Eric Kigada On The Historic Neglect Of Nairobi And Why Slums Do Not Disappear

Architect and planner Eric Kigada, B & A Studios talks about: the history of how Nairobi developed; historic underfunding in its infrastructure as its population grew; how slums develop; the renting out of slum dwellings; why the City Council does not see slums; slum landlords as a powerful political lobby; and the growth of tenement areas.

Pop-up Houses Improve South African Slums: Andreas Keller At TEDxW

After witnessing the appalling quality of life for people in the slum areas of South Africa, Andreas Keller — co-creator of iShack- questioned how he could help. His solution involved harnessing solar power to help build a brighter future for those living in energy poverty. Andreas shares his touching story of how his idea is fostering a renewed hope in creating a more sustainable future for slums.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

The #GlobalPOV Project: “Are Slums The Global Urban Future?”

Welcome to the world-class city. It has towers, expressways, shopping malls, airports, private schools, and gated condominiums with golf courses, swimming pools and tennis courts. It has no slums, but the world-class city is built by slums — a paradox isn’t it? To see the city from the slum provides a different view, a view of the global urban future.

Based on Prof. Ananya Roy’s popular Global Poverty class at the University of California, Berkeley, The #GlobalPOV Project video series combines critical social theory with improvised art and live-action sketch to explore issues of global poverty, development and foreign aid.

The #GlobalPOV Project is a program of the Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) Minor. Based at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley, the GPP Minor creates new ways of thinking about poverty, inequality and undertaking poverty action. 

Join the #GlobalPOV conversation on Twitter.

Website: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/globalpov


Edutainment Radio Programmes

• by: Mia Malan

The ways in which journalists frame HIV stories can strongly contribute towards news consumers’ perceptions of the epidemic. This paper discusses the news values of HIV radio programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa. It argues that the culturally appropriate ‘humanisation’ of HIV stories and the proper use of conflict as adding news value are paramount to the impact of stories.
The skillful application of news values can make almost any HIV-related story newsworthy and therefore part of mainstream news. Moreover, it is maintained that HIV advocacy environments contribute to the newsworthiness of HIV stories in the media.
The AIDS advocacy milieus of South Africa and Kenya are compared and related to the type of HIV stories that are published and broadcast in the respective countries. Journalism training methods are critically discussed in the context of the above. It is argued, that, in developing countries, where journalists often lack basic journalism skills, it is not sufficient to provide reporters with HIV-related information; HIV information sharing should be combined with general journalism training and mentoring.

Introduction
In December 2007, an excited Bashir Osman – a Somaligna-speaking journalist from Dire Dawa in the east of Ethiopia – broadcast a live call-in show on breastfeeding and HIV to his Somali audience on Dire 106.1 FM. According to the most recent Ethiopian government figures, Dire Dawa has the second highest HIV prevalence rate in the country, and almost doubles the national average. Each year there are almost 1, 000 HIV positive pregnancies with at least 230 children born with the virus. Yet this was the first HIV programme that Bashir had ever produced. AIDS was so stigmatised in the region that Dire 106.1 FM hardly ever discussed it on air. And Osman had no problem following this route. A week before the broadcast, the journalist – like most of his listeners – refused to be in the same room as people with HIV because he “didn’t want to risk breathing the same air” (Osman cited in De Masi, 2008) as them. He would never consider sharing a plate, or hosting an HIV positive person in his home, and thought it a deep insult to be tested for the virus.
But then Osman accessed what turned out to be a precious piece of culturally relevant information: he learned that babies of HIV positive women can get infected with the virus through their mothers’ breast milk (personal communication, December 6, 2007). All mothers with babies in his community breastfed their infants x including his very own wife. His own five-month old baby could be at risk, he perceived with shock, because neither he nor his wife knew their HIV status. The realisation changed Osman’s entire view on AIDS, and HIV was suddenly a virus that had the potential to directly impact his own life and those of everyone else he knew, in ways he had previously vehemently denied (personal communication, December 6, 2007). In short, this piece of information made AIDS newsworthy to Osman, his community and his editors. It became something that was crucial and worthwhile to talk about.

HIV and the News Media
Several communication experts, AIDS activists and journalists (Collins, 2005; Kinsella, 1989; Malan & Gold, 2006; Scalway, 2003; Shilts, 1987) have argued that the news media have the potential to be an immensely powerful tool in the response to HIV. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS Executive Director (UNAIDS), dr. Peter Piot, “journalists can save more lives than doctors in terms of HIV prevention because preventing HIV is about communication and changing norms” (Piot, 2006).
Proving statements like this, however, is very complex; studies have not been able to conclusively show that stories in the news media have resulted in change in HIV-related behaviour on a large scale. Research has, however, strongly suggested that news stories are capable of setting the framework in which citizens discuss public events. McCombs and Shaw (1972) demonstrated that there was a strong relation between the topics that the news media highlighted during an American election campaign and the topics that news consumers identified as important. Another US study illustrated the power of broadcast news to set the policy agenda when it proved that evening news bulletins had the effect of defining the policy areas by which the president should be judged (Iyengar et al., 1984).
McCombs and Ghanem (2001) have argued that “the level degree of emphasis placed on issues in the mass media influences the priority accorded these issues by the public” (cited in Reese, Gandy & Grant, 2001, p. 67). Dearing and Rogers (1996) stated that this proposition had been supported by more than 200 studies. But, I would argue that the regular publishing or airing of stories on a certain subject does necessarily lead to the public taking note of that subject. If such stories do not directly relate to the lives of readers or broadcast audiences, or are not presented in captivating ways with strong news values, they are unlikely to influence news consumers’ opinions – whether negatively or positively. In the case of a highly stigmatised and sensitive subject such as HIV/AIDS, even more so. Read more

TEDtalks: Charles Leadbeater: Education Innovation In The Slums

Paul Jenkins – Understanding Urbanisation, Urbanism And Urbanity in African Cities

Human settlement in cities of the South need different approaches to those initially developed in rapid urbanisation in the North from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries, however our concepts of the good ‘urban’ are deeply influenced by this historically and geographically distinct experience. In addition our professional approaches embed these concepts (generally with a high degree of disciplinary exclusivity in understanding), albeit with at least half a century of more recent ‘development discourse’ overlay and adjustment. Whether such concepts, disciplinary approaches and/or professional praxis are relevant would appear to be significantly challenged by the widespread and increasing ‘non-conforming reality’ of cities of the South.

This is perhaps no more clear than in emerging urban areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, the last global macro-region to enter the rapid urbanisation process. In this context, weak states and high levels of urban poverty (and therefore limited private sector engagement) lead to the vast majority of such fast expanding urban areas being developed, not according to pre-defined developmentalist approaches which are overwhelmed by the reality, but by (mostly poor) urban residents, according to their socio-cultural agency, albeit constrained by political economic structures. This has led to a prevalent negative view of such emerging urbanism, labelling this as ruralisation, or defective/pathological forms of urbanity.