PolyMatter: Why Statues are North Korea’s Biggest Export

 

Nautilus Magazine: The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming

Typically the preparation of the animal is where you have exposure. By the time it’s cooked and prepared, the virus would have been dead. It’s more common that transmission is through the animal shedding or people slaughtering the animal, when they’re exposed to bodily fluids, blood, and secretions. With the avian influenza from poultry, a lot of the exposure and infections go back to the preparation of chicken for cooking. In Egypt, for instance, when you look at who was infected, more common than not it was a woman, directly responsible for slaughtering and preparing the animal. [...]

Certainly. We’ve been able to identify bats as reservoirs for coronaviruses and documented specific bat populations as reservoirs for Ebola virus. We want to understand how each of these bats operate within an ecosystem. Do they have certain behaviors and practices that either keep them remote from or proximal to human populations? The bat population in which we isolated the Ebola virus in West Africa was a species of bat that also tends to co-roost within human housing, so it elevates the opportunity for spillover. [...]

Yes. EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO, and others, looked at all reported outbreaks since 1940. They came to a fairly solid conclusion that we’re looking at an elevation of spillover events two to three times more than what we saw 40 years earlier. That continues to increase, driven by the huge increase in the human population and our expansion into wildlife areas. The single biggest predictor of spillover events is land-use change—more land going to agriculture and more specifically to livestock production. [...]

Oh, sure. It was predictable. It’s like if you had no traffic laws and were constantly finding pedestrians getting whacked by cars as they crossed the street. Is that surprising? No. All you need to do is to better manage how we set up crosswalks, how we establish traffic rules and regulations. We’re not doing that. We’re not establishing the kind of safe practices that will minimize the opportunity for spillover. If we better understood where these viruses are circulating and understood that ecology, we would have the potential to disrupt and minimize the risk of spillover.

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SciShow: How Green Energy Could Bring More Rain to Africa

Africa’s Sahara desert is a prime location, some say, to build arrays of solar panels and wind turbines. But scientists are aware that building these structures can potentially have large-scale effects on the surrounding environment that are worth studying first.

WorldAffairs: The Promise of Africa: How Foreign Investment Affects Self-Sufficiency

Africa is home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world. By 2050, it will have a population greater than China and up to a quarter of the world’s workforce. More than half of its population will be under 25 – presenting tremendous growth potential with the right opportunities in place and posing significant risks without them. Governments and businesses from all over the world are scrambling to have a strong footing in Africa by strengthening ties and making investments. In this week’s episode, we’ll consider what countries – from within and outside Africa – stand to gain the most and more critically, how Africans might actually benefit from this investment. Amaka Anku, head of the Africa practice at Eurasia Group, Alex Vines, head of the Africa Program and research director for Risk, Ethics, and Resilience at Chatham House, and Jonathan Ledgard, founder of Droneport and Linnaeus, make the case for the promise of Africa's future with WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez.

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Overpopulation & Africa

For most of our history, the human population grew slowly. Until new discoveries brought us more food and made us live longer. In just a hundred years the human population quadrupled. This led to apocalyptic visions of an overcrowded earth. But the population growth rate actually peaked in the 1960s. Since then, fertility rates have crashed as countries industrialize and develop. World population is now expected to balance out at around 11 billion by the end of the century. But the big picture conceals the details.

Let us look at one region in particular: Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019 it was home to a billion people living in 46 countries. Although its growth rate has slowed down in the last few decades, it is still much higher than in the rest of the world. While some projections expect around 2.6 billion people others reckon with up to 5 billion by 2100. Such growth would be a huge challenge for any society. But Sub-Saharan Africa is also the poorest region on earth. So is Sub-Saharan Africa doomed? And why do the projections vary by 2.4 billion people?

WorldAffairs: What Comes Next? How the World's Most Violent Places Recover

The most violent places today are not at war. Eighty-three percent of all violent deaths occur outside of conflict zones, and in 2015, more people died violently in Brazil than in Syria’s civil war. Yet multiple places which were once engulfed in violence and instability have recovered and have since formed stable democracies. Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of "A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security", joins Markos Kounalakis, WorldAffairs co-host and visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, in conversation about how violent and weak states transform into stable ones.

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Reuters: Economic 'game changer'? African leaders launch free-trade zone

It is hoped that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 - will help unlock Africa’s long-stymied economic potential by boosting intra-regional trade, strengthening supply chains and spreading expertise. [...]

