As COVID-19 cases rise across the world, the act of wearing a mask has come to mean more than just health. It has become symbolic of the corona discourse.
The death of Dr Hawa Abdi Dhibwale has highlighted how critical women’s contribution has been to the provision of healthcare and other services in war-torn Somalia. Her work shows that if more women like her had been allowed to govern their country, Somalia wouldn’t still be a dysfunctional state.
Shirandula gently managed to almost single-handedly give voice, representation, and nuance to the talented, pragmatic, modest, blue-collar masculine sub-archetypes that work in the shadows of capital and its structures.
Was the former child soldier and businessman-cum-philanthropist killed for harbouring political ambitions?
News reports claiming that “wet markets” in Asia are the source of the coronavirus obscure the fact that the consumption of wild animals is common in the West. How can the Western media condemn “unacceptable” animal consumption practices in the global South while maintaining studious silence on the same in the global North?
The majority of urban residents in Kenya cannot afford to go to established restaurants and eateries. To cater to their needs, food kiosks have sprouted in cities such as Nairobi. These kiosks not only serve delicious and nutritious food, they are also meeting places for the urban working class.
Being a visual medium, just as the map is, the comic book is a kind of counter-cartography that centres the people, which imperialist narratives would rather see reduced and captured in the extractive logic of mapped territories and nation-states.
On-demand e-commerce has led to the rapid expansion of food delivery platforms and companies in Kenya’s urban areas. While these companies offer choice and convenience to their customers, they exacerbate class divisions. In addition, the technology required to use these services places consumers at a risk of third parties using their personal data without their knowledge or consent.
Waiting for increasingly elusive work at stakeouts without shelter and facing police harassment is the itinerant washerwomen’s daily lot in this COVID-19 season.
Communication on the prevention and management of COVID-19 needs to borrow a leaf from the lessons learnt in dealing with HIV, eschewing fear-mongering and stigmatisation and instead focusing on the social and behaviour change that will help us to contain the spread of the coronavirus even as science seeks a remedy.
