DONALD TRUMP’S AFRICA!

The New Yorker

By The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provides support to clinics like the one above, in South Africa. President Trump’s team has questioned whether such programs should continue.

The Trump Administration’s budget proposal for next year includes drastic cuts to a myriad of social services and programs, to environmental protection, education, public housing, and the arts and science. But there is something else buried under all of those line items: a call to completely eliminate the African Development Foundation, a government agency that gives grants worth thousands of dollars, in the form of seed capital and technical support, to community enterprises and small businesses on the African continent.

The A.D.F. functions as a kind of alternative to the aid money that the United States regularly provides to several governments in Africa; it was designed to encourage self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship, and it focusses on ventures by farmers, women, and young people, particularly those in post-conflict communities. Last year, it invested just more than fifty million dollars in five hundred active businesses, including agriculture co-operatives and solar-energy enterprises, which in turn reportedly generated new economic activity worth eighty million dollars. (The agency’s Twitter account has been valiantly tweetingout the results of its work in recent days.) The A.D.F.’s reach has been meaningful, though modest. But its proposed termination reflects a deeper apathy, and even belligerence, about Africa from President Trump’s Administration, whose members have publicly wondered what the United States is doing on the continent, and why it is interested in parts of it at all.

So far, the Trump Administration’s prevailing mood toward much of the world, including Africa, has been one of xenophobia and carelessness. Three of the six Muslim-majority countries named in Trump’s executive order barring people from the United States—Somalia, Sudan, and Libya—are in Africa. (The order is on hold pending court challenges.) The Administration is also expected to soon change the parameters of U.S. military operations in Somalia, by removing constraints on special-operations airstrikes and other actions directed at the terrorist group al-Shabaab—rules that were put in place to limit civilian deaths. The University of Southern California hosts an annual summit on trade in Africa, meant to bring together representatives of business and government interests on the continent and in the United States. This year, there were no Africans present, because the State Department did not grant visas to any of the roughly sixty African delegates who were invited. The head of the African Union has criticized the travel ban, saying, “The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries.” Otherwise, African leaders have mostly refrained from offering public appraisals of the current President. Perhaps they consider it wiser to stay out of the spotlight as Trump goes on tirades against foes like Mexico and China.

But if questions posed earlier this year by the Trump transition team to the State Department regarding Africa are any indication, ignorance may be just as harmful as blustery tweets and threats at post-election rallies, if not more so. As the Times, which got a copy of the questions, summed it up, the incoming President’s team wondered why the United States was “even bothering to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria,” and why it hadn’t yet defeated al-Shabaab. It asked about doing away with assistance for Uganda’s hunt of the vicious, Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army, which is still rampaging through central Africa, since the “LRA has never attacked U.S. interests.” It also asked if the President’s Emergency Plan for aids Relief (pepfar), a program started by former President George W. Bush which helps fight H.I.V./aids and tuberculosis on the continent, was a “massive, international entitlement program”—welfare for Africans, in other words. The questions revealed a stunning lack of knowledge about the humanitarian impulses behind the most important operations and programs on the continent, including the most successful, like pepfar, and the longest running, such as the hunt to capture Kony. There were legitimate points of inquiry, such as whether the aid given to some African countries disappears into corrupt pockets—a question that could, in theory, lead to a serious discussion about whether it is more efficient to focus on investment than on assistance. But there was no sign that this Administration will capitalize on that insight. The tone of the questions, judging from press reports, appears to have been overwhelmingly confrontational and dismissive, and even flippant.

The United States has slowly become more and more irrelevant to Africa’s economic progress. Besides foreign aid, America’s main concern in the region has been bolstering its war on Al Qaeda- and ISIS-affiliated militant groups. Meanwhile, its competitors, mainly China, have seized enormously profitable investment opportunities throughout the continent, and maintained beneficial relationships with African governments. Often enough, those ties involve China looking the other way when it comes to human-rights concerns, while making aggressive, ethically nebulous deals. “How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa?” the transition team asked. “Are we losing out to the Chinese?” The answer to the second question is a resounding yes. Based on the queries about China, observers have speculated that the Trump Administration may also look toward investing in Africa. But retooling America’s approach to the continent requires not only business savvy but also the foresight to recognize that Africa is not simply a destination for constant aid—and never really has been.

