Gender justice: stories of gender, science & development from around the world

In this podcast, the tech activist discusses the pioneering women at the forefront of Africa’s tech revolution.

http://www.scidev.net/global/gender/multimedia/q-a-mari-me-jamme-on-africa-s-girl-coder-generation.html

Q&A: Mariéme Jamme on Africa’s girl coder generation

In this podcast, researcher Kate Shaw uncovers why physics in Palestine is not just for men

Palestine’s female physicists offer lessons for the West

For World Humanitarian Day today, we speak to Bayard Roberts, director of the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and a member of the school’s Centre for Global Mental Health. 

Drawing on his research in South Sudan and Uganda, Roberts explains some of the impacts of exposure to conflict on mental health and discusses the challenges to providing better mental health services, particularly for women and young people. He describes how research can help build stronger, more cost-effective and culturally appropriate mental health services, and he outlines ideas for how the international community could work more closely with researchers to provide these kinds of services to communities affected by war.  

http://www.scidev.net/global/conflict/multimedia/impact-war-mental-health.html


Q&A: The impact of war on mental health

Earlier this year, the 2014 Royal Society Pfizer Prize was awarded to Kenyan scientist Faith Osier for her efforts to understand human immunity to malaria in endemic areas of Kenya. 

The prize is given to young African scientists making outstanding contributions to the biological sciences on the continent. Last week, Osier, who works at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust research programme in Kilifi, Kenya, gave a presentation on her work at the Royal Society in London, United Kingdom, and was awarded a visiting professorship at the University of Oxford. 

In this interview, she explains to SciDev.Net how her team’s research into child and adult immunity to malaria can aid vaccine development, and about plans to carry out further related studies on immunity across seven African countries over the next five years. She also shares her thoughts on how to improve links between researchers and policymakers in East Africa, and on creating a more supportive environment for girls and women pursuing scientific careers in Kenya. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/malaria/multimedia/malaria-vaccine-research-africa.html

Q&A: Rolling out malaria vaccine research across Africa

[LIMA] Gender is an important item on the agenda at the UN’s COP 20 climate meeting under way in Peru. Issues on the negotiating table include the goal of boosting women’s participation to improve the gender balance both in the talks and parties connected with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process.

In this podcast, Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of UN Women, the UN body for gender equality and women’s empowerment, explains the links between gender and action against climate change. She also describes the progress made in acknowledging that climate change will affect women differently to men, as well as the need for gender equality in decision-making bodies.

Puri also outlines her expectations from Lima and her views on how to implement the gender agenda, including the need to plug the gender gap in data collection and analysis.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/support-women-climate-action-gender.html

Q&A: Support women to be ‘agents of climate action’

In this audio feature, radio broadcasters and experts discuss why radio remains the cornerstone of how we connect.

http://www.scidev.net/global/human-rights/multimedia/radio-power-communication-human-rights-audio.html

Radio’s enduring power in changing lives

[LONDON] Over the past five years there has been an explosion in tech-based projects and businesses across Africa, says technologist and campaigner Mariéme Jamme. But for such enterprise to flourish, governments need to do more to support vibrant local technologies and knowledge-based economies. 
	
Jamme’s support for female-led ihubs and coder networks across the continent has seen women — both young and old — create and run successful tech enterprises with ever-expanding networks of clients and projects. Here she talks about the progress made by the women she mentors, and the infrastructure barriers that must be removed to make tech sustainable and profitable.

This interview was recorded at Through the people’s lens, an exhibition and panel debate organised by the Overseas Development Institute and the NGO PhotoVoice in London, United Kingdom, on 26 February. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/gender/multimedia/marime-jamme-african-tech-pioneers.html


Q&A: Mariéme Jamme on new hurdles for African tech pioneers

In 2002, after decades of war followed by Taliban oppression, Afghanistan’s university system was in tatters, says Osman Babury, the nation’s deputy minister of higher education, in this audio interview. Just 7,000 students were enrolled in university — and all of them male as the Taliban restricted female education. Thirteen years later, there are over 300,000 students in higher education, 50,000 of them women.

But the path to a fully functioning higher education system remains beset by challenges. Persistent conflict, political volatility and the threat of Taliban attacks — including on universities themselves — make providing higher education a struggle. 

Stress and mental health problems stemming from long-term exposure to war and oppressive regimes affect huge numbers of Afghan students. And as universities in Afghanistan and worldwide increasingly become targets for extremist attacks — the devastating Garissa attack in Kenya in April being the most recent high-profile example — giving students and staff training in how to deal with these threats becomes ever more vital, Babury says. 

In this interview, Babury discusses these and other challenges, and suggests ways to tackle them head-on.

The interview was recorded on 2 June at the British Council’s Going Global conference on international education, in London, United Kingdom.

