Nepenthe

Image from Impala AI homepage.    From Scrolla AllAfrica : AI is helping nurses in Malawi spot danger before sick babies and children become critically ill. Malawi has adopted IMPALA, an AI-powered patient monitoring system used in children’s wards. The system uses machine learning to predict when a patient’s condition may get worse up to three hours before it becomes critical. It can also send alerts before a child’s health drops badly, Connecting Africa reported. IMPALA was developed by GOAL 3, a Dutch social enterprise working in health technology. It is being used at Mangochi Hospital, Malamulo Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, among others. During 2023/2024, two hospitals using IMPALA recorded between 40% and 51% fewer deaths than in 2022/2023, before the system was introduced. Blessings Juma, head of the children’s ward at Mangochi District Hospital, told El Pais that before IMPALA, the hospital could record four deaths in a week to 15 days. Now...

Let's check these many illustrated by Anjana Iyer , for the Found in Translation project.  Backpfeifengesicht – DE – A face badly in need of a fist. (Em PT, somos negativos e depreciativos, a pessoa nem tem cara para levar um estalo / um soco.) Iktsuarpok – Inuit – The frustration of waiting for someone to turn up. (We have seen this one before, but with another translation: “The sense of anticipation as you wait for someone to visit.”) Tingo – Pascuense / Rapa Nui – To gradually steal all the possessions out of a neighbour's house by borrowing and not returning. (We have seen this one before, but with another translation: “The act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.”) Ilunga (Tshiluba) – A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time. (Em PT, Luba é uma das línguas bantas.) Hanyauku – KWN – The act of walking on tiptoes across warm sand. (E...

 Para a RTP.  

Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack . Togo’s first president was gunned down at his own gate in 1963. His crime? Daring to reject France’s money. Sylvanus Olympio wanted more than a flag and an anthem. He wanted a currency for his people. A future not chained to Paris. For that, he was shot dead by Togolese soldiers trained in France. Africa’s first post-independence coup. The weapon was not just the gun. It was the CFA franc. Created in 1945, it forced African nations to deposit their reserves in the French Treasury. It gave Paris veto power over African economies. It made independence a flag ceremony... and nothing more. France called it “stability.” In truth, it was financial slavery. An empire without the cost of soldiers. Olympio was killed. Lumumba was killed. Sankara was killed. Nkrumah was overthrown. The message was written in blood: Africa may raise its flags. But touch the money... and you will fall. And what did it mean for the people? A farmer in Togo sells cocoa for pe...

 Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack .   Right now, Congolese children are digging cobalt with their bare hands, so the world can call Teslas and iPhones “clean.” A Congolese father once sat on a porch staring at his daughter’s severed hand and foot. She was five. She was mutilated because her village missed its rubber quota. That rubber lined bicycles in Paris. Car tires in London. Factory belts in America. Leopold II of Belgium called it civilisation. It was genocide. Ten million Congolese lives traded for European modernity. 1960: Patrice Lumumba stood on independence day and refused to play polite. He told the truth: independence was won... not gifted. That Congo’s wealth should serve Congolese families. And for that, Belgium, the CIA, and local collaborators marked him for death. He was beaten. Humiliated. Flown to Katanga. Shot by a firing squad with Belgian officers watching. His body dug back up, hacked apart, dissolved in acid. His teeth stolen as trophies. Th...

Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack .   65 years ago, Nigeria celebrated political independence. But full independence was never achieved. Britain left behind the architecture of control. Borders drawn for profit, not people. Governments beholden to foreign capital. Economies designed for extraction, not growth. Nigeria as a single nation only came into existence in 1914, at the Amalgamation of Nigeria. In 2025, that makes the country just 111 years old. Much of Nigerian history was written by the coloniser, shaping how independence is remembered. Here’s the truth rarely said: The “Father of Nigeria” is a myth, a story crafted by those who benefit from forgetting. Nigeria was not born of unity or self-determination. It was forged by British businessmen and colonial architects; men whose names Britain still celebrates as “great” empire-builders. In Nigeria it was Sir George Goldie and his Royal Niger Company. Cecil Rhodes in Southern Africa, Ian Smith in Rhodesia. Different cou...

 

  It’s sometimes called the “Tree of Life” for its supportive qualities and long lifespan stretching thousands of years —and it’s also known as the “Upside-Down Tree” for its root-like branches. But no matter the name, the baobab tree has long captivated the human imagination with its surreal shape and enduring presence. Eight living species of the baobab genus Adansonia exist worldwide: one in mainland Africa, six in Madagascar and one in northwestern Australia. Yet, the origins of these botanical behemoths have eluded scientists for years. Many researchers thought the trees began on the African mainland, then spread to the other locations, the New York Times ’ Rachel Nuwer reports. However, a study published last week in the journal Nature used the genomes of each baobab species to unravel the tree’s ancient origins, instead tracing its lineage to Madagascar 21 million years ago. Over the course of millions of years, the team reports, diverse baobab species em...

Libya is an ancient Greek toponym for the lands between the Nile and the Atlantic Ocean, and sometimes by extension for the entire continent. The name may derive from the local Libu tribe. Libya is also the name of the modern North African country between Tunisia and Egypt, formerly infamous for the violent surrealism of Colonel Ghadaffi's decades-long dictatorship and currently for its lawlessness and low-intensity civil war. Ethiopia derives from the classical Greek for "burnt-face" (possibly in contrast to the lighter-skinned inhabitants of Libya). It first appears in Homer's Iliad and was used by the historian Herodotus to denote those areas of Africa south of the Sahara part of the "Ecumene" (i.e. the inhabitable world). But the Greek term originally applied to Nubia (a.k.a. Kush). Later, it was adopted by the kingdom of Axum, a distant precursor to present-day Ethiopia. In 148 BCE, the Romans established the province of Africa Proco...

Portugal Gemas Esta é uma variedade muito especial e valorizada de safira que foi primeiramente descrita no Sri Lanka e que junta na sua cor uma proporção muito particular de vermelho e amarelo. Segundo Richard Hughes (um dos maiores especialistas em safiras no Mundo), o nome deriva de uma corruptela de o sansrito/cingalês “padmaraga” (padma = lotus; raga = color), em alusão à cor  da flor de lotus. Saber que tonalidade se pode enquadrar na designação padparadscha gera, por vezes, controvérsia, até porque não existe grande consenso na definição desta variedade. Os laboratórios gemológicos mais importantes definem-na como de cor pastel entre o rosa e o laranja. Hoje em dia, as safiras padparadscha ocorrem não só no Sri Lanka, mas também no Vietname, Tanzânia, Malawi e Madagáscar, sendo ocasionalmente aquecidas a baixas temperaturas para melhoramento da cor. Os seus valores de mercado, que variam com a qualidade da cor e com a dimensão, são elevados, podendo atingir as...

Portuguese chapter on FB:

About a boy taken from Somalia to escape genocide, who never sees mom and dad again. About Opie. You got this.

Lili Chin

Meeting the Malawians Malawi, the land of the lake