simultaneously offended by the project and jealous of its unprecedented reach. At the time of this blog post, the promotional video for Invisible Children's fundraising/"awareness" campaign about the fugitive African rebel leader has exceeded 70 million views, making it the fastest-growing viral video in internet history.

Snip from DuBois' blog post:

So why, really, are we aid insiders so bothered? It’s the big green monster. Is there another charity whose message has captivated so many so fast? About six months ago, my niece “Lisa” in Chicago excitedly asked me to contribute to Invisible Children. At the time, I’d never heard of it. I poked around. I can’t say I was taken by the cause, but I couldn’t help feeling envious of IC’s having so effectively reached Lisa, usually more interested in dance and boys. These young upstarts at IC are the next big thing. And we aren’t.
Why? Well, for one, they have a simple message that people grasp. For another, good looks. More importantly, Invisible Children has discovered what the entertainment industry figured out a decade ago. It’s not about us old timers. It’s not people who read the Philip Roth or contribute conscientiously to their pension fund. It’s about the under 25s, maybe even the under 15s. It’s about the kids. That’s why there are a couple dozen TV shows about teenage vampires. That’s why we have Jedward.
The aid industry has just been Biebered. IC’s hundreds of thousands of donor / activist – they were invisible to us. Kids. That’s the target and that’s the message. If you think the aid world depends on gray haired HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals, aka rich folk), wait and see what IC does with its pubescent legions. My advice to the aid industry? First, get over it. Then, get on the boat.

Read the rest here.

DuBois isn't speaking for MSF, but I spoke to another MSFer via Twitter today: Avril Benoît, the group's Director of Communications, who pointed me to DuBois' blog post. I asked her if MSF had released an official statement in reaction to the Kony campaign: No. But, she said, "MSF teams in LRA-affected regions of DR Congo, Central African Republic & South Sudan are likely wary of retaliation risks."

Does the viral campaign, and reactions to it on the continent, up the risk for aid workers, I asked?

"It's more that, historically, military offensives v. LRA (as the campaign calls for) triggered retaliatory atrocities against villages," she replied.

Too bad those ugly, complicated realities don't easily fit into Invisible Children's 140-characters-or-less narrative.

The Invisible Children viral video may be the "most-viral" in history, but it's one of the most expensive, too. The group raised $13.8 million in 2011, according to the non-profit's financial statements [PDF]. In an interview with CNN, co-founder Jason Russell says they spent one-third of raised funds on the film, another third on "film-related advocacy" and the rest on a "a mission to end the war, and rehabilitate war-affected children."

They've released no specific price tag on the film, but: do the math. This is a group that is, ultimately, calling for military intervention.

(Photo: The Kony 2012/Invisible Children guys posing with SPLA soldiers on the Sudan-Congo border in April 2008. Photograph by Glenna Gordon.)

African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:55:50 +0000

(Updated with additions, March 10, 2012. Here's a Twitter list, so you can follow all of the African writers mentioned in this post who are on Twitter.)

The internets are all a-flutter with reactions to Kony 2012, a high-velocity viral fundraising campaign created by the "rebel soul dream evangelists" at Invisible Children to "raise awareness" about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and child soldiers. As noted in my previous post here on Boing Boing, the project has many critics. There is a drinking game, there are epic lolpictorials, and a chorus of idiots on Facebook.

There are indications the project may be about stealth-evangelizing Christianity. The Invisible Children filmmakers have responded to some of the criticism. Media personalities and celebrities are duking it out as the campaign (and now, backlash) spreads.

But in that flood of attention, one set of voices has gone largely ignored: Africans themselves. Writers, journalists, activists; people of African descent who live and work and think about life on the continent. In this post, we'll round up some of their replies to #Kony2012.

• Above, a video by Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan multimedia journalist who works on "media, women, peace and conflict issues." She writes, "This is me talking about the danger of portraying people with one single story and using old footage to cause hysteria when it could have been possible to get to DRC and other affected countries get a fresh perspective and also include other actors."

• Ethiopian writer and activist Solome Lemma writes that she is disturbed by the "dis-empowering and reductive narrative" evidenced in Invisible Children's promotional videos: "[It] paints the people as victims, lacking agency, voice, will, or power. It calls upon an external cadre of American students to liberate them by removing the bad guy who is causing their suffering. Well, this is a misrepresentation of the reality on the ground. Fortunately, there are plenty of examples of child and youth advocates who have been fighting to address the very issues at the heart of IC’s work." Update: Here's another from Lemma on "Seven steps for critical reflection." She urges those concerned about human rights in Africa to "think before you give."

