jra's thoughts

Category: Africa

  • Community Finance in West Africa

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    Vasco Pyjama talks about community finance. The ROSCA is known as a “sou-sou” in west Africa, or at least in Nimba county, Liberia. Sousous run for a fixed term, based on the number of members. If there are 10 members and the contribution is $10, each month one of the members will get $90 (9…

  • Repair vs Replace

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    What are the economic effects of the repair vs replace decision? Interesting question, that. If you missed “more local employment of the blue collar type”, go read this: There is a slight diversion of purchasing strategy, repair rather than replace. This feeds a blue collar industry in the local region. It used to be, when…

  • My favorite things, all at once!

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    Yay for old friends, economics, and technology! All at once! kc wrote a blog posting with her humble ideas on how to use IP address space tax. Wait… there’s a tax on address space? Yes, because it has become a scare quantity, because people are too lazy to move to IPv6, IPv4 address space is…

  • O’Reilly Ignite, UK North

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    Tonight I am giving a talk the Old Broadcasting House at O’Reilly Ignite, UK North. Here are my slides. Update: There’s a video here.

  • Malaria Medicine Advice

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    A friend sent me this question: Speaking of healthy, when you’re in Africa, do you take malaria medication the whole time you’re there? Is 45 days too long to take it? First, taking it 45 days is no big deal. It’s taking it for months on end (9, 18, 60) that is not recommended —…

  • The Skills Exist, Use Them!

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    One of the headlines that came out of my trip to Freetown was “The Skills Exist, Use Them!” First, a bit more about what I was doing there. I was on a contract with the Health Metrics Network, which is a project running under the auspices of the World Health Organization, but funded by the…

  • Hello, I’m back!

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    I am back from Freetown, freezing in Leeds. I’ve spent today trying to get software working including reinstalling Chrome (which started marking all words as misspelled) and Word Press which inexplicably started hanging. I’ll write a note, maybe this weekend, about what I was doing in Freetown. It was fun, and we got a lot…

  • An Interview with a DVD-man

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    Rare is the dinner in an expat restaurant in Africa which is not (politely and quietly) interrupted by a DVD-man. They have a stock of DVD’s in their backpacks, and work their way through the restaurant giving you a chance to peruse their wares. You have to see the DVDs to believe them, they are…

  • Hello from Freetown

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    I started a two week trip to Freetown, Sierra Leone yesterday. I am here as an IT consultant for the Health Metrics Network, part of the World Health Organization. We are taking a bunch of random hardware that the government bought with a not-quite-complete architecture and putting in place a foundation for IT services related…

  • More ideas on how to innovate to serve poor communities

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    Another reference I don’t want to lose: Innovation in Africa Tips. Also, why is it “in Africa”? What happened that Africa got so far behind, or is getting so much of the attention? Why don’t we advise people how to make a new clean water technology stick in SE Asia, or in South America anymore?…