The Hub King’s Cross café in London is buzzing today with a new breed of tech geek: consumed not by robots or video games, but African development. This group, about 100-strong, are meeting at the tri-annual Africa Gathering event. And together, through what they call Information and Communication Technologies for Development, or the unwieldy acronym […] More »

Last Saturday afternoon, I attended “Writing Africa: Making 10 years of the Caine Prize“ at the British Library in London. The prize, which awards around $16,000 to the best short story written by an African author, featured previous winners Chika Unigwe, Binyavanga Wainana and Brian Chikwava. After the reading, a member of the audience asked whether this increasing […] More »

In March 2008, when the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” marked its fifth anniversary, Canadian media outlets were in a self-congratulatory mood: “Canada isn’t involved” there, one reporter wrote. “The further we get away from the actual date, the better Canada’s decision to not get involved with the U.S. […] More »

The other day I stumbled across a petition asking that the British government apologize to Alan Turing for “the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended [his] life and career,” and formally acknowledge the significance of his work. Here’s some background. Alan Turing is most readily associated with the Turing Test, which sought to demonstrate whether […] More »

One of the most popular articles in the last issue of This was on urban chicken farming. One of the British companies mentioned in that piece, Omlet, which makes a stylish backyard chicken coop called Eglu, is expanding its urban-agro-empire again. This time, they’re selling Beehaus, a colourful backyard apiary for starting your own honeybee […] More »