Author Archive

Women and children are the ones most susceptible to the effects of drought and famine which is why it is important to consider ways to make remittances more accessible to them. Kenya already has the infrastructure and services to lower the cost of sending money to relatives who need monetary […]

The backdrop to the famine in Somalia is a history of civil war and the collapse of the central functioning government in 1991. What many news outlets fail to mention is that with the civil war came devastation, displacement and the destruction of productive farm land and essential infrastructure. Factor […]

As of May 2011, annual remittances to the continent of Africa exceeded 40 billion US dollars. According to the World Bank, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa totaled 21.5 billion USD. “Cash backs” from emigrants to the Global South have become essential to local economies. In the case of Somalia, it began […]

Research suggests that trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, when specifically applied to “traditional” or indigenous knowledge, genetic material and plant and animal life, have a detrimental effect on biodiversity. The 2001 Doha Declaration suggested that the TRIPS Council look at the “patent-ability or non patent-ability of plant and animal […]

In April, the Columbia Journalism Review raised the question of whether non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa benefit from particular representations of the continent as conflict and poverty-ridden. „Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked […]