Jonathan Kalan
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Storyteller | Entrepreneur | Explorer | TED Resident | Co-Founder @liveunsettled. Frmr @Timeline_Now Editor-in-Chief & @BBC_Future in Africa. Tweets impulsively
Articles by Jonathan Kalan
5 Steps To Tackle the Career Change Process in 2021
Are you looking for a professional career change? Does how you spend your waking hours in order to pay the bills not sit right? Is that lingering feeling of fear and uncertainty preventing you from taking the leap?
Ratting Out TB: Scientists Train Rodents To Diagnose Disease
Abdullah Mchumvu has been training African giant pouched rats for more than a decade in Morogoro, Tanzania. Jonathan Kalan for NPR hide caption toggle caption Jonathan Kalan for NPR Abdullah Mchumvu has been training African giant pouched rats for more than a decade in Morogoro, Tanzania. Jonathan Kalan for NPR Rats are notorious for spreading nasty diseases. Think the plague, lassa fever and even salmonella.
African youth hungry for connectivity
In a tiny sweltering tin-roofed shack tucked inside one of Mogadishu’s bullet-riddled neighbourhoods, two brothers, Ali Hassan and Mustafa Yare, sit hunched over one of eight humming desktop computers. Together they show Nasteexo Cadey, a young veiled student at Mogadishu University, how to set up her Facebook account, browse YouTube videos and check her e-mail.
Potato power: the spuds that could light the world
Mashed, boiled, baked or fried? You probably have a preference for your potatoes. Haim Rabinowitch, however, likes his spuds “hacked”. For the past few years, researcher Rabinowitch and colleagues have been pushing the idea of “potato power” to deliver energy to people cut off from electricity grids. Hook up a spud to a couple of cheap metal plates, wires and LED bulbs, they argue, and it could provide lighting to remote towns and villages around the world.
Philippines: The innovation drive that turned social
There was a summit, a steering committee, a policy document and even a somewhat awkward new brand name: “filipinnovation”, a word that is not as catchy as it is intended to be, but gets easier to say after a few attempts. Around six years ago, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the then President of the Philippines, had launched a drive to encourage technological innovation. The goals, according to the strategy document, were primarily economic.
Honey changes everything
Bees. Specifically African bees are probably not the first, or even fifth idea, that comes to mind when you think of alleviating poverty. Yet these little insects are causing a buzz by helping thousands of rural farmers in East Africa. For the past twelve years, Kenyan social business Honey Care Africa has developed its innovative ‘Business in a Beehive’ model that has allowed low-income farmers to easily earn more money by producing honey.
Egypt’s tech innovators seize opportunity from turmoil
Cairo’s traffic jams are a bit like a zombie horde; no sooner have you dealt with one than another pops up. By some estimates, the country loses around $8bn, 4% of its GDP, every year from its capital’s clogged roads. But in recent months, with protests, marches, and roadblocks springing up across the city, traffic has been even more unpredictable.
A Q&A: Giant rats trained to help stop wildlife trafficking in Africa
The U.S. government is funding a project to train giant rodents to help fight illegal wildlife trafficking in Africa.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the African giant pouched rat is being tested to see whether it can help detect illegal shipments of hardwood timber, used to make furniture, doors and flooring and at the center of a multibillion-dollar black market industry, and pangolins — the world’s most poached mammal.The agency is spending $100,000 on a yearlong pilot program that...
Is e-waste an untapped treasure?
In a hall of the Africa Innovation Summit in Cape Verde, the smell of melting plastic permeated the air. A crowd had gathered around a small stand to watch a special kind of machine go to work. Controlling the device were members of WoeLab, a community “maker space” based in Togo, West Africa. Over the space of an hour, their creation gradually built a small plastic toy, layer by layer. It looked and performed like a typical 3D printer – but this one was different. Why?
It’s About Time.
The Swahili word for soil is udongo, and there’s a hell of a lot of it in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. Where it all began. Where we began. Some of the most important records of human history have been found beneath the valley’s red udongo. The bones of our oldest ancestors — Homo habilis and Homo erectus — rested here. For us Homo sapiens, the udongo is a direct connection to our history.
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Tech fix for Africa’s big farming challenge
Before last year, George Wainaina’s tiny shop selling agricultural goods and veterinarian supplies in Karura, a lush farming area of central Kenya, wasn’t doing so well. His customers found it difficult to get what they needed. Some would complain; others would simply leave. “I didn’t sell many products, I didn’t have many suppliers, and I used to have problems with working capital,” recalls Wainaina, the 27-year-old entrepreneur and professionally trained veterinarian.
Rats: Scratch and sniff landmine detection
Meet the giant Africa rats with a remarkable skill, which allows them to safely clear large areas filled with deadly landmines. More countries deployed anti-personnel mines last year than in any year since 2004, an international survey of landmines finds. When the first of Apopo’s furry and four-legged HeroRats were released into a landmine-ridden field of Mozambique, there was understandable skepticism among the various government officials in attendance.
'We Can't Forget This Machine': The Letterpress of Mogadishu
A print shop in the Somali capital tells the story of the country's two decades of turmoil -- and rebirth. Jonathan Kalan In a tiny, damp, oil-soaked cellar tucked behind one of Mogadishu's bullet-pocked central streets, fragile remnants of a city's survival clutter the rickety shelves. Their location, hidden just beneath Mogadishu's shelled façade, is perhaps their only reason for survival.
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