Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

Reality Check: Emerging African Middle Class

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Africa, over the past 15 years, has seen robust economic growth and made strides in governance and stability.  While it is difficult to generalize about the state of an entire continent, it is doubtless that fewer Africans live in abject poverty and an African middle class is growing into consumers for international goods and services.

While many Western banks and investors are eager to profit from this new and developing market, it is important that they remain aware of the realities of the African market for consumer goods.

Africa has begun to emerge from decades of violence and corruption, which only help to keep people impoverished.  In the past twenty years, the number of major conflicts in Africa has been reduced from twelve to just four.  Increased peace and stability not only increase people’s ability to provide for their families, but also increases consumer confidence.

Additionally, the number of democracies in sub-Saharan Africa has grown from three in 1989 to 23 in 2008.  Better governance and transparency has made it easier for people to start businesses and for outside investors to participate in African economies.

The middle class in Africa is defined as those living on USD $2-$20 a day, though those making between two and four US dollars are considered to be a ‘floating class’.  This group is highly susceptible to being pulled back into poverty in the event of a food crisis or if the major breadwinner in the family should lose their ability to work.  They are, however, part of the recent spending boom in Africa.

Consumer spending is expected to rise from USD $860 billion in 2008 to a projected USD $1.4 trillion in 2020.  In the past decade, six out of the ten fastest growing economies in the world were in Africa, with Ghana leading the charge with a growth rate of 13% annually.  All this has been highly encouraging to Western investors, eager to cash in on the growth of a new market while debt and banking issues slow economic growth at home.

Much of the information about the growth of the African middle class has not been entirely accurate, however.  These hopeful facts and statistics do point to positive trends, but the African middle class is not homogeneous, nor does it have all the characteristics of middle classes in the West or in Asia.

It is important to bear in mind that Africa is home to an incredible diversity of people and cultures, and the middle class in South Africa will likely have different habits than middle class folks in Rwanda or Mali or Ghana.  Additionally, certain accomplishments, such as a college degree, are considered requisites for the middle classes in the West or in Asia, but in Africa this is less true.

Middle class Africans are often involved in entrepreneurship, or in importing goods for sale in their local communities.  Many investors make assumptions about middle class Africans based upon the spending habits of middle class populations elsewhere, but the economic outcome of the growth of the African middle class is likely to look very different.

– Abigail Hanson
Sources: UHY, World Bank, Harvard Business Review

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Ethnic Tension Stirs Violence in China’s Far West

Ethnic Tension Stirs Violence in China’s Far West
Xinjiang, China’s far-western region recently witnessed its first new case of violence since the riots that sprung up in June 2013. In the town of Selibuya, a mob bearing axes attacked a police station on Saturday, November 16. In total, 11 people were killed, nine of whom were a part of the mob, and two who were assisting the police.

Xinjiang is home to great ethnic tension, which has led to unpredictable bursts of violence throughout the year. Ethnic conflict exists between Muslim Uighur and Han Chinese communities. The ethnic conflict has created a great sense of instability and posed a major security threat to Chinese leaders.

Many Chinese are blaming the region’s unrest on the Uighur community–ethnic Uighur separatists who make up the minority in an otherwise Han Chinese region. Uighurs are widely known to practice Islam in China, something that is highly monitored by the authorities.

Some of the Uighurs who have carried out violent attacks in Xinjiang are believed to be tied to terrorist operations overseas. When interviewed, Uighurs deny such claims and instead argue against the growing disparities in class between their community and the dominant Han Chinese community.

The Uighur minority argue that the Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese receive many more jobs than them because they must face Mandarin language barriers, which often disqualifies them in the running for jobs. Uighur communities continue to grow upset, as economic development has led huge numbers of Han Chinese to areas traditionally occupied by Uighurs. The socioeconomic discrimination that the Uighur community feels, coupled with increasing ethnic tension between themselves and Han Chinese have created many violent uprisings over the years.

The first outbreak of violence this year occurred in June in Xinjiang’s city of Turpan when a mob wielding knives stormed police stations and a government building. The riot resulted in the death of 27 people, after rioters who stabbed civilians and lit police cars on fire were shot down by the police force. Although the origin of this riot was never confirmed, it is believed to have stemmed from the oppression and aggravation of the Uighur community by the Chinese government.

As an Islamic minority, Uighurs face pressure from many sides to conform to the dominant culture and give up certain practices like men growing beards and women wearing the veil. Ethnic division and violent turmoil will continue in Xinjiang as long as the tension between Uighur communities and the Han Chinese exist.

