Month: October 2021

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African Tech Roundup - UNAJUA S7 EP3: How are mobile telcos disrupting incumbent financial institutions? ft. Ronit Ghose

In this blockchain-themed UNAJUA series instalment, Citi Group's Ronit Ghose talks about how mobile telcos are eagerly peddling digital banking services— disrupting traditional financial corporations in the process. Ronit also explains how blockchain tech is poised to upend mobile payment norms, ushering in a decentralised contract dispensation. Ronit Ghose is the Global Head of Banking, Fintech, and Digital Assets for Citi Global Insights (Citi Group). Ronit is also the lead author of the Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (Citi GPS) insights platform. He advises Pan-African VC, Launch Africa Ventures and talent search startup Remotexec, and sits on the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) advisory board. Click here (or on the microphone icon on the right of your screen) to leave us a 60-sec voice note with your reactions to any of the topics raised in the UNAJUA Series. (We will include some of your audio takes in future follow-up episodes.) PROMO: African Tech Roundup is partnering with Socialstack to launch a social token ($ATRU) on the Cello blockchain to drive community engagement. Listen in to today's episode to see how you could be one of the first few to receive some $ATRU social token. USEFUL RESOURCES: JOIN THE REVOLUTION: Create a Celo Account via Socialstack(https://wallet.socialstack.co/) EARN $ATRU TOKEN: Click here(https://forms.gle/CE7DrkszZzLXDCA6A) to complete the form and earn your $ATRU. SUPPORT US: Support our independent media-making efforts by becoming a Patreon(https://www.africantechroundup.com/patreon/).
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The Intelligence from The Economist - Zero-to-some game: Asia-Pacific covid-19 plans crack

Where governments enacted zero-tolerance coronavirus strategies, numbers indeed stayed low. That was before the Delta variant. We ask how countries can now wind back those policies. A shocking report of sexual abuse within France’s Catholic church further threatens the institution’s connection with society. And countering the notion that the “standard English” taught the world over is the only proper one. 

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Start the Week - Views from across the water

‘Devil-Land’ – that was how foreign observers viewed England in the 17th century: a ‘failed state’ torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. The historian Clare Jackson recounts this stormy and radical era through the eyes of outsiders across the Channel. But she tells Andrew Marr that the country’s turbulence also bred great creativity and curiosity about the wider world.

The Anglo-French journalist Benedicte Paviot is the UK correspondent of France 24. She explores how the French view Britain today. From Brexit to the government’s pursuit of ‘Global Britain’ and the new Australia/UK/US defence pact, contemporary French neighbours often look on with hostility and bemusement.

Fintan O’Toole is an Irish journalist and polemicist who has spent much of his career commenting on Britain from the other side of the water. But in his latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, he turns his attention to Ireland since his birth in 1958. It’s another story of great turbulence and rebellion, from underdevelopment, domination by the Church and a sectarian civil war in the North, to struggles for intellectual, civil and sexual freedoms.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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Start the Week - Views from across the water

‘Devil-Land’ – that was how foreign observers viewed England in the 17th century: a ‘failed state’ torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. The historian Clare Jackson recounts this stormy and radical era through the eyes of outsiders across the Channel. But she tells Andrew Marr that the country’s turbulence also bred great creativity and curiosity about the wider world.

The Anglo-French journalist Benedicte Paviot is the UK correspondent of France 24. She explores how the French view Britain today. From Brexit to the government’s pursuit of ‘Global Britain’ and the new Australia/UK/US defence pact, contemporary French neighbours often look on with hostility and bemusement.

Fintan O’Toole is an Irish journalist and polemicist who has spent much of his career commenting on Britain from the other side of the water. But in his latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, he turns his attention to Ireland since his birth in 1958. It’s another story of great turbulence and rebellion, from underdevelopment, domination by the Church and a sectarian civil war in the North, to struggles for intellectual, civil and sexual freedoms.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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The Best One Yet - 🦇 “Keep Elon Weird” — Saudi’s soccer cinderella. Tesla’s Austin move. Asana’s CEO secret.

Asana’s stock is a top stock of 2021 - and their CEO has been buying more and more of his own stock all year. Tesla just quit California to move to Austin, but the real story here is every company *except* for Tesla. And Saudi Arabia’s national royal fund just dropped $400M to buy a professional English football club — which instantly transforms it into England’s richest soccer club. $TSLA $ASAN Got a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYork Want a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9 Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Everything Everywhere Daily - The USS Constitution

On March 27, 1794, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act. The Naval Act authorized funding for six frigates which would become the basis for the new US Navy. One of those six ships, and the third one built, was the USS Constitution. It was launched in 1797 and saw service in multiple conflicts all around the world. That ship which first set sail 225 years ago, is still in service and operational today.

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NBN Book of the Day - Anne Pollock, “Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States” (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

An event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans.  Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States (U Minnesota Press, 2021) examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis--and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams--author Anne Pollock takes readers on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality, and the hypervisibility of Black athletes' bodies. Ultimately, Sickening shows what these shocking events reveal about the everyday racialization of health in the United States. Concluding with a vital examination of racialized healthcare during the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter rebellions of 2020, Sickening cuts through the mind-numbing statistics to vividly portray healthcare inequalities. In a gripping and passionate style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.

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New Books in Native American Studies - Nathaniel Morris, “Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans: Indigenous Communities and the Revolutionary State in Mexico’s Gran Nayar, 1910-1940” (U Arizona Press, 2020)

The Mexican Revolution gave rise to the Mexican nation-state as we know it today. Rural revolutionaries took up arms against the Díaz dictatorship in support of agrarian reform, in defense of their political autonomy, or inspired by a nationalist desire to forge a new Mexico. However, in the Gran Nayar, a rugged expanse of mountains and canyons, the story was more complex, as the region's four Indigenous peoples fought both for and against the revolution and the radical changes it bought to their homeland.

To make sense of this complex history, Nathaniel Morris offers the first systematic understanding of the participation of the Náayari, Wixárika, O'dam, and Mexicanero peoples in the Mexican Revolution. They are known for being among the least "assimilated" of all Mexico's Indigenous peoples. It's often been assumed that they were stuck up in their mountain homeland--"the Gran Nayar"--with no knowledge of the uprisings, civil wars, military coups, and political upheaval that convulsed the rest of Mexico between 1910 and 1940.

Based on extensive archival research and years of fieldwork in the rugged and remote Gran Nayar, Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans: Indigenous Communities and the Revolutionary State in Mexico's Gran Nayar, 1910-1940 (U Arizona Press, 2020) shows that the Náayari, Wixárika, O'dam, and Mexicanero peoples were actively involved in the armed phase of the revolution. This participation led to serious clashes between an expansionist, "rationalist" revolutionary state and the highly autonomous communities and heterodox cultural and religious practices of the Gran Nayar's inhabitants. Morris documents confrontations between practitioners of subsistence agriculture and promoters of capitalist development, between rival Indian generations and political factions, and between opposing visions of the world, of religion, and of daily life. These clashes produced some of the most severe defeats that the government's state-building programs suffered during the entire revolutionary era, with significant and often counterintuitive consequences both for local people and for the Mexican nation as a whole.

Geert Slabbekoorn works as an analyst in the field of public security. In addition he has published on different aspects of dark web drug trade in Belgium. Find him on twitter, tweeting all things drug related @GeertJS.

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