THIS GENERATIONER

Wednesday April 30, 2014 Refuting Myths About Africa’s Poverty Recently I watched a TEDx post on Youtube where the speaker was presenting a talk on what he termed as unlocking wrong myths about Africa. World re-known campaigning and community education expert Simon Moss shared with the audience how he had done some research over some time about the presentation he was making and was amazed at how much Africans understand Africa plus its problems themselves and the resulting solutions they were offering for these problems.    The talk itself was a revelation of the fact that there is always a side of the story that is not told to the people who need to hear that particular information most. Africans have been made to believe that this continent and by extension them, are not doing any better and are only getting worse by the day. This negative kind of information about Africa has been made very available to everyone in the world who would be interested ...

April 29, 2014 The future is richer for most established artists in Kenya.Is there Opportunity Inequality though? Any hardworking artist in Kenya will attest to the fact that making a name for yourself in the industry is no mean feat. But then again the question is whether it is making it in Nairobi as the art  center  of the country or in Kenya that has in the past few years positioned itself as the best place to be an artist at in the whole of East and Central Africa. With the launch of the first modern art auction in Nairobi last November by Circle Art Agency, the city under the sun drew attention from all over the world and definitely positioned itself as the best place to be at in the region if you are a professional artist. And even after the art auction ended, there have been a great deal of art events and gatherings in the city that have augmented even further the gains made in and by the arts fraternity in Kenya. More art centers to promote establish...

Thursday April 24, 2014 The Internet needs Content. Create! For thousands of years libraries were known to be the one place you could access books and other reads from. You had to physically go to access the information. There wasn’t an alternative of where to get resources to study for your exams for example or looking for the correct spelling and pronunciation of a word other than the dictionary that is in the library. “The book in the library says this! We can’t do that! …” I can imagine some library loyalist saying that to defend what he had read in the library arguing with someone who had not read from a book in the library but was probably right! And so people had made it cool to have a large collection of books kept safely in a certain shelf in the house where only fathers for example could access the books. It is even still a common thing to flip the cover of a book and find the writings “XXXX family library” In short, there is satisfaction in having content ...

Wednesday April 23, 2014. This Is The Social Innovation Safari! (Part 3) Recently I got a chance to catch up with Bestoon from the Social Innovation Safari through Wats app where we got to share a lot. I pitched the idea of him sharing his experience during the Safari with us through an interview to be conducted through e-mail then to be shared on my blog and he responded to the proposal positively. Here are his accounts of the just ended East African Social Innovation Safari. TG: This Safari was the first of its kind in East Africa. The participants and coaches were from all over the world.Having taken part up to the very end of it, are you positive that the insights imparted on participants are practicable in all disciplines and regions of the world? Bestoon: Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely! I have to admit that in the beginning I was very hesitant and was pessimistic about the merger of my background and having to conduct this safari in...

Sunday April 13 2014 This Is The Social Innovation Safari! (Part 2) The Social Safari is proving to be a very intensive process for some of the participants. However, the knowledge and skills being shared in this activity are very sensible and enjoyable to the extent that I would hate myself for missing now that I know what is really going down here. Cultures are blending, arguments are being made, ideas are being developed, ideas are embracing each other and at the end of it all everyone looks back and smiles at just how much the activity taught them something more. “ Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”   ―   Marie Curie What I am finding most important is how practicality is just put aside at times and the imagination of participants is triggered. Your mind is opened, your ingenuity is challenged.  Competition is put aside and matters are handled objectively. Bestoon is having a good time; I am having a good time. It’s ...

Thursday April 10,2014 This Is The Social Innovation Safari! (Part 1) The inaugural Social Innovation Safari kicked off on the evening of Sunday April 6 at Grace House Resort in Nairobi. The participants were treated to an opening dinner that saw them meet colleagues from cultures some of them had never interacted with before. Most notable was the Iraqi, Bestoon who has so far become one of my closest friends in the whole group. Surprisingly, I also came across Tim here. Tim’s a chap we went to the same high school with but we never talked while there. You see he was in fourth form while I was just a first former. And of course bullying happened. It  wasn't  him who bullied me but I remember he was friends with some of the notorious bullies in school. So on Tuesday morning after visiting the premises of the organizations that we were to help innovate solutions to on Monday, we headed to Naivasha for a camping session. The one hour nature walk that took ...

Friday, April 4, 2014. The Art of Churchill Ongere Finally Freedom!! Churchill Ongere (b. Kisumu, Kenya) immersed himself into art just as he was almost clearing high school in order to explore his imaginations and creativity. He began his career in 2009 as a sketch artist and later on transitioned between poetry, graphitti, rap, paint works and currently collage works. Against The Quiet .  Ongere is heavily influenced by the conversations around him and as he says, “I communicate through my art what I don’t hear people say during the conversations I have with them”. He attributes his inclination to works with political themes to being a liberally minded individual right from primary school to high school where History and Government was his favorite subject up to now that he is pursuing his undergraduate degree in Political Science at a top university in Kenya. To The Cop Station He points to the Fela Kuti, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Michael Soi, Kendell Geers, ...

Wednesday, April 2, 2014. Google Africa Connected Competition winners announced Yesterday afternoon’s award ceremony in Nairobi marked the culmination of Google’s Africa Connected Competition where five out of the top ten finalists were named as the winners. Sitawa Wafula from Kenya, Eseoghene Odiete from Nigeria, Christopher Panford from Ghana, Eric Obuh from Nigeria and Eunice Namirembe were chosen as the top five winners after being selected from a list of ten finalists. The initial number of entries into the continental competition was 2, 200 from across 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The winners during the award ceremony in Nairobi on April 1st All of the remaining five finalists from the initial ten finalists went home with 10,000 USD each while the five winners each got cash prizes of 25,000 USD towards the ventures and activities they highlighted in their competition entries. Google Africa announced that although the competition has come to a...

Tuesday April 1, 2014 The solutions offered by the Google Africa Connected success stories competition finalists are viable in all developing societies. Adopt them. (Part 3)  Sitawa Wafula  is an influential blogger on mental health in Kenya and East Africa. She has used Google Blogger to establish her award winning blog as a source of reference for people looking for support and information on the topic. Sitawa aspires to build a resource center where people that have mental health issues can gain access to information online and all the help they need to manage their conditions. With a mobile phone that can access the internet, one is able to reach voluminous information about anything from health to music. The constraints that limited the amount of information people could access for example distance to a library, out-dated resource centers and language barriers have been eliminated by the internet. The sharing of information from one source to many others is als...