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We need to take a closer look at entrepreneurship in Africa
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I know you’re looking for good news. My love language is providing you with some each week. In this issue, I want to talk about ‘the very worrying toilet situation’ in Africa and all the things that are being done to solve it.
Ok, I’m in.
Cool. So, I am a huge Quartz Africa fan. In their latest issue, they talked about all the noteworthy African startups in sanitation and I'm going to summarize it for you. Because, wow.
Why this matters: Yes, there’s a lot of fighting in Africa. A lot of poverty, too. There are also so many social movements and innovative entrepreneurship, too, who are working on providing the solutions to the continent’s long-standing problems.
Tell me more about sanitation in Africa
It's a huge challenge. Here are some numbers:
- A lot of people do not have access to clean drinking water. According to UNICEF, some 783 million people worldwide do not have access to safe toilets (meaning, toilets that are built in a way so your sh*t doesn’t mix with drinking water), and thus clean drinking water. Among those 783 million people, some 340 million live on the African continent, mostly in the East and South.
- Dig deeper: There are many reasons why this is the case. For example, sanitation services are expensive, and many countries cannot afford it. Plus, climate change creates more frequent floods and drier droughts and those two are the evil twins behind a lot of natural disasters in Africa, that only make things worse than they already are. And, there’s been more fighting, too. Millions of people have had to flee because of it, and the places they flee to (such as refugee camps), they also have sh*tty access to these basic needs there.
- Development aid is not cutting it. Most development aid goes to countries and regions that are already doing well.
As a result, some startups in Africa are taking responsibility for finding a solution. Here are just a few examples:
- South Africa: Loo Afrique. This company makes toilet technology that saves water, improves hygiene, and incorporates greywater usage into everyday living. In 2019, Loo Afrique won R300,000 ($20,500) from the Gauteng Accelerator Programme Innovation Competition. It also receives funding from South Africa’s Water Research Commission.
- Egypt: Water Will. This startup creates filters to eliminate impurities, odors, bacteria, and heavy minerals often found in the water in rural Egypt. Their pots are treated with silver nano particles, which they then sell to rural communities.
- Kenya: Sanergy. This startup collects urine and other biowaste and converts it into biofuel and other useful products. Japan last year gave them US$2.5 million. Another startup in Kenya is HydroIQ. This virtual network helps homes, utilities, businesses, and industries use, manage, and pay for water efficiently. It is one of three startups selected by Google as part of its Startups Accelerator: Africa program this year, meaning they got hella $$$.
- Rwanda: Water Access Rwanda. They’re up and running since 2014, and very successfully, too. This startup has provided clean water access to more than 312,000 individuals, businesses, schools, and farms in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Uganda. The Jack Ma Foundation has funded it.
In other Africa-related news
Somalia: Four people were killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab said they did it. It’s a super sensitive time for the country as it’s (finally) election time.
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We are finally talking about what we did to Indigenous people in the United States
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- Refresher: You probably haven't been taught this at school but... The United States government has a long history of trying to eradicate its Indigenous people. Beginning in 1869 and until the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their homes and families and placed in more than 400 so-called 'boarding schools' across 37 states in the United States. The government and churches ran them. The goal was to assimilate these children into European American culture by force, so they lose their language and culture and to break up Indigenous families. Vox once did this 14-min mini-documentary on "How the U.S. stole thousands of Native American children" that's worth watching.
A new report found marked and unmarked burial sites of Indigenous children at 53 different so-called boarding schools and finally detailed in a report, for the very first time, the brutality and treatment that Indigenous children suffered when they were forcibly moved to so-called boarding schools.
Why this matters: This is a very important step toward healing intergenerational trauma. Indigenous people deserve to grow and heal. Only by elevating the voice of survivors and descendants and acknowledging these racist and violent crimes committed against them is healing even a possibility.
Why do we only hear about this now?
It's important to note that this is not new knowledge to Indigenous people; they know and have shared these stories for decades. However, Indigenous people have been written out of many, if not all, history books.
What did the U.S. government do to Indigenous children back then?
