While digital money apps are now a lifeline for war-affected Sudanese, rural areas are still on leeside
Bankak, developed by the Bank of Khartoum in 2014, is one of Sudan’s largest fintech services. It allows bill payments and money transfers at a daily limit of three million Sudanese pounds ($5,000) per customer.
Lifestyle: US beef industry woos 2.4 million teachers in drive to paint eating meat as socially and environmentally cool
The beef industry “knows it has a trust issue,” says Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami. The industry is attempting to influence public opinion by starting with children, says Jan Dutkiewicz at the Pratt Institute’s Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies.
Non-monogamy? Relationships texture from monogamy, polygamy, polyandry to polyamory
The dating climate is not what it was yesterday and who knows exactly what tomorrow will bring. Today, though, couples are exploring new dimensions with more of a liberated mindset, using social media to freely talk about what does and doesn’t work for them, and there is no shortage of apps that cater to their desires.
Why Kenyan President Ruto’s copy-and-paste Singaporean low-cost housing model faces resistance from taxpayers, courts
The history of affordable housing in Singapore is – too – replete with instances of colonial government involvement. However, the policies were modified to align with the programme with rapid economic growth that resulted in a rapidly rising housing demand powered by booming economy and sharp rise in labour-force from foreign countries.
Rethinking African education policy: Education is meaningless unless you understand the vast expanse of life, its sorrows and joys
We know “an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he or she knows absolutely everything about nothing” about the world about him or her.
Loud on climate change, Kenyan president contradicts himself by sanctioning paved road construction through forest
The Kenyan government wants to build a 32-mile tarmac road through what has been suggested as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to connect two counties, and the country’s environmental agency, the National Environment Management Authority, issued an environmental impact assessment licence for the project last month. The project would cut through 15 miles of closed canopy forest and likely increase vehicle traffic into animal paths.
World music revolution: How and why Africa had fastest-growing recorded music revenues in 2022
There is also Afrobeat – different from Afrobeats – a blend of jazz, funk and traditional West African rhythms popularised by Nigerian musical icon and political agitator Fela Kuti in the 1970s. Then there’s Afropop, a rich variety of contemporary styles. The traditional soukous dance music out of Congo and other parts of Central Africa. The rhythmical and heavily vocal shaabi and chaabi heard on the streets of North Africa. Kenya’s benga and Tanzania’s bongo flava reverberate across dance floors in East Africa, just as fuji and highlife do in West Africa.
Reculturalisation: Long demonised as satanic, African-inspired religions are gaining traction in Latin America
Followers of African-based religions are on the rise in South America new data shows, a reflection of how the region’s African heritage is gaining a greater voice beyond Brazil where such traditions are widely recognised.
US presidential election fever in overdrive as ‘Blank Space’ singer Taylor Swift conspiracy theorists get psyops all wrong
If there is a psyop going on, it’s being run by those crying wolf. Black propaganda can be effective, but it is notoriously hard to do right, Linebarger writes, as it “needs to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country.”
Changed character of how countries go to war: In Russia’s conflict in Ukraine robots are fighting robots
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, small aerial drones have played an outsize role in the war in Ukraine – with thousands of drones being used to monitor the battlefield, watch enemy movements, and carry explosives.
