Inspirational and good news.
From the BBC:
Ugandan MPs have voted to outlaw female genital mutilation – also known as female circumcision.
Anyone convicted of the practice, which involves cutting off a girl’s clitoris, will face 10 years in jail, or a life sentence if a victim dies.
The BBC’s Joshua Mmali in Uganda says it is not officially condoned but is still practised in several rural areas.
The African country of Malawi is expanding a successful program that gave out free drugs to fight AIDs. The country is founding a new company to make the drugs for their people and to export drugs to their neighbours.
“Some 250,000 Malawians are receiving ARVs. We are doing well because many of these could have died by now,” Mutharika said at an AIDS candlelight memorial on the outskirts of the commercial capital Blantyre.
Describing the drugs roll-out as a “success story”, Mutharika said Malawi would establish a local company to “produce ARVs locally and export extra drugs to neighbouring countries”.
Blue chip companies in Germany are looking at using solar energy to power the European markets, the really neat thing is that all the solar energy stations will be in northern Africa. This will help the EU become more efficient with power generation and help the northern African countries with more revenue.
The energy potential in the deserts south of the Mediterranean is enormous.
According to the European Commission’s Institute for Energy, if just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts was captured, it could provide all of Europe’s energy needs.
The Desertec project aims to build solar power plants in several locations in north Africa. Jeworrek said the “most important criteria” was that the locations were “situated in politically stable lands”. Morocco, as well as Libya and Algeria have been cited as potential sites, where land is also cheap.
The technique called “concentrating solar power” or CSP, uses banks of mirrors to focus the sun’s rays in a central column filled with water. The rays heat the water, vaporising the it into a steam which is then used to drive turbines which generate carbon-free electricity.
Namibia is examining the feasibility of using solar thermal towers.
Thermal towers work by creating an airflow that spins turbines and the bigger they are the more efficient they become. Namibia appears to be a great place for thermal towers due to the amount of sun it gets. The proposed thermal towers in Namibia will also act as greenhouses for growing food.
A new breed of solar tower may soon be sprouting up in Namibia, providing the nation with a carbon-free source of electricity and food during the day and night. At one and a half kilometers tall and 280 meters wide, these massive solar updraft towers could potentially produce 400MW of energy each – enough to power Windhoek, the nation’s capital. Proposed by intellectual property company Hahn & Hahn, the towers generate energy by forcing heated air through a shaft lined with wind turbines. Additionally, the base of each tower will function as a 37 square km greenhouse where crops can be grown.
Mombassa is going to be home to Kenya’s first eco-city. The spread of the eco-cities is fantastic news because urban living is fun and is becoming more environmentally awesome!
Construction of Kenya’s first eco-city — a residential settlement that is environmentally, socially, economically and culturally self-sustaining — has commenced on the outskirts of Mombasa, with the first phase expected to be ready for occupation by the third quarter of this year.
The whole project will take four to five years to complete.
Going by the name Hacienda, the development, located in the Mwakirunge area of the North Coast, off the Mombas-Malindi highway, will have 6,250 housing units — of two- and three-bedroom flats, and three- and four bedroom bungalows — to be developed in 10 phases.
The plan also includes a hospital, school, playgrounds and recreation facilities, a police station, commercial centres and office blocks, among other vital amenities.
According to Urban Ecology Australia, a non-profit organisation promoting people- and nature-friendly urban settlements, an eco-city is a human settlement that enables its residents to live a quality life while using minimal natural resource