Some really bad stuff. In attempts to assimilate the children, the schools gave them English names, cut their hair and forbade them from speaking their languages and practicing their religions or cultural traditions. 'Teachers' (not sure if I would call them that) would beat, starve and sometimes even murder Indigenous children at school. "Approximately 19 federal Indian boarding schools accounted for over 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian child deaths," the 106-page report (put together by Bryan Newland, say 'thanks for this' on Twitter) highlighted last week. Over 500. And even that number is expected to grow. Newland told the The New York Times, "there is not a single American Indian, Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian in the country whose life has not been affected by the schools."
Who issued this report?
Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary. Her own grandparents attended such schools. She almost teared up at the press conference (and so did I) while she was talking about the report.
Why now?
That's all thanks to Canada. Last year, so many unmarked graves of Indigenous children who attended similar schools were found (215 in British Columbia, 750 more in Saskatchewan). That's when Haaland said, 'we need to have the same conversation in the United States.'
What now?
First, the children who died at these so-called boarding schools deserve to be identified and their remains brought home. Then, the United States must fully make amends for the genocide committed against Indigenous people.
The government has yet to provide a forum or opportunity for survivors or descendants of survivors to describe their experiences at the schools. However, Haaland has announced plans for a year-long, cross-country tour called The Road to Healing, during which survivors of the boarding school system could share their stories.
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We are worried about Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy in Sri Lanka
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Last week, on May 18, it was Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, also known as Mullivaikal Remembrance Day. On this day, 13 years ago, in 2009, the country's long civil war ended. 169.796 Eelam Tamils were massacred between 1983 and 2009 by the military in Sri Lanka.
Why this matters: If you want to talk about the protests in Sri Lanka, talk about it from the perspective of 'The Outsider', meaning those outside of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy. Plus, paying homage to Mullivaikal Remembrance Day is desperately needed because justice hasn't been served yet.
I remember you wrote about the protests in Sri Lanka last week.
Yes, well, the government has been in deep sh*t for a few weeks now. It’s going through the worst-ever economic crisis since it gained independence in 1948. People in the South have been protesting and demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for a few weeks now. ‘You’re to blame for this!,’ they say. It’s super intense. Eight people have died since the demonstrations began. As a result, Gotabaya Rajapaksa's elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as the prime minister and Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed the country's new prime minister (he has done this job five times before).
A lot of names I don’t know unfortunately. Who’s who?
Don’t worry. This is a judgment-free newsletter. To start, you need to know one name and that is Rajapaksa. They’re a very famous family in Sri Lanka’s politics, they’re ruling the country at the moment and they’re super into Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy (yes, that’s right, there’s more than ‘just’ white supremacy that we need to talk about).
Meaning?
According to the current Sri Lankan government and all other governments before them since 1948, all non-Sinhala communities are considered 'second-class citizens'. The Rajapaksa family has imposed measures that disadvantaged Tamils and Muslims such as sending much more military to Tamil areas, harrassing Tamil journalists and NGOs, or forcibly cremating Muslim COVID victims.
Okay. What do the Rajapaksas have to do with the Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day?
Well, Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the man who 'ended' Sri Lanka's nearly 30-year civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. As a result, the military has occupied Tamil homeland since. So, next to his fiscal mismanagement, he’s also been accused of being responsible for a lot of human rights violations and, most importantly, the genocide of the Eelam Tamil back in 2009.
- Dig deeper: Tamil Guardian revisits the days leading up to May 18, 2009. See more at Remember May 2009, a collaborative project launched last year, between the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, Tamil Guardian and 47 Roots.
Ah, I see. So, now the president is finally taking responsibility for what he did back in 2009?
Not really. As I mentioned, people in the South have been protesting and demanding his resignation. Many Sinhalese people (and not Eelam Tamil) live in the south of Sri Lanka. They’re demanding that he resigns because of the economic crisis, and not because of the human rights violations against Tamil and Muslim people in the country.
OK… what about the new prime minister then?