• Musa Okwonga, a " football writer, poet and musician of Ugandan descent," writes in an Independent op-ed: “I understand the anger and resentment at Invisible Children’s approach, which with its paternalism has unpleasant echoes of colonialism. I will admit to being perturbed by its apparent top-down prescriptiveness, when so much diligent work is already being done at Northern Uganda’s grassroots... Watching the video, though, I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken."

• Award-winning Nigerian-American novelist and photographer Teju Cole published an inspired set of tweets today on sentimentality toward Africa by Americans. Ethan Zuckerman gathered them here, and Alexis Madrigal did the same here. "From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex," Cole writes. "The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening." He is brilliant and you should be following him on Twitter, anyway.

• Angelo Opi-aiya Izama, a journalist and researcher based in Kampala, Uganda, writes: "The simplicity of the 'good versus evil,' where good is inevitably white/western and bad is black or African, is also reminiscent of some of the worst excesses of the colonial era interventions. These campaigns don’t just lack scholarship or nuance. They are not bothered to seek it."

• Benin-born "Author and Africa Enthusiast" Mafoya Dossoumon focuses less on the shortcomings of "Invisible Children," and more on the power elite within Africa. "I urge you my African brothers and sisters, and friends of Africa to direct more energy towards holding our leaders accountable. Our leaders have failed us! "

• TMS Ruge, the Ugandan-born co-founder of Project Diaspora is pissed. He says he wants to "bang my head against my desk" to "make the dumb-assery stop." writes, "It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes. We, Africans, are sandwiched between our historically factual imperfections and well-intentioned, road-to-hell-building-do-gooders. It is a suffocating state of existence. To be properly heard, we must ride the coattails of self-righteous idiocy train. Even then, we have to fight for our voices to be respected." Update: Ruge has a commentary in the New York Times: "‘Kony 2012’ Is Not a Revolution."

• Semhar Araia, founder of the Diaspora African Women's Network (DAWN), is based in Minneapolis and is of Eritrean descent. DAWN "develops and supports talented women and girls of the African diaspora," and is focused on African affairs. In an opinion piece at the Christian Science Monitor titled "Learn to Respect Africans," Araia writes of Invisible Children: "They must be willing to use their media to amplify African voices, not simply their own. This isn’t about them."

• At National Geographic, a guest essay by Anywar Ricky Richard, a former child soldier of the Lord’s Resistance Army, and director of the northern Ugandan organization Friends of Orphans. Richard writes of perceptions of Invisible Children in northern Uganda, where the group has had a presence for some years, "They are not known as a peace building organization and I do not think they have experience with peace building and conflict resolution methods. I totally disagree with their approach of military action as a means to end this conflict."

• Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist who is writing a book on the connection between disruptive technology and African development, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times: "The mundane march of progress in poor countries is what 'awareness' campaigns often miss. And when, as in this case, success is determined by action from outside the region, cries of a new imperialism should be taken seriously. Few international NGOs working in Africa define success properly — as putting themselves out of business. Invisible Children seems no better."

• London-based Ida Horner "grew up in Idi Amin’s Uganda," and says the first 20 years of her life were "marked by civil wars." She now consults to companies that want to ethically source products from East Africa, and writes and speaks about sustainable development and issues affecting African women in poverty. Among her concerns: how will Kony 2012 fever affect tourism income, and investment, which she sees as a better solution than aid? "Uganda was voted by Lonely Planet amongst the top destinations for 2012 but has this NGO just undone the potential for Uganda’s tourism? After all the tourism industry provides a real opportunity for Ugandans to work their way out of poverty through providing services that tourists want to consume."

• Kampala-based "Poet, Artist, and Computer Engineer" Frank Odongka published a poem about Invisible Children, titled " Mocking a Mocking Bird." In an intro, he writes about how he felt immediately after seeing the video: "I was only filled with emptiness. I felt our past was being used by some external figure to attract attention to their cause; which cause is obviously not a better life for my relatives. In 2000, travelling to Kampala from the West Nile was suicide and Invisible Children didn't realize we were invisible and holed up there. Today, more than ever, we are visible but someone suddenly feels the need to exploit our past and paint it as our present! I wrote this poem, short as it is, to reflect how I feel about it."

