Off-Grid Solar Lighting Up Ethiopia
For the millions of people living in remote rural areas of Ethiopia who lack access to the power grid or cannot afford electricity, solar energy represents an important first step on the energy access ladder. Instead of relying on kerosene, candles, dry cell batteries and other fossil fuel-base…
Everything You Need To Understand the Niger Delta Avengers and Their Quest for Secession
On the morning of the 1st of October 1960, Nigerians celebrated their freedom from British colonial rule. Now, 56 years later, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) group hopes to recreate this for the Niger Delta region by seceding from the rest of Nigeria. How they intend to do this r…
Personalized Learning: The Latest Buzz in Classroom Instruction
Shoolchildren from small-town Georgia to suburban Baltimore will encounter a new approach to learning when they head back to class this fall—one that makes them partners in their own education, not just participants. It’s called personalized learning, and it has become one of the buzziest of buzzwor…
Counting Africa’s Invisible Workers
YAMOUSSOUKRO – The billions of dollars in aid delivered to Africa annually may do the continent much good, but it cannot deliver a solution to poverty. Only creating more high-quality jobs can do that. The question is how. Africa boasts a large and creative labor pool, buttressed by …
Battle for Mosul exposes fractures that threaten to haunt post-ISIL Iraq
Baghdad // The run-up to the battle for Mosul, the northern Iraqi city held by ISIL since June 2014, is slow but steady. Government troops are engaged in fierce battles with the militants south of the city while US engineers are busy upgrading an airbase recaptured from the extremist group last mont…
Where (Open) Data Goes to Die
A handful of cities have invested considerable time, energy, and tax-dollars into building an exciting new kind of public infrastructure only for it to be abandoned and fall into disuse shortly after completion. Like the ghost-town villages and crumbling stadiums of Olympic host cities, open data po…
Al Qaeda’s Future Threat
While al Qaeda may soon return to preeminence in the global jihad recruitment competition, it is evolving in the face of existential challenges such as the American post-9/11 counter-terrorism regime, competition from the Islamic State, and a rapidly changing Middle East. al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate…
‘A changing climate is and will continue to put people out of their homes’
In San Bernardino County, Calif., 82,000 people were ordered to leave their homes Wednesday as an explosive wildfire “hit with an intensity that we hadn’t seen before,” as one fire official said, and surged across 30,000 acres. It followed dramatic flooding in Louisiana that the …
The Chibok girls are just one part of the ordeal of women in north-east Nigeria
“Are they the Chibok girls?” Every time there is news of the women and girls held by Boko Haram – as Jama’at Ahlus-Sunnah Lida’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) is commonly known – this is always one of the first questions; and the answer is usually no. Then last Sunday JAS released a …
War Crimes Trials for Islamic State Fighters
The military campaign against the Islamic State has jelled, and ISIS defeatscontinue to mount. As shown in the ouster of Islamic State forces last week from Manbij in Syria and Sirte in Libya, the group’s fighters are now fleeing abroad or into the desert rather than fight to the death to hold unten…