Mario Arulthas, an expert on Sri Lanka and the Tamil struggle for independence, has written this opinion piece for Al Jazeera that’s worth reading. And he says, "Without a fundamental restructuring of the state, Sri Lanka will simply repeat the past mistakes that got it there."
What does he mean?
The old-but-new prime minister, Wickremesinghe, himself has been accused of a lot of bullsh*t before. ‘He doesn’t do sh*t for nobody,’ protestors say. ‘They only gave him the job, so President Gotabaya can wait this one out. But we won’t allow it. We want him out!’ Tamils also say that he too has rejected accountability for war crimes and protected state officials from being dragged in front of the International Criminal Court. Meaning, Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksas are not that different.
What’s it like in Sri Lanka now?
Oh, it’s tense. There’s a curfew. Military and police have warned that they will shoot violent protesters on sight. Amnesty International is also like, ‘this state of emergency thing you got going on, take it back’. It’s kind of crazy but even Sinhala civil society and opposition parties are anti-government now.
Kind of ironic, no?
Yeah... Many Tamils are somewhat entertained by the Sinhalese community’s shock that the all-Sinhala military is pointing its guns at its own. Although, the military did way worse things to the Tamils than to the Sinhalese protesters. Hence why Arulthas writes in Al Jazeera, "what was obvious to Tamils should be obvious to the rest of the population… Sri Lanka is doomed to repeat its past, and stability and prosperity for all its citizens will remain elusive."
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OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT FIND INTERESTING
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First, the bad news
United States: A white supremacist shot 11 Black and two white people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Ten of them died. A day before the shooting, there was another series of shootings in Koreatown in Dallas, Texas. There, luckily, nobody died.
Ecuador: A prison riot in Santo Domingo killed 44 people.
IsraelPalestine: The death of a very famous Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in Jenin is making global headlines. Al Jazeera is convinced, 'Israeli soldiers shot her on purpose', Israel denies this and shifts the blame on 'reckless Palestinian shooters'. An independent investigation is desperately needed as to who committed this war crime (which 'killing a journalist' is). And then, at her funeral, Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinian mourners. Beware: The video is very hard to watch.
The kind-of-neutral
United Arab Emirates: Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan is the new President. His half-brother Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan died at the age of 73.
Croatia: The Parliament voted 117–13 to officially replace the kuna with the euro on 1 January. The eurozone just got bigger.
Hungary: Katalin Novák took office as the first female President of Hungary.
And now, the good news
Health: We've hit a milestone in the fight against this still-very-deadly disease (it killed some 627,000 people in 2020, mostly in Africa). At least one million people have received a dose of the Malaria vaccine. Yay!
Space: The first plants have been grown on the Moon. Plus, we finally saw some images of a suuuupermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (I don't know if you watched Twilight but I did, lol, and one of the movies featured Supermassive Black Hole by Muse and I couldn't get it out of my head while reading writing this issue.)
Greece: Greece banned conversion therapy for minors as well as all advertisements promoting it. In honor of this good news, I added some George Perris (he came out last week!) songs to the newsletter's very own Spotify playlist.
Nigeria: Musician Burna Boy became the first Nigerian artist to sell out New York City’s Madison Square Garden (it can welcome up to 20,789 people) last week. Performing with his band, The Outsiders, Burna Boy was also joined by Senegal's legend Youssou N’Dour. Find some of my favorite tracks in the same Spotify playlist.
Mozambique: Last week, the Parliament passed a bill detailing how
new courts that will specialise in trying crimes like piracy, illegal fishing, and offshore 'terrorism' will work. These crimes have reportedly been rising in the country, which has a 2,400km coastline and where 60% of the population lives by the sea. This is a long time coming. The courts were first proposed in 1996 but were never activated. So, yay!
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Some 49 people will run for president in Kenya’s elections on August 9. Only three of them are endorsed by official political parties. The others will run as independents. Even a gospel artist and a Methodist pastor are up for the top job in the country.
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That's it from me for this week. If you want to stay connected on social media, follow me on Twitter or on Instagram.
Bye,
Sham
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