– Chante Owens

Sources: BBC News, The Wall Street Journal

The Worldwide Pop-Up Newsroom

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On November 16, global poverty had a unique light shed on it thanks to journalism students from around the globe. As part of a “pop-up newsroom,” students in the UK, U.S., Taiwan and India hit their local streets armed with their journalism training and social media outlets to report on those who experience poverty directly.

Politicians usually hold the platform for discussing poverty but they are rarely the ones who actually experience it. Instead, the journalism students went through locally-based organizations and interviewed both victims and combatants to gather on-the-ground experiences of poverty and the policies meant to address it. David Baines, who led the UK side of the project, stated one of the goals was, “to make the complexities transparent rather than trying to simplify things,” as is often done by politicians.

The pop-up newsroom idea began at California State University Northridge (located in Northern Los Angeles). As technology changes the way we can access information, Dr. Melissa Wall (a journalism professor at CSUN) wanted to find a way to utilize the immediacy of social media to inspire positive changes. By appealing to a younger population, the pop-up newsroom allows important issues, like global poverty, to reach people of all ages and of all interests.

November 16 marked the first time the experimental pop-up news reporting went international. The universities that participated have a number of international students and the fact that they were reporting from different countries made this a truly global event.

Not only are the students participating in an innovative journalism experience, they are adequately trained to do so. The Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, India is one of the most prestigious in the region and covering inequality is a requirement for all students. At Newcastle University, UK, the students prepared for this project by studying the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s guidelines for good reporting on poverty.

Reported topics ranged from art, health, feminist issues and economic inequality. Using the hashtag #livepoverty, students reported their stories on Twitter while in the field, as it was happening. By encouraging students to post immediately, the project emphasized that global poverty is a constant force that doesn’t go to sleep at night, but rather hangs over its victims 24 hours a day. With participants like the UK and U.S., the pop-up news stories proved that poverty is experienced even in the wealthiest countries in the world.

– Alessandra Luppi
Sources: Pop Up News, Rebel Mouse
Photo: WNYC

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15 Memorable TED Quotes

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TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a global set of conferences owned by the private nonprofit organization Sapling Foundation. Under the slogan “ideas worth spreading,” TED events are held throughout the world, addressing a variety of topics, from science and culture to health, medicine, and global development. Here are some of the most memorable quotes made by TED speakers on the topic of poverty and development.

1.       “You don’t wake up one day no longer a racist. It takes generations to tear that intuition, that DNA, out of a soul of a people.”

–Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim

2.       “I’d grown up thinking that a [sanitary toilet] was my right, when in fact it’s a privilege — 2.5 billion people worldwide have no adequate toilet.”

–Rose George: Let’s talk crap. Seriously.

3.       “Child mortality [since 2000 is] down by 2.65 million a year. That’s a rate of 7,256 children’s lives saved each day. … It drives me nuts that most people don’t seem to know this news.”

–Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there’s good news)

4.       “What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.”

–Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

5.       “The challenge of development: abject poverty surrounded by corruption.”

–Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

6.       “I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.”

–Rory Stewart: Why democracy matters

7.       “You don’t have to get rich to have [fewer] children. It has happened across the world.”

–Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

8.       “We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.”

–Alex Steffen: The route to a sustainable future

9. “Connectivity is productivity — whether it’s in a modern office or an underdeveloped village.”

–Iqbal Quadir: How mobile phones can fight poverty

10. “We’ve seen how distributed networks, big data and information can transform society. I think it’s time for us to apply them to water.”

–Sonaar Luthra: Meet the Water Canary

11. “Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

–Melinda Gates: Let’s put birth control back on the agenda

12. “Human development, not secularization, is what’s key to women’s empowerment in the transforming Middle East.”

–Dalia Mogahed: The attitudes that sparked Arab Spring

13. “The United Street Sellers Republic — the USSR — [would be] the second-largest economy in the world after the United States.”

–Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

14. “We need to deliver [mental] health care using whoever is available and affordable in our local communities.”

–Vikram Patel: Mental health for all by involving all

15. “It was the buildings [in Haiti], not the earthquake, that killed 220,000 people, that injured 330,000, that displaced 1.3 million people, that cut off food and water and supplies for an entire nation.”

–Peter Haas: Haiti’s disaster of engineering

– Nayomi Chibana
Feature Writer 

 

Read global poverty quotes.