Africa has much catching up to do: its intra-regional trade accounted for just 17% of exports in 2017 versus 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe, and Africa has missed out on the economic booms that other trade blocs have experienced in recent decades. [...]

Members have committed to eliminate tariffs on most goods, which will increase trade in the region by 15-25% in the medium term, but this would more than double if these other issues were dealt with, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates. [...]

The zone’s potential clout received a boost on Tuesday when Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, agreed to sign the agreement at the summit. Benin has also since agreed to join. Fifty-four of the continent’s 55 states have now signed up, but only about half of these have ratified. [...]

The vast difference in countries’ economic heft is another complicating factor in negotiations. Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa account for over 50% of Africa’s cumulative GDP, while its six sovereign island nations represent about 1%.

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The Guardian: Should museums return their colonial artefacts?

Macron’s pledge and Killmonger’s heist had context. The preceding decade had brought growing demands for the restitution of artefacts taken from Africa by European colonists during the 19th century. If the case for the restitution of human remains to indigenous communities had been, by and large, acceded, the new frontier was works of art. The UN kickstarted the conversation in 2007 with article 11 of its declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, which urged states to restore “cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property” taken from indigenous people without their “free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs”. With that aim in mind, the Benin Dialogue Group was established the same year as part of an effort to get European museum curators talking to key representatives in Nigeria. [...]

A core objective of the Benin Dialogue Group was the creation of a permanent display in Benin City of objects once belonging to the former kingdom and now in continental hands. Last year, Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, called for international guidelines akin to the Washington principles (which address the restitution of Nazi-confiscated art to descendants of dispossessed, predominantly Jewish families) to help museums handle provenance research and repatriation of illegally acquired artworks in public collections. It is no coincidence that much of this thinking coincided with growing calls for western European nations to apologise for various “crimes” of empire, from the Germans in Namibia and the Dutch in Indonesia to the British in Kenya and India and the French in north Africa. [...]

At the same time, an exciting wave of new museums was announced across Africa. The Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar, Senegal, was opened in 2018, with capacity for about 18,000 objects, alongside a clear demand for some of that space to be filled by items currently housed in European museums. New projects are also scheduled for the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria, the Museum of National History in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the JK Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos. The opening of the Benin Royal Museum in Benin City is scheduled for 2021.

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The Calvert Journal: Afro-Poland: a revolutionary friendship, captured in rare photos from 1955-

Between 31 July and 14 August 1955, the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Warsaw. The festival — organised by the anti-imperialist and left-wing World Federation of Democratic Youth — gave Poles the opportunity to meet around 30,000 delegates from 114 countries, incorporating other Eastern Bloc allies, revolutionaries from South America and young socialists from the postwar capitalist West. 911 African delegates from colonial states still largely subordinate to European powers were also in attendance. For the communist leaders of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), this was a timely occasion to promote socialism and solidarity to the soon-to-be independent African states. For Polish citizens, this was one of the first opportunities to interact with non-white people after the destruction of the multicultural Second Polish Republic during the Second World War. [...]

Nowicki’s exhibition revealed the myriad ways in which PAD stood alongside white Poles during the communist era. The World Festival of Youth and Students was simply a starting point, after which students from Africa were encouraged to study at Polish universities — as well as elsewhere in the Soviet sphere of influence. This was most keenly emphasised in Poland following the events of 1960, when 17 African countries declared independence from colonial rule. The arrest and murder of the Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was widely covered in the Polish press, alongside solidarity protests in Warsaw. Photos from these demonstrations show Polish students hand-in-hand with PAD. According to Nowicki, this was — in part — a technique to depict a humane Poland in contrast to a brutal West. “They were really fighting against the Americans on the level of race,” he explains. “You could see how horrible American race rhetoric was, look what was happening to the people — lynching, and so on.” [...]

Omolo suggests that while Poles may have less contact with non-white people — compared to those in countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany — this does not entirely explain why PAD experience racism in Poland. Instead, he believes that Polish people have often been exposed to literature and screen media that demean those from the African continent, thereby perpetuating the idea that white people are superior. For Omolo, this makes Poles more likely to believe negative, unfounded stereotypes about PAD, such as those espoused by the PiS party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. “When Kaczyński said that Europe should not accept refugees from Africa because they’re carrying some diseases that are not in Europe — most of them bought it actually,” Omolo recounts. “What about Poles who visit Africa and come back? Are they not coming with some protozoa?”