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/afghan-universities-violence-war-conflict.html

Building Afghan universities in the face of violence

Corruption is neither black nor white but fifty shades of grey, explains Alina Rocha Menocal, in this audio interview. Any attempts to tackle it must take such nuances into account. 

Rocha Menocal is a senior research fellow in the Developmental Leadership Program at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and co-author of Why corruption matters, a 2015 report published by the UK Department for International Development. 

Here she lifts the lid on myths surrounding corruption — including the alarming development that, rather than stamping it out, the transition of many regimes from authoritarian to democratic government during the 1980s  entrenched new forms of graft. In states where institutions of accountability are weak, the democratic process is often “where much of the business of corruption happens”, Rocha Menocal says. There’s a lot of money involved, “both legal and completely dirty”.  

Another issue is that “corruption is not the sole domain of the developing world … [but] exists everywhere”.  According to Rocha Menocal, developed countries are often responsible for propping up corrupt practices in the global South. Meanwhile, mechanisms for measuring and analysing corruption vary across different contexts, making it difficult to compare across countries, continents or regions. Breaking down what people mean when they use the word “corruption” and putting in place robust mechanisms for measuring and analysing it will be a vital first step towards its eradication, she says. 


The interview was recorded at Corruption and Development, an event at University College London, United Kingdom, on 29 June. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/governance/multimedia/hidden-faces-corruption-dfid.html


The hidden faces of corruption

In a continent of 54 countries, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for development, but the value of science and technology transcends national differences, says Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, the new president of Mauritius, in this audio interview.

“We know that science and technology have been very important tools for improving livelihoods, creating wealth and, of course, changing the destiny of many countries,” she says. Mauritius is a country “at a crossroads” economically, and should now build on its strong literacy base to advance research and science-led development, she adds. 

At the heart of this move to boost science should be an investigation into local and traditional knowledge, Gurib-Fakim says. Traditional healers and medicines have been overlooked for too long, and scientists and governments alike should now dig deeper into this rich repository of knowledge and ‘creole remedies’ to find and develop medicines, she explains. The kind of “translational research” that Gurib-Fakim has been doing as a chemist can help turn local knowledge into health products for use worldwide, generating new businesses and livelihood opportunities that connect the local with the global. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/governance/multimedia/mauritian-president-traditional-medicine-matters.html 


Mauritian president on why traditional medicine matters

When the NGO Field Ready first arrived at a health clinic in Haiti, they found the hospital’s maternity ward dangerously short of equipment. Nurses and doctors were using makeshift tools to clamp the umbilical cords of new-born babies. So the team began printing umbilical cord clamps using 3D printing presses, trained up the staff, and this kind of printing is still in use today, long after Field Ready left the island. Rather than buying expensive equipment, which is usually imported at great cost from China and elsewhere, healthworkers can now simply print off such kit as and when they need them. 

In this audio interview, Laura James, advisor to Field Ready, which specialises in 3D printing for humanitarian relief, explains that umbilical cord clamps are just one use for this important, rapidly evolving technology. They hope to develop the capacity to create spare car parts and the more straightforward but no less vital tool, buckets – both items that are in high demand but short supply in the global south, with countries too often reliant on expensive imports.  

In time, Field Ready hope to create a global network of 3D printing technicians and designers who, through online manuals and forums, can share designs and ideas across continents and contexts. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/innovation/multimedia/3d-printing-emergency-healthcare-haiti-maternity.html


3D printing can revolutionise emergency healthcare

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

The contrast between the passionate ideals of the UN International Day of Peace this week (21 September) and the tragic reality of world politics in the closing months of 2015 couldn’t be starker. In 2014 180,000 people were killed in conflicts – over three times the number killed in 2010. In June the UN reported that 60 million people are now displaced from their homes — more than at any point since records began. Of the 19 million refugees, half are children. These are brutal, shameful statistics — each number representing a life destroyed or damaged, a family blown apart. Today, "strenthening the ideals of peace, within and among all nations and peoples" — as the UN said 21 September should be used for back in 1981 — feels more beyond our grasp than ever. 

In this audio interview, we speak to Ray Acheson, director of Reaching Critical Will, a disarmament research and advocacy programme at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the oldest women’s peace organisation in the world. She talks about the link between deadly technologies, the global arms trade and the wars now raging around the world, and the importance of public and political recognition of the connections between weapons sales and the growing refugee crisis.   

Acheson discusses the gendered impacts of weapons — from the role of small firearms in sexual and gender-based violence, to the ways nuclear radiation affects women and men’s bodies differently. She explains how social constructions of gender and gender roles can “reinforce the sense of men as militants, reinforcing violent masculinities, and undermining women.” And she explains why it so important to get more women around the table during peacebuilding discussions — not only to promote gender equality and break down essentialist ideas of masculine and feminine characteristics, but also to ensure the practical knowledge women often have about the mechanics of their communities feed into and shape agreements to build a more socially relevant, robust, and lasting peace.   

http://www.scidev.net/global/conflict/multimedia/women-deadly-tech-war-refugees.html


Women should be at the heart of peacebuilding talks

HIV is no longer the death sentence it used to be. With early diagnosis and treatment, people infected with the virus can now live long and relatively normal lives, and can avoid passing it to their children through pregnancy or breastfeeding. Access to free antiretroviral treatment remains far from universal — only half of those who need it get treatment — but it is improving. 

