Links I liked

Thinking of this beautiful view in Durban on a rainy day here in Berkeley

• The security situation in Burundi seems to be getting worse.  The government has recently banned the country’s leading human rights league and arrested the head of a union in the prominent tea sector.  En plus, le ministre de l’Environnement a été assassiné.

• Ken Opalo has some essential reading on electoral integrity issues in Kenya ahead of the August 2017 elections.  This was an interesting piece on the small but growing market for affordable housing in Nairobi.  And the use of mobile money may have pulled up to 200,000 Kenyans out of poverty over the last decade.

• Africa’s commodity boom has been driven in part by China’s 2001 accession to the WTO.  New evidence from Zambia suggests that we may have been dramatically overestimating the number of Chinese citizens working in Africa.

• Challenging stories of the day: this piece about Joseph Kabila’s family-run business empire is a masterpiece of reporting, but also suggests that he has many incentives not to leave power in 2017 as he’s agreed.  US special forces are increasingly likely to get involved in African conflicts.  Zambia’s energy sector shows the risks of depending on hydropower in the age of climate change.

• Hopeful stories of the day: a new Ebola vaccine has been declared safe and effective.  Lagos is a beacon of religious tolerance.  You can now stay up to date with Kim Dionne’s new Ufahamu Africa podcast, and submit effective anti-poverty interventions for replication by Evidence Action.

• There’s lots of opportunity in the higher education sector in Africa.  Want to start a university?  The ten most populous countries in Africa have only 1 university per million people, as compared to 16 per million in the US.  Want to reach non-traditional students?  The American University of Nigeria is using technology to provide online courses to displaced people.  Concerned about access to materials?  Check out the 3D printer that students in Ghana built from electronic waste.

• So many good books by African authors, so little time!  Here’s Writivism’s list of their 21 favorite books of 2016, and Bookshy’s list of 14 new books to look forward to in 2017.  Add this new translation of the earliest known biography of an African woman to your list as well.  Africa in Words has a lovely article on the intersection between law and literature in Uganda.  And here are two ways of looking at the South African publishing market.

• Enthusiasm for universal basic income is spreading, with new pilot projects recently announced in Scotland and Finland.  An interesting argument for the positive effects of UBI is that it already exists for the 1% in the form of capital income.

• Video of the week: I’m about a year behind the times, but I just found Blitz the Ambassador‘s beautiful, heartbreaking Afro-Brazilian-inspired video for “Running,” and I can’t stop watching.