Robyn Whittaker of Partners for Possibility discusses the impact of education-innovation partnerships on schools

At Kannymeyer Primary School on the Cape Flats, we spoke to teachers and pupils about the challenges they face and their hopes for the future

Many children, particularly those from Afrikaans families, are given extra support to improve their English through a 'Living through Learning' programme

In the IT room, a combination of digital tech and teacher support guides pupils through curriculum-based maths courses

Ridwan Samodien, the principal, shows me around the science lab

Talking to the pupils about their hopes and plans for the future

A new school library operates like a public library and can borrow books from a network of libraries in the community

The principal and vice principal discuss the impact of partnerships, and the school's plans

I asked Ridwan Samodien if these kind of partnerships could be problematic for education support at a broader level

Ridwan Samodien reflects on changes in the education sector since the 1976 Soweto uprising, and on his own journey

The Burmese pro-democracy leader won world-wide respect for her courage and resilience during her long imprisonment by the military government in Myanmar. But she's disappointed some people who think she should be more vocal in defence of other victims of oppression.  A radio essay by Jill McGivering, who's been following her career for decades.   

Aung San Suu Kyi and the disappointments of practical politics

[NAIROBI] Africa is said to be one of the fastest growing continents economically. But the continent still faces numerous challenges in addressing its developmental needs even as it strives to catch up with the developed world, according to IBM Africa’s Vice President, Kamal Bhattacharya.

In this podcast, SciDev.Net talks to him on the role of his organisation’s lab in data collection and analysis, and how this can translate into tangible solutions for Africa’s developmental challenges and policy making.

 “IBM opened this lab in Nairobi, Kenya, to help find solutions to the continent’s grand challenges in areas such as energy, transport, health and agriculture,” Battacharya tells SciDev.Net. He urges African governments to build local applications and solutions to the continent’s challenges.

IBM Research - Africa is the first commercial technology research facility on the continent conducting both applied and far-reaching exploratory research. According to Bhattacharya, the lab has been encouraging and strengthening an innovative culture, and building partnerships with businesses, research organisations, governments and universities across Africa and around the world.

For instance, IBM worked with Mobile Service provider, Airtell, to collect and analyse data on people’s perceptions of hygiene and Ebola in Sierra Leone.

This article has been produced by SciDev.Net's Sub-Saharan Africa desk.

http://www.scidev.net/sub-saharan-africa/data/multimedia/data-ibm-research-africa.html


IBM's Lab Role In Data Collection And Analysis

This week the UN released a report revealing that 17,000 homes and other buildings in part of the occupied Palestinian West Bank known as Area C are under threat of demolition by Israel. It reiterates the shocking vulnerability of Palestinians living in Area C, which covers 60 per cent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control.

Life in Area C can be brutal for Palestinians. The UN reports that over 70 per cent of communities are not connected to the water grid, many have no electricity, and around six thousand people live within Israeli ‘firing zones’ used by the military. An Israeli-Palestinian NGO sets up small-scale renewable energy and clean water systems for Palestinians living high in the hills of Mount Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Elad Orian, the cofounder of Comet-ME, tells me “the Israeli authorities have been trying for a long while to drive these people off their land”. Withholding energy and water is part of this “political campaign”, he says.

The off-grid energy systems Comet-ME builds tap into this arid region’s intense sunshine and strong winds to produce clean, sustainable energy for homesteads and villages. As Orian explains in this audio interview, access to a small amount of energy each day can transform lives and livelihoods, particularly for women, who carry out the bulk of domestic tasks and who take care of cheese production that is the staple of livelihoods here. 


Battle for basic services in occupied Palestine

In the podcast this week, a language map of the brain, listening for landslides a year after the Nepal quake, and the Soviet internet that never was.

Nature Podcast: 28 April 2016 – brain dictionary, Soviet internet and Nepal one year on.

This week’s ‘UN Gender Focus’ from the United Nations is presented by Janie Cangelosi.

She brings you the following stories:
- Geneva takes diplomatic approach to gender equality 
- Health needs of women and children in conflict zones neglected 
- Future “catastrophic” unless climate action is taken

UN Gender Focus: gender equality, SDGs and climate change

This week’s ‘UN Global Perspective’ from the United Nations is presented by Dianne Penn.

