Africa & Coffee Articles IV

Posted by Go Vols on Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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The latest installment of things relevant to our lives in Africa (sort of):
  • WSJ: African Brand Is Sweet on Obama (10/7/10) - Obama is all over Africa ("First Kenyan to be President of the United States").  The possibility of products with Obama are endless here.  Lucy has a lovely apron with Obama's face on it and had to stop me from buying these fashionable britches.
  • WSJ: Troops Pledged to Somalia (10/7/10) - Uganda will provide the physical bodies if someone else pays.  Museveni has been President of Uganda for 24 years and was able to remove any mention of term limits from the constitution in 2006.
  • WSJ: Catching Africa's Investment Bug Is Proving Contagious (10/6/10) - Yes, limited competition results in healthy margins, but can volatile exchange rates, corruption, political instability, and an unskilled labor force be overcome?  Cellular providers and breweries print money in Africa, but can other industries?
  • WSJ: When Togo Played Bahrain, the Whole Match Was a Fake (10/4/10) - Bahrain paid to fly the Togo national team to Bahrain for an exhibition match.  A team came but it wasn't the national team.  This story probably sounds ridiculous to Americans but doesn't seem odd to me after living in Africa. The pictures below were taking soccer games in Kigali.  The national stadium was a ten-minute walk from our house.


  • NYTimes: Frenzy of Rape in Congo Revails U.N. Weakness (10/3/10) - The stories that continue to come out of Congo are hard to imagine and quite disturbing.  This article reinforces what seems to status quo when it comes to the U.N. providing peacekeepers.  The video below shows the landscape of the area which is very similar to Rwanda.