So what is Ethereuma and Blockchain again?

Ethereum: The not-Bitcoin cryptocurrency that could help replace Uber

BY EMMA HINCHLIFFE  Mashable

2017 has been a big year for Bitcoin: its highest price ever, a major disappointment from the SEC for No. 1 Bitcoin fans the Winkelvoss twins, and, for a moment, a value higher than gold.
But another cryptocurrency has been quietly growing in volume while everyone was focused on Bitcoin. Ethereum, which is kind of like Bitcoin but slightly nerdier and more complicated, edged up against Bitcoin in its daily volume earlier this month. In plain english, Bitcoin is much bigger in terms of monetary value, but Ethereum is being used so much that it’s facilitating nearly as much business.

Even people who don’t care about digital currencies at all have heard of Bitcoin. But according to a brief unscientific survey of the Mashable offices, it appears that approximately no one outside the cryptocurrency loop knows what Ethereum is.

So what is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a decentralized application that supports a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, just like Bitcoin. You can pay for things online, trade money, and buy and sell anywhere that accepts it.

But there’s more to Ethereum than there is to Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency, called ether, runs on a “smart contract.” The smart contract is a blockchain technology and “if:then” system that allows Ethereum to be traded if a certain condition is met.

Bitcoin runs on the blockchain (a distributed, decentralized ledger of transactions) too, but it doesn’t involve the extra step of a smart contract.

What is the blockchain again?

Blockchain is a distributed ledger where all of Bitcoin’s — and Ethereum’s — transactions are recorded. It’s totally decentralized, which means it’s not run by any one person or company. Its decentralization gives it a ton of other applications besides Bitcoin — distributing music rights, powering components of traditional financial institutions — and it’s integral to digital currencies.

What can Ethereum do that Bitcoin can’t?

Ethereum’s cryptocurrency is like Bitcoin with a few extra features.

The smart contract means that you can use Ethereum to do more than just pay for something. If you want to place a bet on the Super Bowl, for example, you could use Ethereum to pay only if the Patriots win.

An if:then tool has bigger applications that just gambling. You could set up a crowdfunding campaign using Ethereum, as the Huffington Post pointed out, that would only take your money if a project’s goal was met — without the fees charged by Kickstarter or GoFundMe.

“Things are possible with Ethereum that aren’t imaginable with any other technology today.” 

The smart contract could even replace lawyers, CEOs and companies.

“You don’t need to have Uber, the company, anymore,” said Benedikt Bunz, a Ph.D. student at Stanford who studies cryptocurrencies. “You could have the Uber contract handle the money and do the payouts.”

Who’s using Ethereum now?

Ethereum, perhaps unsurprisingly, has similar clientele to Bitcoin. But Ethereum is in an earlier, more experimental stage. Investors and speculators are still focused on building new applications — not on introducing Ethereum ATMs.

How can I buy Ethereum?

Getting started with cryptocurrencies is a whole thing — you need an account, for instance, but a good place to start is Coinbase.

What’s the price of Ethereum?

A single Bitcoin is really expensive: on Thursday morning, it was valued at $1,050. Ethereum isn’t nearly as pricy by unit. Its value hovered around $41 on Thursday.

What has Ethereum already done?

Developers can use Ethereum to build apps that take advantage of its smart contract technology. A few cool ones support microfinance, build virtual worlds and prevent identity theft.

Is Ethereum the only alternative to Bitcoin?

No, but it’s the best one. Most other cryptocurrencies provide an alternative to Bitcoin without adding any real reason to switch. Ethereum is the only one that comes with a totally different set of advantages because of its smart contract.

The cryptocurrency Zerocash is the most persuasive alternative besides Ethereum, Bunz said. Its innovation is improving the privacy of transactions, since Bitcoin transactions are public on the blockchain ledger.

Besides that, everything else is pretty much just like Bitcoin.

What are the risks of Ethereum?

If something were to go wrong with Ethereum’s smart contract, it could be really bad. The program wouldn’t just crash — it could wipe away money with no way to get it back, since an if:then command could go through and would be irreversible, Bunz said.

The chance of that happening is pretty low, but it’s still a scary prospect.