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The Calvert Journal: This new book captures the history and reality of the black experience in Russia and Europe

These collective issues relate to the experience of being “a black citizen living in Europe”. The book — illustrated by gritty, original photography — details Pitts’ quest to offer up a more unified picture of black communities across the continent. His aim was to explore “blackness” as something “taking part in shaping European identity at large” as opposed to a sub-plot in a frequently whitened history. He writes that the term “Afropean” suggests “the possibility of living in and with more than one idea: Africa and Europe, or, by extension, the Global South and the West, without being mixed- this, half- that or black- other. That being black in Europe didn’t necessarily mean being an immigrant.” [...]

Afropean adds to a rarely acknowledged but rich body of literature detailing black experience in Russia. The most famous account comes from a group of African-American writers and artists who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1932. Frustrated with the lack of fair representation in Hollywood, they saw the Soviet Union as a place where people of colour could be portrayed in the arts as more than white projections of black identity. Though many eventually became disillusioned with the communist project, their initial impressions were overwhelmingly positive. “I’d read so many pieces of literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Claude McKay, black actors and poets and writers who had all gone to Moscow and had a great time,” says Pitts. “A lot of those writers — Harlem renaissance writers specifically — were looking for places they might get equality and Russia seemed like it was leading the way. It seemed here was a real viable alternative.” [...]

A recent report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance concluded that although the number of hate crimes and racist murders has declined in Russia, “comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation is still lacking and racist and homo/transphobic hate speech is widely used in public discourse”; in March 2019, a professional Russian footballer was fined and given a suspended ban for telling a local newspaper it was “laughable” to have black players in the Russian National team, before later apologising for his comments.

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The Conversation: How many humans tomorrow? The United Nations revises its projections

These new projections replace those that the United Nations published in 2017. The calculations have been revised upwards or downwards according to the countries or regions. For example, in the medium scenario, the figure for China in 2100 is 44 million higher than that in the 2017 projections (4% more). In contrast, for India, it is down 66 million (4% less). The same goes for Africa as a whole, whose projected population in 2100 is reduced by 187 million (-4%). For the planet as a whole, the upward and downward revisions offset each other, but only partly. According to the medium scenario, the global total for 2050 is projected to be 37 million fewer people than in the previous projections (-0.4%) and 309 million fewer in 2100 (-3%). [...]

The first time the United Nations published population projections up to 2100 was in 1981, and their medium scenario predicted then that the world population would reach 10.5 billion that year. The June 2019 projections suggest a figure of 10.9 billion – 0.4 billion higher. While the world total is slightly higher, it conceals a radical change in population distribution across the different continents. In 1981, the population of Asia was projected to reach 5.9 billion by 2100, but in 2019 the figure was revised downward to 4.7 billion (20% less). Likewise, for Latin America, the figure of 1,187 million in 2100 was lowered to 680 million (a decrease of about 43%). For Africa, on the other hand, the 1981 projections were 2.2 billion for 2100, while the 2019 projections have nearly doubled this figure to 4.3 billion (see Figure 2 below).

Where do these changes come from? The population of a country or continent changes because of fertility and mortality. Migration is also a factor, but to a lesser extent for many countries and with zero effect worldwide. It is therefore the assumptions on mortality and fertility that affect projections. For mortality, it declined faster than imagined 40 years ago, especially for children, which led to more rapid growth. The AIDS epidemic was certainly not anticipated at the time, and Africa has paid the heaviest cost. But the excess mortality it has caused will have lasted only one-time, and life expectancy has begun to increase again in recent years and relatively quickly. AIDS has had little effect on the demographic vitality of Africa.

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Vox: Botswana decriminalizes homosexuality in a victory for LGBTQ rights in Africa

The decision reflects the attitudes of many in the country. Last December, Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi showed his support for decriminalizing homosexuality. “Many people of same-sex relationships in this country ... have been violated and have also suffered in silence for fear of being discriminated,” he said. ”Just like other citizens, they deserve to have their rights protected.”

And a 2016 study by Afrobarometer showed that 43 percent of people in Botswana were not opposed to having LGBTQ neighbors. They were likely among those in the packed courthouse who cheered the decision. [...]

The 2016 Afrobarometer study shows the average acceptance rate for living next to gay individuals on the continent is just 21 percent, an abysmally low number. The chart below indicates that Cape Verde leads the way with 74 percent, while Senegal only has a 3 percent acceptance rate.

