Rural Reporters Top 5 Pick
It’s the beginning of a new week and as part of our tradition, Rural Reporters collates a weekly report on development in rural Africa and its environs. The reports include are some of our top picks of recent must-read research, interviews, reports, blogs and in-depth articles to help you keep on top of global crises.
Here are top updates from the previous week.
The Rural Kenyan School That Collects Water For The Community
The Uaso Nyiro Primary School – the first of its kind in Africa – is a solid, single-storey cylindrical structure with walls made of local stone. Rainwater is collected from a 600m2 pitched roof catchment area and harvested through a low-tech ceramic water filtration system, which purifies the water for immediate use by the pupils and nearby families. Its solar-powered pumps, tanks and filter banks are capable of filtering larger quantities of water stored in a 150,000-litre reservoir underneath the central courtyard, and pumped daily to provide drinking water on demand.
The school was designed by British architects Jane Harrison and David Turnbull, founders of the non-profit PITCHAfrica. It was completed in early 2013 for around £36,000, the same cost of a typical four-classroom school building, but has twice the space and indoor vegetable gardens. A collaboration with local NGO the Zeitz Foundation, the school was funded by the Guernsey Overseas Aid Commission, a non-governmental body based in the Channel Islands specialising in grant aid to charities with projects in the developing world.
South Africa: North West Ready to Launch Agri-Parks
It’s all systems go for the implementation of agri-parks in the North West province.
This after the recentvisit by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti and the North West MEC for Rural Environmental and Agricultural Development, Manketsi Tlhape, to the agri-park at Springbokpan.
The visit was to assess the state of readiness of the Springbokpan silos. The Silo is being refurbished as part of the establishment of agri-parks in the province.
Rethinking Rural Development in Namibia and Beyond
This I learned from my third-year students as we were theorising about development work – organising, planning and implementing – with rural communities.
Let me say it. Here at the University of Namibia (Unam), we think big, and do big things! It’s about time that I reflect about a lecturer’s life in a classroom at Namibia’s first public institution, an institution at the forefront of opening, moulding and shaping Namibia and the world’s best minds.
We said that there is a century-long tradition of rural community development work throughout the world, and that reality is not lost on Namibia or Africa.
A lot, however, when it comes to rural development, still needs to be done on the African continent. In developed countries’, like Sweden and the US, rural life is robust, well-developed and more affluent. In reverse, extreme poverty, high concentration of unemployment and underdevelopment characterise rural Namibia/Africa.
On why women would rather give birth at home instead of going to the hospital, Mrs. Paul said, “It is not midwives that conduct home delivery but Traditional Birth Attendants. They aid home delivery and we call them TBA. There are challenges that comes with these home delivery, one is that the TBA do not have the equipment to perform a safe delivery and if there is a complication, they do not know how to sought it out. This in most cases result to the death of either the mother or the baby. After birth these TBA cannot tell of the possible outcome unlike hospitals where if there is a complication, it will be looked into immediately. For instance, when a newly born is short of oxygen, TBA cannot handle that situation but the hospital can.
Lessons From The 48th Session Of The United Nations Commission On Population And Development (Cpd48)
The reality of our world as a global village demands that we have common positions against common threats and take advantage of global opportunities to boost peace and security, technology, trade among other shared interests. Whereas we must acknowledge our different cultural and religious backgrounds we must never behave like the proverbial ostrich who continued to hide the head in the sand and hoped the danger will go away. More important though, we need to ensure we don’t repeat the same ills that impeded realization of previous goals as we prepare to embark on the proposed Sustainable Development Goals. As such we need we need stronger accountability and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to keep on telling us where we are and what we need to do to measure progress and achieve the plethora of targets.