There’s also the general volatility of Ethereum, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. During a recent three-day stretch in March, the price of Ether doubled and has been all over the place since.

How important could Ethereum actually be?

Ethereum’s main quality at the moment is its potential. Cryptocurrency believers say that the technology could, well, replace Uber and, theoretically, a variety of other services.

“There are things that are absolutely possible that aren’t possible with mainstream currency and are not even possible with Bitcoin today,” Bunz said. “Things are possible with Ethereum that aren’t imaginable with any other technology today.”

The Pastor as Sexual Object

Contending Modernities

Photo Credit: Dr Chris Okafor. https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/drchrisokafor

At the core of my ongoing study of Pentecostal pastors and changing forms of authority in Africa are two related premises.

First, due to a variety of factors, partly socio-economic, but also cultural as well as political, the landscape of authority across a majority of African states has altered radically over the last three decades. For example: if one effect of the combined militarization of the state and ‘Structural Adjustment’ of the economies of many African countries in the 1980s was the impoverishment of the academy, its logic has been the delegitimizing of universities themselves as authoritative centers of knowledge production.

With the entire system of tertiary education more or less stripped of its epistemological raison d’être, growing numbers of the African intelligentsia have had to look elsewhere for intellectual fulfillment and compensation that is commensurate with their status and skills. Hence my claim: that for all that this exodus has bequeathed a social and intellectual void, Pentecostal pastors have been the indirect beneficiaries, purveyors of a new kind of authoritative clerical speech-act which tends to be valorized over and above secular law or normativity.

The Pentecostal pastor is no mere direct substitute for the intellectual though. True, he (or in far fewer cases, she) now occupies what once was the academic’s spotlight as authority on economic, political, and cultural matters, to such an extent that today, even the academic tends to genuflect to his (i.e. the pastor’s) authority. But that is where, seemingly, the comparison ends. At the peak of his influence, the African intellectual was a mere defender of the public good, in which capacity he defined and contributed to public debates, built bridges with popular organizations like trade unions, resisted military and other forms of dictatorial rule, and generally aligned with efforts to hold the state accountable. In short, the intellectual was a crucial cog in an emergent postcolonial public sphere.

In terms of his authority, the modern-day Pentecostal pastor is a different beast. Contra his predecessor the intellectual, his power and influence project over a wider range of social life, including the most intimate. He is a widely sought after existential micromanager: a blend of spiritual guide, financial coach, marriage counselor, fashion icon, travel advisor, all-purpose celebrity, and last but not least, and as we are beginning to see from a stream of media reports from across the continent, center of an erotic economy.

He is the one with the power either to command female congregants to come to church without their underwear so that they can be ‘more easily receive the spirit of Jesus Christ,’ as was reportedly the case with Reverend Pastor Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church, Nairobi, Kenya; or, as we saw more recently with Kumasi-based pastor ‘Bishop’ Daniel Obinim, the one with the license to openly massage the penises of male congregants with erectile anxiety.

Whilst the political sociology of the pastor is a well-trodden ground, the idea of the pastor as an object of erotic fascination, part sexual healer, part sex symbol, the throbbing center of an intense Pentecostal sexual economy, is comparatively less frequented. Yet, this is something that my research has persistently thrust on me, and one I would argue holds immense riches.

For one thing, it furnishes a radical approach to the study of African Pentecostalism by allowing us to corral and cross-fertilize issues and subjects typically allocated in separate intellectual compartments. Foremost amongst these are: masculinity, gender, patriarchy, femininity, studies of affect, crowd engineering and crowd control, the religious spectacle, media studies, emotions, pornography, sex and sexuality, and ethics.

For another, it allows us, taking provocation from theorists Niklaus Largier, Birgit Meyer, and Nimi Wariboko’s respective works on the religious sensorium, to approach the physical space of the church as a sensual space, a place where people go to find pleasure, and where sounds, ululations, music, dance, bodies in motion, bodies flailing and sprawling, bodies in collision [whether casually or intentionally], bodies sometimes literally thrown at or surrendered to the mercy of the pastor; all combine to produce ecstatic worship.

Photo Credit: Ebenezer Obadare. Lagos, Nigeria.