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Quartz: Africa’s largest mosque has been completed with thanks to China

The Great Mosque of Algiers, or Djamaa El Djazair, sits on an area of 400,000 square meters and has a 265 meter (870 feet) minaret that houses observation decks. The compound’s domed sanctuary and outside courtyard overlooking the Bay of Algiers can house up to 120,000 worshippers and has an underground parking space with a capacity of 7,000 cars. [...]

With its completion, the mosque will now be the world’s third biggest by area and the largest in Africa. The two largest mosques are The Sacred Mosque of Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina: both considered the holiest sites in Islam and accustomed by millions of Muslim worshippers and pilgrims every year. [...]

The choice of building Africa’s largest mosque is an interesting choice for a Muslim-majority nation that has for years struggled with an Islamist insurgency. After the government canceled the 1992 elections where Islamists appeared to win, that triggered a civil insurgency that led to the death of 200,000 people.

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Quartz: The most common destination for African immigrants is neither Europe nor North America

A new Afrobarometer survey of respondents in 34 African countries shows that 36% of Africans are more likely to move to another country within the continent. The trend noted in the report is also backed by reality as only 20% of African migrants who decide to emigrate from their countries actually leave the continent, according to the African Union. For example, many more people move from the Horn of Africa to southern Africa than those crossing the Sahara to north Africa to reach Europe.

The destination preferences also vary by region, the report shows. While a majority of west and north Africans prefer to move to Europe, intending immigrants in central, east and southern African largely prefer to move to another African country, specifically one within their regions. [...]

Crucially, as Afrobarometer’s report shows, 47% of respondents aged between 18 and 25 have considered moving elsewhere—the most of any age group. The trend is a consequence of unabating local unemployment which respondents cited as the leading reason for looking to emigrate.

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Aeon: African art in Western museums: it’s patrimony not heritage

The immediate paradox here is that, whereas objects from the periphery were welcome in the centre, people were very much not. Since the independence of West African countries throughout the late 1950s and early ’60s, the retention of objects and the simultaneous rejection of people has become ever more fraught. Young undocumented migrants from former French colonies stand metres away from the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, a museum in Paris full of their inaccessible patrimony. The migrants are treated with contempt while the objects from their homelands are cared for in museums and treated with great reverence. The migrants will be deported but the objects will not be repatriated. The homeland is therefore only home to objects, not people. [...]

The objects taken from West Africa during the colonial period indexed many things, most of them problematic and racist. Some objects acted as a catalyst for the creative work of Western artists, and consequently entered the artistic canon as prompts and props (seen in the background of artists’ studios such as that of Pablo Picasso). The objects that Picasso encountered at the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris were the impetus for his ‘African period’ at the beginning of the 20th century, which produced one of his most famous works, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). [...]

The acts of return in themselves are a symbol of strong contrition, re-opening the dialogue on past wrongs to better establish relationships for the future. It seems that behind proclamations of the complicated nature of the process of return lies this more difficult truth. Human remains have been returned from museums to be reburied with dignity. Nazi-looted art has been seized from unsuspecting collectors and returned to Jewish families. Now is the time for colonial patrimony to be reckoned with because patrimony indexes the biographies of those who made and acquired the objects, drawing their descendants into moral relationships in the present. It is now not a matter of if but when objects will be returned, and whether this happens with good grace or through a fractious period of resistance.

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The New York Times: Sexual Abuse of Nuns: Longstanding Church Scandal Emerges From Shadows

The pope’s remarks on Tuesday, in response to a question posed on the papal plane about Ms. Scaraffia’s article, came after decades of persistent allegations of such abuses, and seeming Vatican inaction, which has now collided with the heightened awareness of the #MeToo era. They also came just ahead of an extraordinary conference of bishops on sexual abuse scheduled this month at the Vatican.[...]

Advocates for abused nuns were relieved the pope had at last put the issue on the church’s radar. But they also noted that it was a long time coming and that the pope’s other remarks Tuesday did not inspire confidence in a speedy solution. [...]

“I was wondering when he said they were dealing with the problem for a long time, because we just don’t know what those actions are,” said Zuzanna Flisowska, the general manager of Voices of Faith, a group advocating for more participation by women in lay leadership positions inside the church. [...]

In 1994, Sister Maura O’Donohue sent the Vatican the results of a multiyear, 23-nation survey about such abuse, which was especially rampant in Africa where nuns were considered safe sexual partners for priests who feared infection by H.I.V.

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Social Europe: Does the European Union generate external instability?

