New study shows highly creative people like visual artists and architects have ‘unique brain connectivity’
The latest research into creativity compares the brain function of exceptionally creative visual artists and scientists with a highly educated group. Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan participants’ brains while they performed tasks that tested creative thinking. The researchers found that the brains of exceptionally creative people...
Moving target: Rather than Nigerian police investigate crimes digitally, they profile young men for torture and extortion
In Nigeria, the meaning of “tech” is rapidly changing. In the last year, data centres have been spreading all across Africa. In response, Lagos-founded MainOne – the largest ISP and data centre operator in West Africa – was acquired by Equinix for $320 million in 2021, with the hopes of...
Cybercrime: Why international institutions are shunning internet traffic from Nigeria as scepticism on financial instruments grows
In November 2021, Oluwaseun Medayedupin was arrested by the Nigerian police in Lagos. An investigation found that he had been pursuing “disgruntled employees” from American companies and pushing them to release ransomware on internal enterprise servers, offering a percentage of the cut if they agreed to collaborate in the attack....
Island nation of Guyana on course to becoming one of leading oil producers in the world by 2025
A United States Geological Survey estimated in the year 2000 that the Guyana-Suriname basin’s reserves stand at 13.6 billion barrels of oil and 32 trillion cubic feet of gas, but subsequent discoveries and surveys have taken updated estimates way beyond those numbers. On this basis, the basin represents one of...
First malaria vaccine is a leap forward, but it is suicidal for the world to stop pumping money into more research
When the World Health Organization endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine in October 2021, it was a pivotal moment in a very long quest. I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I tweeted, emailed, texted and called colleagues, friends and family members. Some of us cried. This vaccine, which will be...
Irony of Colombia ‘socialising’ the idea that women victims of armed violence are responsible for their deaths
Many of the women under threat in the Colombian town of Tibú have nowhere to turn, aside from a small handful of human rights defenders. Authorities have lost grip of the rising insecurity that targets women to armed groups in the cocoa-growing region that borders Venezuela. “The women of Catatumbo...
How collapse in Colombian government authority has triggered femicides linked to armed groups
In Tibú, a small town along the border with Venezuela, a rising wave of violence in Colombia’s primary coca-producing region is targeting women, leading to an unprecedented spike in killings and forcing others to flee. Those who flee are often left in precarious economic situations far from their homes, too...
Inside Ukraine-Russia cyber warfare: Information hacking and leaking is ‘weaponised’ to unhinge the enemy
Names, birthdays, passport numbers, job titles – the personal information goes on for pages and looks like any typical data breach. But this data set is very different. It allegedly contains the personal information of 1,600 Russian troops who served in Bucha, a Ukrainian city devastated during Russia’s war and...
Returning ex-child soldiers track Uganda’s LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony’s exile to Darfur Province in Sudan
Former child soldiers who have escaped the clutches of insurgents in northern Uganda are providing new information about the whereabouts of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) founder and leader Joseph Kony. The LRA leader is said to be in the sprawling Darfur province, western Sudan. Darfur is also in the...
‘At the moment we need to recognise that climate crisis in Eastern Africa is actually the new normal’
The current stretch of failed rains in the Horn of Africa has hit a region that had barely begun to recover from the 2016-2017 drought. With no pause to enable pasture and water points to regenerate, estimated 20 million people’s ability to cope has been stripped away. In southern Ethiopia,...