Accepting the Pentecostal church as sensual space frees us to imagine the altar as a special stage repurposed, if not in fact designed, for the pastor’s hypersexual posturing. On this altar—increasingly, the ritualistic center of worship in many mega churches—the sexualized pastor channels masculine performances that bristle with erotic intimations. Through him, female congregants may lay a vicarious claim to ‘spiritual impregnation;’ often times, and as vindicated by countless examples across African Pentecostal churches, it goes beyond that.

Thus, to place the pastor at the center of a Pentecostal libidinal economy is, in essence, to put the persona of the pastor under a completely different analytic light. What my study appears to mandate, and what I am proposing here, is a critical shift from the idea of the pastor as the one who dictates sexual mores, who gives counsel on sex and proper sexual conduct, the physical symbol of heteronormativity whose stable (sexually and otherwise) domestic life is invoked as an example to the congregation; to the idea of the (body of) the pastor as an object of desire whose sexual energy comes from a strategic choreography of dress, mode of preaching and performance on the pulpit, aesthetics, personal ‘tone,’ automobile, travel, and ‘connections’ (either proven or suggested) to transnational networks.

Suffice to say, the backdrop to all this is extremely complex. It involves—and is in part enabled by—the rise of the celebrity pastor in Africa; the rise of pastoral ‘calling’ as the quickest route to social prestige, critical in a context in which the need to ‘be somebody’ has become very acute; and its corollary, the emergence of pastoring as a virtually automatic guarantor of social mobility.

But perhaps of utmost importance is what appears to be Pentecostalism’s theological project of producing a new man, which tends to translate all too literally into a man shorn of his masculine properties, i.e. highly domesticated, abjuring the company of ‘sinful’ former friends, and most important, sexually ‘tamed.’ A ‘demasculinized’ man, in short. The consequence, I would argue, is that often times, the only ‘man’ left standing in the Pentecostal church is the pastor occupying the altar. Cherished, beloved, and, dare I suggest, eroticized.

Ebenezer Obadare
Ebenezer Obadare is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. He is author of Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2016) and co-editor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014). His ongoing Contending Modernities research focuses on Pentecostal pastors and changing patterns of authority in Nigeria and Ghana.

The Pastor as Sexual Object

Contending Modernities

Photo Credit: Dr Chris Okafor. https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/drchrisokafor

At the core of my ongoing study of Pentecostal pastors and changing forms of authority in Africa are two related premises.

First, due to a variety of factors, partly socio-economic, but also cultural as well as political, the landscape of authority across a majority of African states has altered radically over the last three decades. For example: if one effect of the combined militarization of the state and ‘Structural Adjustment’ of the economies of many African countries in the 1980s was the impoverishment of the academy, its logic has been the delegitimizing of universities themselves as authoritative centers of knowledge production.

With the entire system of tertiary education more or less stripped of its epistemological raison d’être, growing numbers of the African intelligentsia have had to look elsewhere for intellectual fulfillment and compensation that is commensurate with their status and skills. Hence my claim: that for all that this exodus has bequeathed a social and intellectual void, Pentecostal pastors have been the indirect beneficiaries, purveyors of a new kind of authoritative clerical speech-act which tends to be valorized over and above secular law or normativity.

The Pentecostal pastor is no mere direct substitute for the intellectual though. True, he (or in far fewer cases, she) now occupies what once was the academic’s spotlight as authority on economic, political, and cultural matters, to such an extent that today, even the academic tends to genuflect to his (i.e. the pastor’s) authority. But that is where, seemingly, the comparison ends. At the peak of his influence, the African intellectual was a mere defender of the public good, in which capacity he defined and contributed to public debates, built bridges with popular organizations like trade unions, resisted military and other forms of dictatorial rule, and generally aligned with efforts to hold the state accountable. In short, the intellectual was a crucial cog in an emergent postcolonial public sphere.

In terms of his authority, the modern-day Pentecostal pastor is a different beast. Contra his predecessor the intellectual, his power and influence project over a wider range of social life, including the most intimate. He is a widely sought after existential micromanager: a blend of spiritual guide, financial coach, marriage counselor, fashion icon, travel advisor, all-purpose celebrity, and last but not least, and as we are beginning to see from a stream of media reports from across the continent, center of an erotic economy.