She brings you the following stories:
- UN embraces concept of “sustaining peace” 
- 60 million people worldwide affected by El Niño phenomenon
- Palmyra archeological site has “maintained its integrity and authenticity” 


UN Global Perspective: focus on peacebuilding, El Niño and Palmyra archeological site

The state of education in South Africa has been the focus of sustained protest and political debate over the past 18 months. With the rise of the student-led Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall campaigns in early 2015, debates have raged over the escalating price of university education, the content of curriculums and broader problems of social inequality. 
But there are massive problems in the primary and secondary sectors too. Access to quality education remains deeply unequal and divided along social lines. Critics say the government has done far too little to improve education in the 22 years since the end of apartheid, and in many areas the situation seems to be getting worse, with overcrowding, and inadequate resources and staff. About 80 per cent of South Africa’s 25,000 schools are officially classified as struggling. 
In this audio feature, recorded in Cape Town in May, I speak to primary teachers and students as well as education experts from the Partners for Possibility programme, which is working to overhaul government primary schools. It is building partnerships between school principals and local business leaders to bring the innovation and creative skills of South Africa’s flourishing business sector into state education. Together, principals and their business partners assess what the problems facing schools are and come up with solutions. Funding and training collaborations between businesses, universities and local civil society then work to put these in place. 
Central to this is the idea of schools as the hub of communities, connecting parents, families, teachers and local organisations. I visited Kannemeyer Primary School in a neighbourhood in the Cape Flats, a series of townships lying on the south-west fringes of Cape Town. There I spoke to the principal, staff and students of the school about the challenges facing South African education, and what they have been doing to tackle these head on. “We need to get every school to develop and restore full citizenship to all our children,” the principal, Ridwan Samodien, told me. “All the adults, all the citizens need to hold the hands of our children, so that together we can get our children on the correct path to success and to make a meaningful difference in this country.”  

With thanks to the staff and pupils of Kannymeyer Primary School, Cape Town. 
http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/partnerships-south-african-schools.html

New partnerships bring hope to South African schools

For most people a doctor is probably the first port of call when it comes to informFor most people a doctor is probably the first port of call when it comes to information about how to keep in good health. Still, much guidance gets broadcast by the media, and in developing countries the radio remains a major source of public health advice.

But just how much is the impact of the mass media? Do they save lives, and at what cost? 

For five years, the West African country of Burkina Faso has been a testing ground for a media campaign designed to answer these elusive questions using the gold standard of scientific study, a cluster-randomised clinical trial. The trial targeted child mortality, treating the media as any other health intervention and measuring lives saved after three years of continuous radio programming with information about behaviours that can prevent disease, such as taking a child to a health centre.

SciDev.Net spoke to the project’s leader, Roy Head, CEO of the social enterprise Development Media International. Head explains the rationale behind the study and offers a preview of the results, due to be published later this year. 

The interview was recorded on 23 February at the 2017 ISNTD Festival organised by the International Society of Neglected Tropical Diseases in London, UK.
ation about how to keep in good health. Still, much guidance gets broadcast by the media, and in developing countries the radio remains a major source of public health advice.

But just how much is the impact of the mass media? Do they save lives, and at what cost? 

For five years, the West African country of Burkina Faso has been a testing ground for a media campaign designed to answer these elusive questions using the gold standard of scientific study, a cluster-randomised clinical trial. The trial targeted child mortality, treating the media as any other health intervention and measuring lives saved after three years of continuous radio programming with information about behaviours that can prevent disease, such as taking a child to a health centre.

SciDev.Net spoke to the project’s leader, Roy Head, CEO of the social enterprise Development Media International. Head explains the rationale behind the study and offers a preview of the results, due to be published later this year. 

The interview was recorded on 23 February at the 2017 ISNTD Festival organised by the International Society of Neglected Tropical Diseases in London, UK.

http://www.scidev.net/global/health/multimedia/mass-media-save-lives-the-evidence.html

Do mass media save lives? The evidence is in

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 

New partnerships bring hope to South African schools

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