South Africa’s parliament reopens after landmark elections that lead to the formation of a government of national unity after the governing ANC lost its majority. We talk to international co-operation minister, Ronald Lamola. Is the ANC buying time or wasting time?
Somalia imposes a 5 percent tax on digital transactions sparking causing a public outcry
And why is Turkey boosting cooperation with Niger?
Prsenter : Audrey Brown
Producers :Bella Hassan, Joseph Keen and Sunita Nahar in London and Susan Gachuhi in Nairobi
Technical Producer: Jonny Hall
Senior Producer: Paul Bakibinga.
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi.
The manager of a coffee farmers's co-operative says small scale farmers in Africa are concerned that they may soon be unable to sell their produce to Europe because of the impact of the European Union's deforestation regulations.
New information about the largest rainforest in Southern Africa raises questions about discovery - is it just a foreign concept?
And, two decades after his country's capital was conquered by Italy, Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila became the first black African to win Olympic gold, running barefoot in Rome.
Presenter: Charles Gitonga
Producers: Joseph Keen and Sunita Nahar in London, and Susan Gachuhi in Nairobi.
Technical producer: Jonny Hall
Senior Journalist: Patricia Whitehorne
Editors: Alice Muthengi and Andre Lombard.
Is the role of the church in Kenyan politics changing? We hear the perspective of a senior member of the umbrella group- the National Council of Churches of Kenya
Why has Chadian President Mahamat Deby cancelled an official visit to Paris scheduled for this week?
We talk to the founder of a beauty pageant in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, a place with a reputation for danger.
Zimbabwe's President Emerson Mnangagwa has announced public hearings into the mass killings of Zimbabwe's Ndebele people 40 years ago. The president says the hearings will be a mechanism to bring healing and national cohesion. But a survivor of the massacre of opposition supporters, tells us he does not trust the process.
Also, why are major gas companies threatening to pull out of South Africa?
And Zambia has spent millions of dollars on hiring new teachers and making primary and secondary education free, but the policy has also worsened class overcrowding.
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Bella Hassan, Rob Wilson and Joseph Keen in London. Charles Gitonga in Nairobi.
Technical producer: Craig Kingham
Senior Journalist: Paul Bakibinga
Editors : Alice Muthengi and Andre Lombard.
Toronto is a bustling city on Lake Ontario which is growing at an astonishing rate. Almost a third of Torontonians have arrived in the last decade and more than half were born outside of Canada. The city’s Mohawk name is , which means “the place on the water where the trees are standing".
Noah Richler explores the fictional landscape of the city with four of its exciting writers from different generations and backgrounds; Catherine Hernandez, Adrianna Chartrand, Don Gillmor and Deepa Rajagopalan who all join him in front of a lively audience at The House of Anansi Bookshop.
When listener Sophia decided to donate a kidney to a stranger through a domino transplant scheme, her teenage daughter Katie objected. But years later, Katie decided to do the same - inspired by the chain of goodness her mother started, and the joy of meeting organ recipients at the transplant games.
Also: Big Ocean - the first K-pop band whose members all have hearing impairments. As the Paris Olympics approach, we look back at the amazing story of two athletes who chose to share gold in Tokyo. Wild horses return to Kazakhstan for the first time in over two hundred years, thanks to a zoo breeding programme. The innovative system helping grow crops in arid regions with less water. And the children who got to perform at London's famous Royal Opera House.
Our weekly collection of happy stories and positive news from around the world.
How do you think about the internet? What does the word conjure up? Maybe a cloud? Or the flashing router in the corner of your front room? Or this magic power that connects over 5 billion people on all the continents of this planet? We might not think of it at all, beyond whether we can connect our phones to it.
Another chance to hear one of our favourite episodes, inspired by a question from CrowdScience listener Simon: how much does the internet weigh?
First of all, this means deciding what counts as the internet. If it is purely the electrons that form those TikTok videos and cat memes, then you might be surprised to hear that you could easily lift the internet with your little finger. But presenters Caroline Steel and Marnie Chesterton argue that there might be more, which sends them on a journey.