He is the one with the power either to command female congregants to come to church without their underwear so that they can be ‘more easily receive the spirit of Jesus Christ,’ as was reportedly the case with Reverend Pastor Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church, Nairobi, Kenya; or, as we saw more recently with Kumasi-based pastor ‘Bishop’ Daniel Obinim, the one with the license to openly massage the penises of male congregants with erectile anxiety.

Whilst the political sociology of the pastor is a well-trodden ground, the idea of the pastor as an object of erotic fascination, part sexual healer, part sex symbol, the throbbing center of an intense Pentecostal sexual economy, is comparatively less frequented. Yet, this is something that my research has persistently thrust on me, and one I would argue holds immense riches.

For one thing, it furnishes a radical approach to the study of African Pentecostalism by allowing us to corral and cross-fertilize issues and subjects typically allocated in separate intellectual compartments. Foremost amongst these are: masculinity, gender, patriarchy, femininity, studies of affect, crowd engineering and crowd control, the religious spectacle, media studies, emotions, pornography, sex and sexuality, and ethics.

For another, it allows us, taking provocation from theorists Niklaus Largier, Birgit Meyer, and Nimi Wariboko’s respective works on the religious sensorium, to approach the physical space of the church as a sensual space, a place where people go to find pleasure, and where sounds, ululations, music, dance, bodies in motion, bodies flailing and sprawling, bodies in collision [whether casually or intentionally], bodies sometimes literally thrown at or surrendered to the mercy of the pastor; all combine to produce ecstatic worship.

Photo Credit: Ebenezer Obadare. Lagos, Nigeria.

Accepting the Pentecostal church as sensual space frees us to imagine the altar as a special stage repurposed, if not in fact designed, for the pastor’s hypersexual posturing. On this altar—increasingly, the ritualistic center of worship in many mega churches—the sexualized pastor channels masculine performances that bristle with erotic intimations. Through him, female congregants may lay a vicarious claim to ‘spiritual impregnation;’ often times, and as vindicated by countless examples across African Pentecostal churches, it goes beyond that.

Thus, to place the pastor at the center of a Pentecostal libidinal economy is, in essence, to put the persona of the pastor under a completely different analytic light. What my study appears to mandate, and what I am proposing here, is a critical shift from the idea of the pastor as the one who dictates sexual mores, who gives counsel on sex and proper sexual conduct, the physical symbol of heteronormativity whose stable (sexually and otherwise) domestic life is invoked as an example to the congregation; to the idea of the (body of) the pastor as an object of desire whose sexual energy comes from a strategic choreography of dress, mode of preaching and performance on the pulpit, aesthetics, personal ‘tone,’ automobile, travel, and ‘connections’ (either proven or suggested) to transnational networks.

Suffice to say, the backdrop to all this is extremely complex. It involves—and is in part enabled by—the rise of the celebrity pastor in Africa; the rise of pastoral ‘calling’ as the quickest route to social prestige, critical in a context in which the need to ‘be somebody’ has become very acute; and its corollary, the emergence of pastoring as a virtually automatic guarantor of social mobility.

But perhaps of utmost importance is what appears to be Pentecostalism’s theological project of producing a new man, which tends to translate all too literally into a man shorn of his masculine properties, i.e. highly domesticated, abjuring the company of ‘sinful’ former friends, and most important, sexually ‘tamed.’ A ‘demasculinized’ man, in short. The consequence, I would argue, is that often times, the only ‘man’ left standing in the Pentecostal church is the pastor occupying the altar. Cherished, beloved, and, dare I suggest, eroticized.

Ebenezer Obadare
Ebenezer Obadare is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. He is author of Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2016) and co-editor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014). His ongoing Contending Modernities research focuses on Pentecostal pastors and changing patterns of authority in Nigeria and Ghana.

Finally, Africa gets its own web address with launch of .africa

Africa

People attend a computer training course, as part of the 'Afrique Innovation, reinventer les mediasImage copyrightAFP
The African Union hopes .africa will create a unique online identity for the continent

Africa now has the unique web address .africa, equivalent to the more familiar .com, following its official launch by the African Union.

AU commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma hailed its creation as the moment when Africa “got [its] own digital identity”.