But creating geopolitical stability internally has not, during the last two decades, been followed by external geopolitical stability along the fringes of the union. Most of the big EU member states (UK, Poland, Italy, Spain) participated, often eagerly, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which led to the deaths of some half a million people, destabilised the middle east even further and produced Islamic State.[...]

The wars along the long arc from Libya to Afghanistan, in which EU powers participated, were the proximate cause of large refugee flows a few years ago, which continue even now. (As I have written elsewhere, the underlying cause of migration is the large gap in incomes between Europe, on the one hand, and Africa and the ‘greater middle east’, on the other, but the sudden outbursts were caused by wars.)[...]

It all means that Europe needs a much better thought-out external policy with respect to its neighbours. There are already some signs that it is moving in that direction but it is doing so too slowly and hesitantly. A multilateral compact with Africa is needed to regulate migration from a continent with the fastest rising population and lowest incomes. Much more European investment—in hard stuff, not conferences—is needed. Rather than complaining about China’s Belt and Road initiative, Europe should imitate it—and, if it desires to counteract Chinese political influence, invest its own money to make more African friends. A similar set of much more proactive policies is required within the framework of the Mediterranean initiative, while military options in the region should be forsworn no less clearly than they are within the union.

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Quartz: Photos: African-led churches are taking charge of the gospel in England

As indigenous church populations have dwindled in the United Kingdom, numbers at churches founded by African immigrants have swelled. Last year, a survey showed “an unrelenting decline in Church of England and Church of Scotland” numbers. Only 14% of Britons identified as members of the Church of England—a record low. Similarly, Church of Scotland numbers dropped to 18% from 31% in 2002. In total, 52% of people said they had no religion. [...]

As Quartz Africa has previously reported, African “reverse missionaries” in the UK are increasingly leading Christian evangelism, catering to local African immigrant audiences while also looking to revitalize Christianity among indigenous populations. It’s a visible reverse from nearly five centuries of when Christian missionaries first brought the religion to to African communities. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is a prominent example of the outward expansion of African-founded churches. First founded in Nigeria in 1952, RCCG now has churches in 198 countries globally.

As the cultural center of Christianity has shifted, Africa has become the world’s largest Christian continent. While in 1950 an estimated 80% of the world’s Christians were in Western countries, by 2025, at least 50% of the world’s Christians will be in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. But some of the spread of Christianity in the developing world has also been linked to economics with studies showing people are more likely to attend church in the world’s most unequal countries than they are in the most equal ones.

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Quartz: The African Union will unveil the design for a single passport for all Africans this year

The announcement comes in the heels of the AU’s launch of a single air market initiative to improve connectivity and a free trade agreement to establish a common market for goods and services. If the heads of state assembly adopt the measures in February, it will pave the way for of the issuance of the African passport in accordance with respective national laws and regulations.

The move is likely to be a windfall for citizens of African states, who hold some of the least powerful passports in the world. Movement within their own continent is hard for Africans too: only Seychelles and Benin offer visa-free travel to all African travelers. And even as visa regimes get relaxed, travelers from nations like South Sudan and Burundi need visas to go to 48 and 47 African countries respectively. [...]

Skeptics point out the move will be challenging, with many African states already resistant to migrants and refugees, and some have been quietly tightening their visa rules. Faki, however, stated the AU will push for more integration saying “the persisting obstacles to our citizens’ movement within their own continent are simply unacceptable.”

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Quartz: All the places plastic bags are banned around the world

In America, only two states have conclusively banned single-use plastic bags: Hawaii and California.

Though Hawaii’s ban came first, it wasn’t technically a state-wide ban: all five Hawaiian islands (Big Island, Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Pala) individually banned plastic bags at various points—the last of which took effect in 2015. The bans, which aim to fully phase in by 2020, range in definition and severity, but generally still allow for the use of 100% recyclable plastic bags.

California passed a unilateral, state-wide ban in September of 2014, and it went into effect in November of 2016. The law bans single-use plastic bags at all large retailers, and imposed a 10-cent charge for paper bags. Before the law was passed, more than 100 California local laws banning bags were already in place. [...]

At least 32 countries around the world have plastic bag bans in place—and nearly half are in Africa, where plastic bags frequently clog drains, leading to increased mosquito swarms (and, as a result, bouts of malaria). [...]

In Ireland, a 22c plastic bag tax has reduced usage by as much as 90%. Portugal has seen a drop in excess of 85%. And since imposing a tax in 2003, Denmark has seen the lowest plastic usage in Europe, averaging just 4 bags per person per year.

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