• "Let’s call Joseph Kony what he is: a narcissist, a pedophile and a terrorist," writes Ghanaian-American blogger Malaka Gyekye Grant in a post titled Joseph Kony Is Still At Large and It’s all My Fault. "Why are we not speaking out until our voices are impossible to ignore? Here’s a better question: Why did an AFRICAN not start the Kony2012 campaign?"

• Ethiopian-American writer Dinaw Mengestu, at the conflict journal Warscapes: "If there is one thing Invisible Children is right about, it’s that ignorance is blinding. Change has never come with a click, or a tweet; lives are not saved by bracelets. We all want solutions, but why should we think or expect an easy one exists for a twenty-year-old conflict in Uganda when we have none for the wars we’re engaged in now. "

• Former LRA abductee turned peacekeeper Victor Ochen is a social entrepreneur and peace builder in Uganda who founded The African Youth Initiative Network. They work to physically and psychologically rehabilitate youth affected by war. He writes at AYINET's blog: "I agree that Kony must be stopped as soon as possible. However, it must be done in a way that avoids further civilian casualties and the loss of the lives of innocent children. Raising potentially false expectation such as arresting Kony in 2012 will not rebuild the lives of the people in northern Uganda. Rebuilding communities and rehabilitating victims is what we need. The stronger survivors become, the less Kony remains an issue. Restoration of communities devastated by Kony is a greater priority than catching or even killing him."

• The Guardian has published an interview with Jacob Acaye, the Ugandan former child abductee featured in the "Kony 2012" video. Acaye is now a 21-year-old law student in Kampala. He says the filmmakers wandered into a village where he and other children sought refuge; the Invisible Children representatives were looking for a child who spoke English, to feature in their film. "They could not understand what was happening. They wanted a kid who was sleeping there and who spoke English," Acaye said. "I could understand English and I could say what was happening, so that is how I was in their film."

Bonus Round:

• Ethan Zuckerman is not African, but the Global Voices co-founder has done much work over the years to create platforms and networks that amplify voices from the continent, and promote thoughtful, informed dialogue on complicated issues like this one. Ethan has a great roundup of links from various African voices. And Global Voices contributor Rebekah Heacock has an extensive post here, which gathers opinions from the African blog-o-/twitter-o-sphere.

Link to full, multi-panel LOLpic.

(Thanks for the links: Afripop, Kalaya'an Mendoza, Texas In Africa, ToriaURU, dgtlubun2 somebadideas, nothingsmonstrd, Oxblood Ruffin, Rosebell K., TMS Ruge, Emeka Okafor.)

Kony 2012: a viral mess

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 04:25:35 +0000

(Photo: The Kony 2012/Invisible Children guys posing with SPLA soldiers on the Sudan-Congo border in April 2008. Photograph by Glenna Gordon.)

UPDATE: African voices respond.

Mark Kersten at Justice in Conflict writes about the Kony 2012/Invisible Children video everyone's going crazy over today:

It is hard to respect any documentary on northern Uganda where a five year-old white boy features more prominently than any northern Ugandan victim or survivor.

Harder still when the documentary Godwins itself just minutes in with a Hitler namecheck. There's another good post at Foreign Policy which attempts to parse why this dubious fundraising/attention-getting campaign has spread so wide so quickly, and the many things it seems to get wrong:

[L]et's get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn't been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

From Grant Oyston:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces.
(...) Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something.

The photograph by Glenna Gordon (above) of the men behind "Kony 2012" has become an interesting part of the story.

There's even an official Kony 2012 drinking game.

To play, you will need: eight (8) pickleback shots; one (1) Brandy Alexander; one (1) bowl Feuerzangenbowle; one (1) six-pack of Tusker Lager; one (1) jar green Play-Doh; one (1) bottle of Zima; one dozen (12) chocolate chip cookies; one (1) My Little PonyTM cocktail made of equal parts Malibu rum and Sunkist orange soda (generally used for statutorily raping 14 year olds); three (3) bottles of wine, one (1) brick wall.

And via a Boing Boing reader, here's a disturbing offshoot: random idiots on Facebook, jazzed up by the Kony2012 campaign, declaring their excitement for the campaign: "Let's go kill this [n-word]."

Invisible Children responds to the criticism here.