The AU says the .africa domain name will “bring the continent together as an internet community”.

Addresses can now reflect a company’s interest in the whole of Africa.

For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

Icann, the body that establishes these addresses known as generic Top-Level Domains, approved the move, after lobbying by the AU.

The campaign was spearheaded by a South African company ZA Central Registry (ZACR), which will now be responsible for registering .africa names.

ZACR’s boss Lucky Masilela said that .africa addresses could cost as little as $18 (£15), AFP news agency quotes him as saying, and registration will start in July.

Other domain names recently created by Icann, include .fun, .phone and .hair.

The Entire History of the World—Really, All of It—Distilled Into a Single Gorgeous Chart

This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. (The David Rumsey Map Collection hosts a fully zoomable version here.) (Update: Click on the image below to arrive at a bigger version.) 

This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book publishing of the 1920s and 1930s: the “outline,” in which large subjects (the history of the world! every school of philosophy! all of modern physics!) were distilled into a form comprehensible to the most uneducated layman.

The 5-foot-long Histomap was sold for $1 and folded into a green cover, which featured endorsements from historians and reviewers. The chart was advertised as “clear, vivid, and shorn of elaboration,” while at the same time capable of “holding you enthralled” by presenting:

the actual picture of the march of civilization, from the mud huts of the ancients thru the monarchistic glamour of the middle ages to the living panorama of life in present day America.

The chart emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (a quasi-racial understanding of the nature of human groups, quite popular at the time) evolved throughout history.

It’s unclear what the width of the colored streams is meant to indicate. In other words, if the Y axis of the chart clearly represents time, what does the X axis (marked as “relative power of contemporary states, nations, and empires”) represent? What’s the meaning of “power” to the mapmaker? And did Sparks see history as a zero-sum game, in which peoples and nations would vie for shares of finite resources? Given the timing of his enterprise—he made this chart between two world wars and at the beginning of a major depression—this might well have been his thinking.

Sparks followed up on the success of this Histomap by publishing at least two more: the Histomap of religion (which I’ve been unable to find online) and the Histomap of evolution.

Histomap

John B. Sparks, Histomap. 1931. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

The Entire History of the World—Really, All of It—Distilled Into a Single Gorgeous Chart

This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. (The David Rumsey Map Collection hosts a fully zoomable version here.) (Update: Click on the image below to arrive at a bigger version.) 

This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book publishing of the 1920s and 1930s: the “outline,” in which large subjects (the history of the world! every school of philosophy! all of modern physics!) were distilled into a form comprehensible to the most uneducated layman.

The 5-foot-long Histomap was sold for $1 and folded into a green cover, which featured endorsements from historians and reviewers. The chart was advertised as “clear, vivid, and shorn of elaboration,” while at the same time capable of “holding you enthralled” by presenting:

the actual picture of the march of civilization, from the mud huts of the ancients thru the monarchistic glamour of the middle ages to the living panorama of life in present day America.

The chart emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (a quasi-racial understanding of the nature of human groups, quite popular at the time) evolved throughout history.

It’s unclear what the width of the colored streams is meant to indicate. In other words, if the Y axis of the chart clearly represents time, what does the X axis (marked as “relative power of contemporary states, nations, and empires”) represent? What’s the meaning of “power” to the mapmaker? And did Sparks see history as a zero-sum game, in which peoples and nations would vie for shares of finite resources? Given the timing of his enterprise—he made this chart between two world wars and at the beginning of a major depression—this might well have been his thinking.

Sparks followed up on the success of this Histomap by publishing at least two more: the Histomap of religion (which I’ve been unable to find online) and the Histomap of evolution.

Histomap

John B. Sparks, Histomap. 1931. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

46 killed, dozens missing in Ethiopia garbage dump landslide

Associated Press

Police officers secure the perimeter at the scene of a garbage landslide, as excavators aid rescue efforts, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Police officers secure the perimeter at the scene of a garbage landslide, as excavators aid rescue efforts, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, March 12, 2017.  (AP Photo/Elias Meseret)

A mountain of trash gave way in a massive garbage dump on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, killing at least 46 people and leaving several dozen missing, residents said, as officials vowed to relocate those who called the landfill home.

