In order to commemorate Malawi’s Independence day, 6 July, the Malawi Embassy in Japan has organized the Nsima party in liaison with Malawi Society of Japan. This party will take place at JICA Hiroo Centre (Chikyu Hiroba, i.e. Global Plaza) in Tokyo on 4 July, 2009 from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. It will be preceded by a seminar from 2:00pm to 3:00pm. Continue reading this post…

Malawi, the Warm Heart of Africa

The Daily Times is reporting that a new steel rolling factory worth K1 billion, that uses recycled scrap metal to manufacture steel bars, has opened at Makata industrial site in Blantyre, Malawi.The company, called Malawi Iron and Steel Corporation Limited (Miscor), is born out of the premises and left-over equipment of former Agrimal and Encor Products companies, formerly owned by the defunct parastatal Malawi Development Corporation. Continue reading this post…

In her talk at the recent NYU Development Research Institute conference on What Would the Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation in New York City, June Arungo, Director of Corporate Affairs at BSL,  said that the aid industry is responsible for human resource diversion in Africa. She further pointed out that it is very easy to start an NGO in Africa; all you need to do is to know how to write a proposal. I entirely agree with June on this issue. In addition, most NGOs founded in this way do not really have the interest of the poor people at heart. They serve as an easy way for the founders to enrich themselves. They go for quick fix solutions which do not equip the people for long term self sufficiency. One wonders why donors continue to give such NGOs more money.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Lao Tsu

I am fascinated by NGOs which are not founded based on buzzwords of the day, but rather based on passion for the poor. Such NGOs will always strive to equip Africans with lifelong skills that will lead to their financial independence long after the work of the NGOs is over. I encourage donors to pour more money into such NGOs. Africa Bags, which was started by Todd and Holly Petitt in 2007, quintessentially belongs to this category. Instead of giving poor people charity, Africa Bags gives them a chance to help themselves. Continue reading this post…

Lives of thousands and thousands of poor people in the rural areas of Kenya are being transformed because of M-PESA, a service that allows users to transfer money using a mobile phone. M-PESA (M for Mobile and PESA for money in Swahili), operated by Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile operator,  is tailored for mobile customers who do not have a bank account, typically because they do not have access to a bank (in rural areas) or because they do not have sufficient income to justify a bank account (those who are living on less than one dollar). Continue reading this post…

Last summer, Josh Nesbit, a student of international health and bioethics at Stanford University,  and his friends came up with an interesting system that uses mobile technology in the delivery of health care in low resource settings. This system was first implemented at tiny St. Gabriel’s Hospital in Namitete, Malawi, in order to better serve the quarter million people living in the surrounding 100-mile radius. The system relies on SMS, or text messaging, plus a single laptop using a GSM modem and running FrontlineSMS, a free mass messaging program to non-profits. Continue reading this post…

The United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) has organized a new forum for young people to showcase their experiences in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for community development projects. The new eLeaders ICT4D Best Practices Forum, powered by TakingITGlobal, gives all young people involved in ICT4D the opportunity to share their best practices, innovations, success stories and more. Continue reading this post…

The Foundation Heart for Malawi, led by Dr. Steven Paas, has announced the release of the combined Chichewa to English and English to Chichewa dictionary. As pointed out earlier,  the main objective of this project is to bridge the gap of communication between speakers of Chichewa/ Chinyanja (C) and speakers of English (E). Continue reading this post…

For the past three days, just like most Malawians in the diaspora, I have had sleepless nights listening to Zodiak radio which has been covering this year’s parliamentary and presidential elections in Malawi.

President Bingu wa Mutharika, Source: africanelections.org

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SEACOM, the much anticipated undersea fibre-optic cable system that will connect Africa to the World at a blazing 1.28Tbps, is 54 days from completion.The folks at  SEACOM have now created a twitter account through which they share the latest updates on their progress in the lead up to their launch in June.

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Sometime last year, I wrote a post about  the disposal of used cars in developing countries, in which I proposed that automobile companies like Toyota should be following up their scrap cars in developing countries with an aim of either recycling them or properly disposing them. I am of the view that the manufacturers themselves have the best capability to do these kinds of jobs. Today, a friend of mine shared with me an eye-opening Basel Action Network (BAN) documentary which shows how the trade in toxic e-waste leaves the poorer people of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and poison, a choice that nobody should have to make. This documentary also suggests the best ways for dealing with e-waste in the developed world without exporting it to developing countries.

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