But the idea of HIV as a death sentence persists, with devastating effect, as filmmaker Tom Gibb explains in this interview for today’s World AIDS Day. Gibb makes films for the Medical Research Council and World Health Organization that aim to make health research in Sub-Saharan Africa accessible to medics, policymakers and funders.  

Another strand of his filmmaking explores how interactive drama workshops and film screenings help reduce HIV stigma and change behaviour among rural people in Malawi and Zimbabwe, as he explains here. Gibb has also teamed up with Together as One, a Harare-based youth group, to test out a filmmaking technique that aims to immerse viewers in the experiences of a young woman in Zimbabwe living with HIV. The resulting film, Chiedza’s Song — Growing up with HIV in Zimbabwe, has its UK premiere this evening at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.


Immersive film seeks to end HIV stigma

The Zika crisis unfolding in Latin America calls for the lessons learnt from the Ebola epidemic to be put into practice. 

When it comes to field response, aid agencies must recognise the importance of culturally sensitive public health information delivered by trusted messengers. 

Anne Bennett is the director of Hirondelle USA, a non-profit organisation that supports radio development in countries emerging from conflict or facing humanitarian crises. 

In this audio interview, she says that “top-down messages with a government stamp” often lack credibility in public health crises because they show a poor understanding of the everyday challenges people face. 

Take the directive from five Latin American governments telling women to avoid getting pregnant for two years, for example. “While that message might be sound biomedical advice,” Bennett says, “it’s entirely impractical for most women, especially women from vulnerable communities who don’t have access to family planning … and [where] there are high levels of sexual violence.” 

This is where community radio stations can step in, Bennett says. These stations are “trusted agents”, ideally placed to deliver information in local languages that takes into account both public health guidelines and cultural realities. 

The interview was recorded at the World Radio Day 2016 celebrations organised by SOAS Radio and the Communication for Development Network at SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom, on 15 February. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/multimedia/local-radio-zika-crisis-ebola.html

The power of local radio in the Zika crisis

What are the language barriers facing refugees and what tools can help bridge these linguistic gaps? Rebecca Petras of Translators Without Borders talks to Imogen Mathers. 

Bridging the language gap in the European refugee crisis

In the face of an earthquake or cyclone, what would you do first? Most people, I imagine, would rush to a place of safety, find out what was going on, and make contact with their families. But what if you didn’t know the language of those around you or understand emergency bulletins broadcast or appearing on billboards, television or mobile screens?   

This is what happens to many of the world’s 60 million people displaced living in countries prone to environmental disasters or conflict,  as well as for local people who do not speak the language of government and public broadcasts. 
When crises strike, it’s not just the emergency itself that affects people: actually understanding what is going on and where to get help is a challenge. 

The breakdown in communication between aid workers and affected people following the Haiti earthquake of 2010 prompted the global translation NGO Translators Without Borders to form their ‘Words of Relief’ crisis project. The team have spent the past two years analysing the information needs of people in crises, designing tech-based tools to aid communication, and training up internet translation engines to recognise more obscure languages like Nepali, Dari and Pashto. 

Their deputy director, Rebecca Petras, tells us more in this interview. 


Tech tools break down language barriers in emergencies

Hear Ameenah Gurib-Fakim explain how a PhD fund will build pan-African science expertise in critical sectors.

Africa’s 54 countries have wildly differing economic outlooks and research landscapes. But across the board, they suffer from a shortage of local scientific skills needed to improve access to water, energy, nutritious food and reliable health systems, says Mauritian President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim in this audio interview. 

This is where a new PhD fund, coordinated by the African Academy of Sciences and the Planet Earth Institute, of which Gurib-Fakim is vice-chair, plans to help. The idea is that students will focus on sectors in critical need of attention. 

Health is a good example. The West African Ebola epidemic revealed the catastrophic state of health research capacity and education in the affected countries, and how detrimental this can be to containing disease, Gurib-Fakim says. “If we had the testing ability and the basic education around the sciences — hygiene for example — we probably, and hopefully, would not have had the human disaster that we saw during the Ebola crisis.”

“Industry-relevant research” will also underpin a PhD project that aims to forge much closer relationships between the private sector and researchers. But will this carry a human price? Gurib-Fakim weighs the pros and cons of handing the reins of research to industry. 


Link African labs to industry, says Mauritian president

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. 