Addis Ababa city spokeswoman Dagmawit Moges said most of the 46 dead were women and children, and more bodies were expected to be found in the coming hours.

It was not immediately clear what caused Saturday night’s collapse at the Koshe Garbage Landfill, which buried several makeshift homes and concrete buildings. The landfill has been a dumping ground for the capital’s garbage for more than 50 years.

About 150 people were there when the landslide occurred, resident Assefa Teklemahimanot told The Associated Press. Addis Ababa Mayor Diriba Kuma said 37 people had been rescued and were receiving medical treatment. Dagmawit said two had serious injuries.

Many people at the landfill had been scavenging items to make a living, but others live there because renting homes, largely built of mud and sticks, is relatively inexpensive.

An AP reporter saw four bodies taken away by ambulances after being pulled from the debris. Elderly women cried, and others stood anxiously waiting for news of loved ones. Six excavators dug through the ruins.

“My house was right inside there,” said a shaken Tebeju Asres, pointing to where one of the excavators was digging in deep, black mud. “My mother and three of my sisters were there when the landslide happened. Now I don’t know the fate of all of them.”

The resumption of garbage dumping at the site in recent months likely caused the landslide, Assefa said. The dumping had stopped in recent years, but it resumed after farmers in a nearby restive region where a new garbage landfill complex was being built blocked dumping in their area.

Smaller collapses have occurred at Koshe — or “dirty” in the local Amharic language — in the past two years but only two or three people were killed, Assefa said.

“In the long run, we will conduct a resettling program to relocate people who live in and around the landfill,” the Addis Ababa mayor said.

Around 500 waste-pickers are believed to work at the landfill every day, sorting through the debris from the capital’s estimated 4 million residents. City officials say close to 300,000 tons of waste are collected each year from the capital, most of it dumped at the landfill.

Since 2010, city officials have warned that the landfill was running out of room and was being closed in by nearby housing and schools.

City officials in recent years have been trying to turn the garbage into a source of clean energy with a $120 million investment. The Koshe waste-to-energy facility, which has been under construction since 2013, is expected to generate 50 megawatts of electricity upon completion.

Ethiopia, which has one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, is under a state of emergency imposed in October after several months of sometimes deadly protests demanding wider political freedoms.

46 killed, dozens missing in Ethiopia garbage dump landslide

Associated Press

Police officers secure the perimeter at the scene of a garbage landslide, as excavators aid rescue efforts, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Police officers secure the perimeter at the scene of a garbage landslide, as excavators aid rescue efforts, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sunday, March 12, 2017.  (AP Photo/Elias Meseret)

A mountain of trash gave way in a massive garbage dump on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, killing at least 46 people and leaving several dozen missing, residents said, as officials vowed to relocate those who called the landfill home.

Addis Ababa city spokeswoman Dagmawit Moges said most of the 46 dead were women and children, and more bodies were expected to be found in the coming hours.

It was not immediately clear what caused Saturday night’s collapse at the Koshe Garbage Landfill, which buried several makeshift homes and concrete buildings. The landfill has been a dumping ground for the capital’s garbage for more than 50 years.

About 150 people were there when the landslide occurred, resident Assefa Teklemahimanot told The Associated Press. Addis Ababa Mayor Diriba Kuma said 37 people had been rescued and were receiving medical treatment. Dagmawit said two had serious injuries.

Many people at the landfill had been scavenging items to make a living, but others live there because renting homes, largely built of mud and sticks, is relatively inexpensive.

An AP reporter saw four bodies taken away by ambulances after being pulled from the debris. Elderly women cried, and others stood anxiously waiting for news of loved ones. Six excavators dug through the ruins.

“My house was right inside there,” said a shaken Tebeju Asres, pointing to where one of the excavators was digging in deep, black mud. “My mother and three of my sisters were there when the landslide happened. Now I don’t know the fate of all of them.”

The resumption of garbage dumping at the site in recent months likely caused the landslide, Assefa said. The dumping had stopped in recent years, but it resumed after farmers in a nearby restive region where a new garbage landfill complex was being built blocked dumping in their area.

Smaller collapses have occurred at Koshe — or “dirty” in the local Amharic language — in the past two years but only two or three people were killed, Assefa said.