  • NYTimes: Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold (9/29/10) - Sudan has had been in a state of war and all over the press for the last few years.  How things play out with the upcoming referendum on secession could be a very ugly affair.
  • WSJ: Wal-Mart Bids $4.6 Billion for South Africa's Massmart (9/28/10) - Thank goodness!  We have been to Game in Dar (the movie theater is in the same mall) and Kampala to look for hard to find western (typically Chinese-made) items.
  • WSJ: Wal-Mart Faces Union Opposition in South Africa (9/28/10) - Strikes in South Africa are as frequent as the French ( those who say "35-hour workweeks are too much"), but can totally shut down the country.  Wal-Mart doesn't like unions.
  • NYTimes: A Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origins (9/27/10) - The most dangerous form of malaria originated in gorillas, not chimps, according to ape dung studies.  Interesting how scientists now interact with apes, considering our encounters with the mountain gorillas were not really under any supervision.
  • NYTimes: Birth Control Over Baldness (9/25/10) - High birth rates in the developing world make combating poverty even more challenging.  Can advances in birth control make contraceptives more affordable and available in the developing world?
  • NYTimes: Boast, Build and Sell (9/22/10) - Kristof obviously spends a lot of his time writing about development issues and is usually pretty on target.
  • WSJ: Report Alleging Massacres Shakes Rwanda's Participation at U.N. (9/18/10) - Kagame wasn't getting a ton of good press before the election he won with 93% of the vote (somehow the opposition kept ending up in jail).  Now there is quite a bit of press about potential raids in Congo being supported/funded by the Rwandan government.  He can't put the U.N. and jail so now he may not want to play in the sandbox anymore.
  • NYTimes: I.B.M.: Africa Is the Next Growth Frontier (9/17/10) - As a general rule of thumb, cell phone accessorizing and alcohol are near the top of the list when it comes to figuring out where disposable income goes in Africa (perhaps not so different in the U.S.?).  Wireless phone providers like MTN (you may remember it from the World Cup), Zain, and Tigo are some of the most prominent and fastest growing companies on the continent.
  • NYTimes: Precursor to H.I.V. Was in Monkeys for Millenniums (9/16/10) - Monkeys that have developed in isolation for 10,000 years on an island off Cameroon are infected with S.I.V., demonstrating that humans have been exposed to a precursor of H.I.V. for thousands of years (not hundreds as had been believed). 
  • NYTimes: A Boy and a Bicycle(s) (9/15/10) - I posted the original article related to this story on the first installment of related articles (Interesting Articles on Africa and Other Topics Relevant to Me!) and am pleased to see something materialized.  So many projects in Africa have no hope of being sustainable and to me this is a major challenge to effectively evaluating the success or failure of a project.  This bike project sounds great and it certainly sounds like it is trying to cover its bases to keep things going after the funding dries up.
  • WSJ: Somali Militants Try Piracy to Fund Attacks (9/10/10) - Piracy is a real growth industry in the region.
  • NYTimes: Lost in Tangier (9/9/10) - Never been to Tangies but this new column "Getting Lost" is probably going to describe pretty much everything we do.  When there are no street names, no maps, no reservations, and no answers, we bound up lost everywhere we go.  It adds to the adventure.  And we may be going to Morocco for Christmas.
  • WSJ: Declaring Eid Is an Inexact Science (9/9/10) - The Muslim festival Eid-ul-Fitr marks the end of the Islamic lunar month of Ramadan and as I understand is perhaps the holiest day of the year.  Because we now live in a predominantly Muslim country, there was a lot of anticipation for this day (it is the end of a month of daytime fasting as well).  Because the day itself is set by the sighting of the new moon, it is a bit touch and go if you wanted to plan a long weekend around it.  This year it was thought to be on Thursday (9/9/10) night but it depends where you are in the world (We ended up having Friday (9/10/10) off).  Either way check out the picture Lucy took of the new moon and Venus (I think...anyone else have an idea?), though it doesn't quite do justice to the live version.
  • NYTimes: U.N. Officials Say 500 Were Victims of Congo Rapes (9/7/10) - More news on the extremely volatile area of Congo just over the Rwanda border where I climbed Nyiragongo Volcano.
  • NYTimes: The Peanut Solution (9/2/10) - Lack of general healthcare and malnutrition kill exponentially more people in Africa than the more well known diseases like AIDS and Polio.  This is an interesting article on a potential solution for malnutrition that can withstand the environmental challenges and also make a lot of money for its creators.
  • Dartmouth College - A Dartmouth anthropology professor studies gelada monkeys in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains.  They are pretty incredible animals that fight on these cliff edges for group dominance with the leader often being thrown of the edge (the video doesn't do them justice).  I went to the Simien Mountains around this time last year and hope to go back sometime.
  • Dartmouth College - At graduation this year, Dartmouth honored Agnes Binagwaho, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda, with an Honorary Doctorate of Science.
  • Dartmouth College - In some Dartmouth publicity, I found a story on international students in the freshman class and two of them seemed particularly relevant to us (William  Kamkwamba & Lotta Nygren).  Lucy's mom actually sent us something on William's story last year unrelated to the fact that he is now a Dartmouth student.  Pretty neat story.
  • NYTimes: Tapping Methane at Lake Kivu in Africa (1/26/10) - The methane deposit in Lake Kivu (also see next article) has the potential to be quite deadly and scientists are studying ways to extract the gas from the lake so that it can be used as an energy source.  The concept of a limnic eruption  is something I never would have considered had I not lived in Rwanda and been swimming numerous times in Lake Kivu.
  • NYTimes: Deadly Gas Flows Add to Lake's List of Perils (11/5/09) - I also meant to put this up last year, since we used to vacation on the weekends at Lake Kivu in Rwanda.  There are many dangers along the shores of Lake Kivu, including proximity to utterly lawless Congo and eruptions of Nyiragongo Volcano (the one I climbed), but the one that is often forgotten is unseen: reservoirs of methane and carbon dioxide buried deep beneath the surface of the lake that can essentially erupt toxic gases at anytime, suffocating those nearby (That is Lucy in Lake Kivu in the picture below).


Coffee news:
Totally unrelated and largely because I am cleaning out my inbox (some of you may actually hear back from me!):
  • NYTimes: The Catch (10/8/10) - Expensive seafood at some of the most exclusive restaurants in the U.S. comes from the area around where Lucy's Grandfather lives.
  • NYTimes: More States Allowing Guns in Bars and Restaurants (10/3/10) - Normally I am proud when Tennessee makes the national news, but this whole guns in bars law is really disappointing.  According to Curry Todd (State Representative, R-Collierville), the the guns in bar law he proposed is primarily to allow people to defend themselves while walking to and from restaurants.  He is from Collierville!  Who is he kidding!
  • NYTimes: Elite Colleges, or Colleges for the Elite? (9/29/10) - Should congress actually outlaw alumni preferences in college admissions?  I thought congress was still busy on the baseball steroid tribunal and the legality of the Bowl Championship Series for college football.  Understandable why there is no time to tackle the budget deficit, healthcare, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • WSJ: A College Band's Unlikely Climb (1/18/08) - My dad sent me this article on my high school friends' band MGMT as they were starting to take off.  They have become pretty big since then and their second album came out earlier this year.  See the video below for their performance on the David Letterman Show.

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