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Category: Articles
We are helping the Chinese to have more babies
Chinese poster from 1987 promoting one-child policy. Text reads, “Fewer and better births revitalize China”. Provided by IISG, via Flickr. January 8 2019 – It has to be easy to imagine the smiles on faces of millions of Chinese men and women over this great piece of news: the Chinese government has decided to reverse the one-child policy and to allow families to have more than one child, which has…...
Wisdom in education lies in marrying the traditional with the modern
April 6 2017 – Education, as we commonly talk of it, is that process by which an individual is taken through formal structures that inculcate in him/her a certain body of knowledge and values qualifying the individual for a useful and serviceable existence. This usually denotes the school system, complete with its classrooms, teachers, syllabuses and books. But there is always another education, which is not that formal, one which…...
Harness the millennials’ energies or prepare for destruction
March 9 2017 The debate around the need to have a serious constitutional review in Tanzania is simply refusing to go away. Every week we learn of new legal action taken by members of civil society that seek to challenge this or that act undertaken by government officials that people find unjust, unfair or illegal. Increasingly, this is becoming a litigating society in which more and more people are willing…...
We’re all victims of Afrophobia, self-haters
March 2 2017 Chirau Ali Mwakwere “Zipapa” is a former Kenyan minister and ambassador who is so funny he could make the Sphinx laugh. He can also belt out a song at a moment’s notice, in Kiswahili, English or Lingala. He speaks impeccable Kiswahili, and claims the language originated from Kwale, his home county where he is contesting the gubernatorial seat in the upcoming elections. All the foregoing, however, is…...
Do unto others as if they were you
November 11 2016 – An object lesson in how to do unto your opponents was delivered many years ago in one central African country which was ruled over by a particularly obnoxious dictator. The president had been in power for close to 20 years when an old school friend came to him to ask for a favour. The friend, a prominent architect, came to complain to the president because all…...
Now Magufuli, give us a constitution
November 3 2016 At about this time in November of the year two thousand and seventeen, President John Pombe Magufuli will have spent two years in office, and he will still have not reached the halfway mark of his first term. That means he will be far from being worried about his reelection, which will not be due till three years later. As he celebrates his first year in office…...
AI without Artificial Morality would be calamitous
October 13 2016 I cannot in any way be characterized as a Luddite, one of those people who suffer from a morbid fear of technological advances as were witnessed in England at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The term “Luddite” itself is supposed to have come from Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire worker who led his fellow proletarians to wreck machinery because technical innovations threatened workers’ jobs. By the standards…...
Follow Tanga and Copenhagen; get on your bike and ride
September 29 2016 – Most of our cities on the African continent are bursting at the seams with motor-vehicle traffic. It is divine bliss when one finds oneself in a capital city like Lilongwe, Malawi, where one can afford to take out one’s car for a pleasure ride around the town. Generally the scene is of a chaotic mélange of nauseating fumes, suffocating dust, blaring horns and foul-mouthed drivers and…...
It’s open season on Blacks in the US, and transparency is said to be subjective
September 22 2016 – Am I alone in having this feeling, that we are witnessing unprecedented police shootings of African Americans in the United States? Feelings, of course, do not need empirical evidence to be credible, but I suspect that if one did a scientific study in this area, this feeling would be borne out. This is true: There is hardly a week that passes by these days without news…...