They meet Andrew Blum, the author of the book Tubes – Behind the Scenes at the Internet, about his journey to trace the physical internet. And enlist vital help from cable-loving analyst Lane Burdette at TeleGeography, who maps the internet.
To find those cables under the oceans, they travel to Porthcurno, once an uninhabited valley in rural Cornwall, now home to the Museum of Global Communications thanks to its status as a hub in the modern map of worldwide communications. With the museum’s Susan Heritage-Tilley, they compare original telegraph cables and modern fibre optics.
The team also head to a remote Canadian post office, so correspondent Meral Jamal can intercept folk picking up their satellite internet receivers, and ask to weigh them. A seemingly innocuous question becomes the quest for everything that connects us... and its weight!
Producer: Marnie Chesterton
Presenters: Marnie Chesterton & Caroline Steel
Editors: Richard Collings & Cathy Edwards
Production Coordinators: Jonathan Harris & Ishmael Soriano
Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald
(Image: Blue scales with computer coding terms. Credit: Alengo via Getty Images)
Nigerian authorities guilty of violating protesters rights during mass demonstrations against police brutality, known as #EndSars, in 2020. Why hasn't police behaviour changed?
Can Africa's booming population be harnessed?
And can anyone stand in the way of another presidential term for Rwanda's Paul Kagame?
Presenter: Audrey Brown
Producers: Charles Gitonga and Frenny Jowi in Nairobi. Nyasha Michelle and Joseph Keen in London.
Technical producer. Philip Bull
Senior Journalist: Paul Bakibinga
Editors : Alice Muthengi and Andre Lombard.
In the lead up to the US election President Joe Biden admitted to ‘screwing up’ in a debate against Donald Trump. His excuse? Several trips around the world, a cold and severe jet lag. Joe has Marnie and the panel wondering how we can fly better.
We’ll be stopping off to hear how one species, much like the US president, should consider reducing its airmiles, if only to avoid a pointless 16,000km round trip every year. There’ll also be a stopover in Northern Canada to hear how thinning ice is making it difficult for local communities to remain in touch with their ancestral heritage and traditional modes of travel.
Whilst we recommend considering more environmentally friendly alternatives here at Unexpected Elements Airways, we understand that some flights can’t be avoided. Take time whilst onboard to consider how you can reduce the symptoms of jetlag with tricks learnt from the latest scientific understanding of human physiology. Professor Rosemary Braun tells us how the clocklike rhythms of the body can be manipulated to make any long haul flights more manageable.
Also, the smashing specificity of Wimbledon’s grass tennis courts, a grand astronomical debate from the 1920s and a very special Nunavut Day.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton
Panellists: Christine Yohannes and Meral Jamal
Producers: Julia Ravey, Harrison Lewis, Dan Welsh and Noa Dowling
The 2024 north Atlantic hurricane season has started with a bang, with Hurricane Beryl traversing the whole ocean, and leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, into Mexico and Texas. Presenter Roland Pease speaks to climate expert Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University about this hurricane season and the role of climate change.
And Roland speaks to Amie Eisfeld of the Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has been looking at the infection and transmission of bovine H5N1 influenza (bird flu). The virus is shown to be transmitted through the milk of cows with bovine flu to mice and by intranasal exposure to mice and ferrets. The findings are published in Nature this week.
Ancient genomics: Neolithic farmers hit hard by the plague. Repeated outbreaks of plague may have contributed to the decline in Neolithic populations in Scandinavia, a Nature paper suggests. The analysis of ancient DNA from more than 100 individuals sheds light on the fate of these farmers around 5000 years ago. Roland speaks to geneticist Frederik Seersholm of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre in Copenhagen.
And a cheap coating that can be painted easily onto the glass of greenhouses converts part of the sunlight spectrum into red light that should boost the rate at which plants grow. Roland joins the chemists and crop scientists to see if there really is a difference with tomatoes and strawberries.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
(Image: Hurricane Beryl batters northern Jamaica after killing 7 people in southeast Caribbean. Credit: Anadolu/Getty Images)