Sources: TED, Reddit
Photo: Lingholic

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10 Innovations That Are Changing the Face of Africa

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Although Africa has long been seen as the forgotten continent, it is more important now to the United States and the rest of the world than ever before. Home to 6 of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, the continent is increasingly in the eye of foreign investors from London, New York, Shanghai and Dubai. Here are some of the innovations that are changing the face of Africa in this rapid transformation from an allegedly “lost” continent to a new growth engine.

1. Start-ups and incubators

Innovation hubs like iHub in Nairobi, Co-Creation Hub in Lagos and the Silicon Cape Initiative in South Africa are now competing with the already well-established initiatives in the start-up capitals of San Francisco, London and Berlin. These communities are giving African start-ups access to capital and the advice they need to take new products to the market.

2. Afro-entrepreneurs

Omidyar Network has highlighted the growing number of “afro-entrepreneurs” that are emerging all across the continent with innovations that are uniquely African. One such example is Bridge International Academies, with over 46,000 students enrolled in their schools across Kenya. This is an initiative that commoditizes schools; pupils pay just $5 dollars a month to study at one of their “Academies-in-a-Box.”

3. Local technology producers

Several African technology firms have begun to design and produce mobile and computing hardware tailored to local needs. In the Republic of Congo, for example, there is VMK’s Way-C, an affordable Android tablet, and in Kenya, the Nairobi-based company Ushahidi developed BRCK, a black box designed to address unreliable power and data connections that has been dubbed the “backup generator for the Internet.”

4. Smartphones built for Africa

Major firms are starting to produce smartphones made specifically for African consumers. The Chinese company Huawei, for example, recently introduced its new product, 4Afrika, an affordable smartphone which will let users benefit from the growing data connectivity across the continent.

5. The maker movement

This trend from the developed world, which has seen millions of people creating and selling self-made products, has officially made it to Africa. The movement’s trademark event, the Maker Faire, took place last year in Lagos. The most notable locally produced product that resulted from this event was a generator designed and built by four teenage girls that uses 1 liter of urine to produce 6 hours of electricity.

6. Greater connectivity

Africa is leading the way when it comes to developing innovative solutions for limited connectivity. By taking advantage of unused radio and TV frequencies, providers are able to widen data coverage to include countless rural areas through white space technology. Microsoft has already partnered with Kenyan regulators and Google with South Africa’s ICASA to show that broadband can be offered over white spaces.

7. Mobile money

Africa is frequently seen as leading the world in mobile money solutions. In December 2012, Visa launched mVisa in Rwanda to serve the unbanked, improve ATM services across Rwanda and promote electronic payments which will contribute to formalizing the economy.

8.  mHealth

Health organizations have started to use mobile technology to address critical medical needs. SMS, in particular, is being used for countless needs, such as sharing vital information with expectant mothers or sending reminders to HIV/AIDS patients about taking their anitretrovirals. In Malawi, Baobab Health is developing solutions to replace traditional paper-based systems.

9. eLearning

Initiatives like One Laptop Per Child, Samsung’s e-learning technology platform, and solar-powered schools are innovative ways to ensure that students across the continent have access to up-to-date information and online resources, and are able to interact with teachers even when geographical obstacles stand in the way. Other organizations such as Wikipedia have teamed up with Orange to provide free access to the online encyclopedia to anyone with a mobile phone in Africa.

10. Social media

The use of social media is rising at astronomical rates in Africa. Besides Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Africans are also creating and using local social media platforms, such as MXit, which has over 50 million users who can use the platform to chat and play games at low data costs.

– Nayomi Chibana
Feature Writer 
Sources: Portland, Center for Global Development
Photo: Education Innovations

African Natural Resources Make the World Go Round

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Countless everyday appliances and gadgets would not exist if it were not for the minerals that come from Africa. From cars to cell phones, laptops, airplanes and batteries, much of what makes the world go round depends on resource-rich African nations that are being fueled by a global commodities boom.

Although much can be said of whether the rising demand for these minerals is actually benefiting those at the bottom of the pyramid, it is certain that emergent African economies are growing thanks to these raw materials. If well-managed, Africa’s mineral resources can lift the continent out of poverty and catapult it toward growth and prosperity for all.

Here are some of the everyday objects that are created with African natural resources.

1.       Cars

The catalytic converters in cars that are made to reduce pollution are made with platinum and rhodium. South Africa alone produces 72% of the world’s platinum and 83% of the world’s rhodium.

