africa

Arm Power to Light Entire Continent

- Adam Clare

from the bbc

Windup radios already exist and now the company that makes them has created windup light bulbs so people can create their own light!

As part of its LifeLight Project the Freeplay Foundation has drawn up designs for a charging base unit that would be able to power up several detachable lights that can be used around a home.

The Foundation aims to train women to sell and maintain the lights
“They could use them for study or for safety – to help them if they go somewhere at night,” said Ms Pearson.

Working prototypes are now being made that will be tested with families in Kenya to refine the design.

Generic HIV Drugs to Start Production

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

After much bureaucratic silliness, a generic pharmaceutical company can now begin production of a drug that helps people suffering from HIV/AIDs. Rwanda had to notify of their intention of importing the drug then get approval for the drug to even be manufactured (that’s the simple version). The point is that soon in Rwanda people will be better treated.

Rwanda plans to import 260,000 packs of TriAvir from Canada. The drug is a fixed-dose combination of widely used anti-AIDS drugs lamivudine, zidovudine and nevirapine. The generic product is manufactured in Canada by Apotex Inc.

From the It’s-About-Time-Department

- Adam Clare

Good things happen every day a zillion times a day, sometimes people get to experience those good things before others. Today I found out about two such things:

1. Women’s rights in Sierra Leone have improved thanks to new laws that protect women. Other countries already have such laws in place and it’s great to see yet another country support equality.

2. Taiwan is going to replace their streetlights with LEDs in a US $7 million initiative to cut power consumption of the lights by 85%. LED streetlights are nothing new, but I have no idea if this is the first time that there has been a LED replacement program that is this big.

Politicians and Scientists Ought to Talk

- Adam Clare

SciDev.net has an article about how scientists and politicians can help developing nations develop in Africa by highlighting science. By creating policies that support research and development countries will benefit from increased keeping educated labour within their borders and perhaps attracting companies to setup shop in their country.

Bernard Aduda, professor of physics at the University of Nairobi said the move would take S&T to the heart of policy making and raise socioeconomic development to levels comparative with countries in Asia.

“We need the linkage to enable MPs and scientists to work together so that we can mainstream science, technology and innovation issues in the countries’ policy making processes for the socioeconomic benefits of the citizens,” he told SciDev.Net.

Planting Trees to Fight Climate Change

- Adam Clare

logoTree-Nation will plant 8 million trees in Africa in the shape of a huge heart to fight Climate Change and Poverty. We will create the park in Niger which is one of the poorest countries in the world, and one that suffers the most from climate change and desertification. Furthermore, we are affiliated with the United Nations Environment Program in support of each others projects.

We have built a great new kind of website that combines a community with our own mapping tool. Inspired by Google maps we built our own special version to be able to plant 8 million trees, all with blogs and profiles.

So via our website you can buy trees for yourself or offer and send one to someone you love, and people are doing this for Weddings, Valentines, new born babies, birthdays, to advertise a business, or simply to share some thoughts. You can plant a tree on a virtual map and a real tree will be planted in the same place in the real world. The virtual trees all have Tree-Blogs and Profiles so that you can keep in touch with the recipient and interact with others who have bought trees via our community. You can share ideas, photos, messages, make contacts and debate on environmental issues.

It really is exciting to see members buying trees, writing beautiful messages and then sending them to loved ones via our website.

Note: This was not written by me, but by Jeremiah from Tree Nation.

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