“In the long run, we will conduct a resettling program to relocate people who live in and around the landfill,” the Addis Ababa mayor said.

Around 500 waste-pickers are believed to work at the landfill every day, sorting through the debris from the capital’s estimated 4 million residents. City officials say close to 300,000 tons of waste are collected each year from the capital, most of it dumped at the landfill.

Since 2010, city officials have warned that the landfill was running out of room and was being closed in by nearby housing and schools.

City officials in recent years have been trying to turn the garbage into a source of clean energy with a $120 million investment. The Koshe waste-to-energy facility, which has been under construction since 2013, is expected to generate 50 megawatts of electricity upon completion.

Ethiopia, which has one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, is under a state of emergency imposed in October after several months of sometimes deadly protests demanding wider political freedoms.

If Ethiopia started to develop its coffee industry, it could trade its way out of poverty

About 100 million people rely on coffee for their livelihood but they’re not always getting a fair deal, writes Killian Stokes.

WHEN WE THINK about the products on supermarket shelves, there isn’t a level playing field. Take wine and coffee for example.

The French don’t export green grapes. They export bottled and branded wine and consumers actually pay more for premium French brands such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne.

As a result, more jobs, income and profits stay in France and France makes about €12bn a year from its wine exports.

At the same time, a big coffee-producing country like Ethiopia only earns €760m from coffee. Both are premium products, so what’s the problem?

Fairtrade Fortnight

Fairtrade has been fantastic for raising awareness but it was supposed to address this imbalance.

Fairtrade is marking Fairtrade Fortnight at the moment and after 20 years of Fairtrade products on our shelves in Ireland, has it achieved its aims of addressing poverty in developing countries?

Short answer? Not really. Fairtrade in the UK announced sales of £1.64bn this week for products with their certification. That gave farmers £30m in “premium payments” for their products. After 20 years of campaigning, that’s not a lot of added value for producers.

A Problem Worth Solving – A Look at Coffee

Agegnehu & Genet in Moyee's Roastery in Addis Ababa, EthiopiaAgegnehu and Genet in Moyee’s Roastery in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Coffee has become the world’s favourite drink. It’s bigger than wine, beer and booze put together. Each day we drink 2 billion cups of coffee and the global coffee industry is worth almost €100 billion a year.

Across the developing world about 100 million people rely on coffee for their livelihood, that’s the coffee farmers and their families. But these are amongst the poorest people on the planet. 90% of coffee farmers earn less than €2 a day while 90% of coffee growing countries still need international aid to survive.

While 100% of coffee is grown in the coffee belt, 99.9% of all coffee we drink is roasted in Europe or America. Coffee is exported out of the coffee belt as raw green bean and so even if coffee farmers earn slightly more with Fairtrade premiums, most of the jobs, income and profits from coffee are exported out of the coffee belt. This has to change.

Ethiopia, which I mentioned earlier, is the birthplace of coffee, the home of Arabica and the producer of some the finest beans in the world including Harrar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe beans.

It is Africa’s largest producer of coffee, coffee accounts for 30% of its exports. 1 in 4 Ethiopians rely on coffee for their income. That’s about 20 million people.

Ethiopia should earn enough to power its economy, but as that value’s being added in the West, it has to rely on about €3 billion in foreign aid per year.

A Better Deal for the Coffee Belt – Trade over Aid

fairchain graph

If Ethiopia started to develop its coffee industry, with roasting, packaging and quality control taking place at origin, it could create millions of jobs and triple the country’s income from coffee to €2.5 billion a year. It could begin to trade its way out of poverty.

At Moyee Coffee we call this approach FairChain. We now roast 85% of our coffee in Addis Ababa, as well as packaging and quality control jobs. By roasting locally, we create more jobs and ensure more profit stays with the people who contribute most to the coffee chain.

We think that’s an idea worth talking about this Fairtrade Fortnight. Let’s move the conversation beyond supporting farmers and look at supporting entire industries in developing countries.

We believe this FairChain revolution can spread throughout the coffee belt and make a real difference in the fight to tackle poverty.

Killian Stokes is an adjunct lecturer on Business and Global Development at the Quinn School of Business in UCD and the co-founder of Moyee Coffee Ireland (moyeecoffee.ie), the world’s first FairChain coffee.