2.       Electronics

Devices such as cell phones, laptops, and other electronic gadgets are made from tantalum. Africa provides 71% of the world’s tantalum, with Mozambique leading the region as the source of 24% of the global production of the mineral, followed by Rwanda with 20% of the production.

3.       Jewelry

In 2011, more than 57% of the world’s diamonds, nearly 75% of the world’s platinum and 20% of the world’s gold was found in Africa. Botswana is the world’s second largest producer of gem diamonds, and in 2011, the diamond industry accounted for half of the government revenue.

4.       Batteries

The cobalt used in the electrodes of rechargeable batteries is growing rapidly in demand due to the use of portable electronic devices. In 2011, Africa accounted for 58% of the global production of cobalt, while the Democratic Republic of Congo alone represented 48% of this supply. Mineral mining, however, has been implicated in funding conflict in the country.

5.       Airplanes

Many aircraft parts are made with aluminum alloys, which can account for up to 80% of the jet’s weight. Jet engines also use superalloys that contain cobalt and chromium. South Africa represents 47% of the global production of chromite – used to produce chromium -, while Guinea represents 8% of the world’s production of bauxite, used to make aluminum. Guinea has almost half of the world’s bauxite reserves and is predicted to become a world-leading producer of iron ore in the next decade.

6.       Electricity

Besides coal and gas, Africa produces 16% of the world’s uranium, which is the source of the nuclear fuel that provides 14% of the world’s electricity.

7.       Oil

Last year, Africa produced 10% of all the world’s oil – nearly 9.4 million barrels per day. Leading this production is Nigeria, with 37 billion barrels of proven reserves of oil – enough to keep supplying oil at 2011 levels for the next 40 years.

– Nayomi Chibana
Feature Writer
Sources: African Minerals Development Centre, CNN
Photo: CSMonitor

India’s ‘Hackathon for Humanity’

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A three-day conference designed to bring the interests of women in technology to the forefront of the tech world, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing is the only of its kind in India. The Conference is composed of keynote sessions, presentations on technology and professional development, a career fair, the Women Entrepreneur Quest, and Grace Hopper Celebration’s crowning glory – the Hackathon.

This year’s Hackathon, held last week in Bangalore, India, brought in around 120 women to code on open-source platforms for three humanitarian causes. In its fourth year of operation, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing India was themed “Together We Rise,” to symbolize the collaboration of women from various sectors of the technology industry and their power to create a large network of technology-minded women.

The developers at this year’s Hackathon participated in projects in the fields of financial inclusion, mapping and health. Within the subject of financial inclusion, the women coded for Mifos, a free and open-source platform that enables financial service providers to more effectively deliver their services to the world’s poor. Mifos services microfinance institutions in managing funds, loans, installments, savings, deposits and other accounting reports. By coding at the Hackathon, the women helped to develop the platform and more efficiently manage Mifos’ data.

The second project built onto the framework of the Bachchao Project, an organization aimed at creating open technology tools to ensure user safety. The first of a larger set of technologies to keep women safe, the Bachchao app was first prototyped at the 2012 GHC Hackathon to transform mobile phones into personal security systems. This year, the women at the Hackathon helped to develop a custom crowdsourced map that alerts the user of safe and unsafe areas and displays local locations such as police stations, hotels and NGOs.

The final project worked on by GHC’s developers was a clinical reminder system that allows people to receive alerts about medications, medical tests, immunizations and examinations. This was designed to give people, especially women, greater control of and awareness about their own health.

In the shadow of the male-dominated technology industry, women are working against all odds to establish themselves as strong contenders in the growing field of IT.

– Tara Young

Sources: Mashable, Grace Hopper, The Hindu, The Bachchao Project

Teen Suicides Prompt Change in Rape Laws

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A teenage girl in Morocco committed suicide last month after being forced to marry her rapist. Her death occurred amidst debate over a controversial article of Morocco’s Penal code which allows rapists to avoid a jail sentence if they marry their victim.

The article in question, Article 475, received global attention after a similar case in March 2012 in which Amina Filali, 16, drank rat poison after being forced to marry her rapist. At the time, activist Abadila Maaelaynine said on Twitter, “Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law.”

In Moroccan society, a woman who loses her virginity – even by rape – is considered unfit to marry. “There’s a mentality that says that a girl that’s no longer a virgin is worthless,” said Khadija Riyadi, President of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH). She went on to say that families feel like they cannot support an “unmarriagable” daughter and to make her marry her attacker seems like the only solution.

