Gute Nachrichten aus Afrika hat Alexis Okeowo im Blog des New Yorker gesammelt. Darunter:
1. Die zunehmende Verbreitungs von Handys in Afrika:
Cell phones continue to change how Africans live. The devices have proven to be invaluable: health-care workers use cell phones to track and monitor pregnant women in rural Rwanda (where the number of maternal deaths is high) and H.I.V. patients in Kenya, and Kenya’s mobile banking system, which has been called the world’s most innovative, lets Kenyans pay bills, send remittances, purchase goods and airtime, move funds among accounts, and even take out and pay back loans for entrepreneurial ventures.
2. Die zunehmende Technisierung des afrikanischen Alltags.
Emeka Okafor, a Nigerian, once said that he couldn’t understand why, in the tech realm, so little interesting and creative activity seemed to be coming out of sub-Saharan Africa. Curious about what good ideas from Africa looked like, he helped found Maker Faire Africa, where inventors from across the continent gather to showcase their wares—this October in Cairo, in previous years in Nairobi and Accra. The result has been astounding: mobile apps, seed-planting devices, solar-powered computer kiosks made out of recycled oil drums, paraffin lamps, and other technologies that, importantly, address the immediate needs of Africans.
Als wenn es noch nicht genug gute Gründe gäbe, offene Formate und Open Access zu unterstützen, so kommt hier noch einer: Wer sein Paper hinter Paywalls oder in Printzeitschriften versteckt, wird in den Dörfern um Kairo, Nairobi oder Accra sicherlich nicht gelesen. Liegt es auf einem OA-Repository, so kann es auch dort gefunden und gelesen werden.
