Silicon Savanna: Mobile Phones Transform Africa
The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called […]
Killing Fields: Africa’s Rhinos Under Threat
Nestled in the golden bush grass of an open savanna, a black rhinoceros lies on her side. Her head is haloed by a dried pool of blood. The animal’s horns have been sawed off at the stump. Her eyes have been gouged out. “That’s a new thing,” notes Rusty Hustler, the manager of South Africa’s […]
Making Over Lagos
In his epic 1976 anthem “Go Slow,” Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti described the traffic in his hometown of Lagos, casting it as a metaphor for Nigeria’s spiritual standstill. “Then your head start to ache because car crush they for your head,” he sang. “Lorry they for your front, tipper they for your back, motorcycle they […]
Kenya’s Banking Revolution
To meet the future of retail banking, cross Moi Avenue into the rougher part of downtown Nairobi, pass the Chicken Spot restaurant and squeeze between four stalls selling counterfeit mobile phones, and you’ll reach a door — and behind it a tiny room containing a hat stand, a wall calendar, a strip light and a […]
Land of Hope
Fed by drought, Africa’s deserts are spreading, bringing with them hunger, disease and tribal conflict. But innovative policies can push the deserts back Head north from Nairobi toward Mount Kenya and almost invariably you’ll hit weather. Fog, rain, hail, even snow, all unusual for the equator but a blessing for Mount Kenya’s farmers, who export […]
Why Zimbabwe’s New Diamonds Imperil Global Trade
New mines in Zimbabwe help keep the despotic Robert Mugabe in power and threaten to undermine global efforts to eliminate blood diamonds Searching for the world’s newest blood-diamond bazaar, I arrive in Manica, Mozambique, near the border with Zimbabwe. It’s a sunny provincial town of shady bungalows and bright purple bougainvillea set around a central […]
China’s New Focus on Africa
If you want to see what’s wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling […]
South Africa: Playing the Rebel Game
Two of the most godforsaken soccer pitches in the world are on Robben Island, a flat rock battered by Antarctic winds and icy waves in the southern Atlantic, 6 miles (about 10 km) off Cape Town on the tip of Africa. The island’s isolation made it a natural prison for British colonists, who kept their […]
First Person: Imprisoned in Zimbabwe
Jailed for reporting, a TIME reporter sees that for most of its citizens, Robert Mugabe’s nation is itself a prison A bad jail wastes a body quickly. When I entered Cell 6 at Gwanda police station, I was fit. After five days in a concrete and iron-bar tank, with no food and only a few […]