Opponents of Article 475 pressured U.S. president Barack Obama who met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI on Friday to urge the king to repeal the article.

A move to protect women from violence was submitted to the Moroccan parliament earlier this month, a year after the initial idea was proposed. Justice Minister Mustapha Ramid told Al Jazeera, “Until now, it’s still just a law project that’s being considered by parliament but hasn’t been rectified. We have not yet formally edited the article.”

“Delays in legal reform in Morocco are leaving women and girls exposed to abuse,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International. “Unless the gap is closed between the authorities’ rhetoric about improvements to the law and their delivery of these changes, more lives will be at risk.”

– David Smith

Sources: Al Jazeera, The Telegraph, All Africa

Voss Foundation Brings Clean Water to Africa

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At the Voss Foundation’s Women Helping Women luncheon, women enjoyed food, shopping, and good company. Most importantly, they also helped bring clean water to developing nations in Africa. By shopping at a well-curated African bazaar set up in the Dream Downtown hotel, luncheon guests contributed to the cause. The Voss Foundation, a Norwegian water company, works to bring access to clean water to regions in sub-Saharan Africa. At the luncheon, the Voss Foundation spearheaded a bazaar which sold an array of goods such as scarves, jewelry, and woven home goods. The merchandise was created by women whose communities had benefited from Women Helping Women’s work, which includes building wells and latrines and providing sanitation facilities.

According to reports, the event was a success. The event had a big impact on the fashion world as renowned female personalities such as designer Jill Stuart, author Susan Fales-Hill and beauty queen Nana Meriwether, attended the event; their presence alone “underscored an important reality about the water crisis”. In addition, the fact that the attendees were mostly female showed that the water crisis in Africa largely affects females. According to Kara Gerson, the foundation’s director, “women and girls who are responsible for clean water and so they spend hours carrying heavy loads of water on their backs and heads back to their families. There are obviously physical issues with carrying heavy loads of water long distances, there are safety issues when the women are alone and the water that they are carrying might not even be clean”. Model and actress Selita Eban who was honored by Women Helping Women in 2012 for her charity work in Sierra Leone, agrees with this notion.

– Stephanie Olaya

Sources: Voss Foundation, Wall Street Journal
Photo: Action Against Hunger

Tweets Assist Efforts in the Philippines

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p What was learned from humanitarian efforts through the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004? Coordination is critical to effective relief efforts.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) does just that, brings together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to disasters. In this age of technology information, OCHA has been on the lookout for technological supports. Enter the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN).

DHN is supporting OCHA and the Philippines Red Cross’s joint ongoing rapid needs assessments through geo-mapping. Geo-mapping combines crowdsourcing from micro-mapping with machine intelligence, to filter and categorize information, which is then pinpointed on virtual maps in real time.

How does this actually work? Through collecting tweets, images, and messages, real time data can be distributed to aid workers. With this up-to-date information, aid workers are informed on the needs, gaps, and accomplishments in their area of focus, allowing them to make better decisions as they move forward with their relief work.

OCHA activated DHN one day prior to the category five Typhoon Haiyan reaching the Philippines. Through the persistent work of thousands of digital humanitarian volunteers worldwide, including media monitors, translators, GIS specialists, statistical analysts, emotional support teams and standby task forces, thousands of tweets were collected and automatically filtered down to a manageable size. The filtering process is based on relevance and uniqueness of the information.

As there are more than 30 million social media users throughout the Philippines, the data collected was substantial. For instance, 230,000 tweets were collected during first 48 hours of landfall. Processing this large amount of data can take up to weeks. Through the work of thousands of volunteers worldwide were these tweets processed in a matter of hours.

The data collected is uploaded to web maps that are easily accessible to aid workers. One such map is the Open Street Map. The Open Street Map was updated through geo-mapping 300,000 times in the typhoon-affected areas in the Philippines during the first three days.

DHN relies on Internet availability to function. Thus, lack of Internet can affect the amount of data DHN is able to collect, consolidate, and distribute. However, DHN has contributed to the collaboration of aid workers during conflict, disasters, crisis, and displacement in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Samoa, Syria, and now the Philippines. The typhoon in the Philippines is the largest deployment DHN has responded to.

DHN is contributing to relief work by helping to fill the information gap during conflicts and disasters. Through the social media information gathered by DHN, aid workers can work collaboratively, ensuring the most efficient use of resources.

– Caressa Kruth

Sources: IRIN News, DH Network, UNOCHA, Devex, MicroMappers