Posts Tagged ‘kenya’
On being an “African writer”
Nikita Bernardi has a piece in Think Africa Press about the Caine Prize for African writing. For Caine, “‘An African writer’ is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or whose parents are African”. For Caine finalists, not so much. At a recent event [...]
In northern Kenya’s desert, herders get a hand — from a NASA satellite
This story starts where Kenya’s roads end — literally. The smooth tarmac that winds through Kenya’s wheat and flower fields turns to dust in Isiolo. When my taxi driver dropped me off here, where I was to catch a 10-hour overnight bus to Marsabit, he said, “Tell those people there that Kenyans say hello.” I’ve [...]
Outing corruption in Kenya, and African authors you want to meet
Last year, I wrote about a new book on a Kenyan whistleblower, written by a British journalist. A reader pointed me to Kenyan writer Billy Kahora, who’d also just published a book, locally, about a Kenyan whistleblower — in fact, the man who, as Kahora tells it, exposed Kenya’s biggest-ever corruption scandal. It’s also one [...]
Farm aid from space
This is the title of my newest Christian Science Monitor article, which is actually about weather-indexed insurance programs in sub-Saharan Africa. All kinds of cool science-and-tech stuff has come together in the last five years to allow big insurance companies to offer super-small insurance policies — low-premiums, comparatively low-payout, to the usually poor, always vulnerable [...]
And in Kenya, an alternative to the Gospel of Greed
African journalist extraordinaire Michaela Wrong just released her new book, “It’s Our Turn to Eat,” about anti-corruption crusader John Githongo. He spent his life documenting sleaziness under several Kenyan leaders, then fled the country in fear of his life. He landed at Wrong’s apartment, and she turned his work into a book. It’s a hot [...]
On hearing what you want to hear
I have been keeping track, for no explicable reason, of the number of places outside of the States where I hear a song that my fellow West Virginians and I can only consider an anthem, possibly one more emotionally significant than anything Francis Scott Key ever hummed. Never mind that John Denver only traveled through [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [