by Ruth Aine - 01 November 2014

Africa is a close-knit community. It is not a country, but we seem to have a lot of things that differentiate us from the rest and yet bring us together. Culture is an integral part of who we are. With culture comes tribalism.

by Ruth Aine - 01 October 2014

“Empowering women and girls is not only the right thing to do: It’s also smart economics and vital to ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity. For example, an extra year of secondary schooling for girls can increase their future wages by 10% to 20%. And evidence shows that resources in the hands of women boost household spending in areas that benefit children. But despite a range of significant advances, too many women still lack basic freedoms and opportunities and face huge inequalities in the world of work.” - World Bank

by Ruth Aine - 25 September 2014

The African Union 2063 agenda has aspirations that need to be achieved in the next 50 years (from when it was instituted last year). The aspirations range from a united influential global partner to an Africa of good governance. Aspiration 4, for example, is for a peaceful and secure Africa:

By 2020 all guns will be silent. Mechanisms for peaceful resolution of conflicts will be functional at all levels. A culture of peace and tolerance shall be nurtured in Africa’s children and youth through peace education

by Ruth Aine - 08 September 2014

Photo credits : Andy Kristian

I have taken an interest in my neighbors of recent. This is because they are mostly women. I do not have an 8-5 job and so I move around the neighborhood at rather odd hours, explaining why the boda boda [motorcycle taxi] guys at my stage think that I am a student at Makerere University. I live in an area that has both “high-end” and low-end housing. For a 2-bedroomed house, 2 bathrooms and toilets with small servants quarters we pay $180 per month. There are houses that go up to $400 a month as well. A small room will cost up to $60 a month. Bathrooms and toilets [if any] are communal.

by Ruth Aine - 31 August 2014

On Saturday, 23rd August, there was an ongoing trending conversation on Twitter in East Africa (mainly Kenya and Uganda), with the hash tag #Pakasa4. The 4th edition of the Pakasa Forum is a physical meeting with the theme, Creating Opportunities for Youth in East Africa, and convened by the multimedia conglomerate, The Vision Group, with CEO Robert Kabushenga in the lead. Vision Group is home to New Vision – a leading English daily newspaper and host of TV and radio stations countrywide in Uganda.

by Ruth Aine - 26 August 2014

I have been thinking hard about the recent tragedies that have befallen the universe - the kind of scenarios that we have very little control over.

Terrorism is the first to make the list. How do you leave your house and within the next few minutes, find yourself with no limbs in the middle of the taxi park, numb with pain? The shock of the reality, the pain in the moment and in years to come is something that needs to be dealt with. How does anyone ever recover from such incidents? Forgive and forget? Go on and make the best of the rest of your life? This was the unfortunate scenario on 4^th April 2014 when Abuja city in Nigeria woke up to a bomb blast at 6:30 am at Nyanya bus station. Two days later a total of 71 people had been confirmed dead and over 124 injured.

by Ruth Aine - 30 July 2014

When I first went to Europe, I was struck by the many people I met that were like me. Being like me, has nothing to do with how I look or anything, it was more to do with the fact that we obviously did not belong. We were different, we may have learned the cultures and got accustomed to the European way of doing things, but we still did not belong. This is something that we obviously knew but made a great attempt to hide.

by Ruth Aine - 22 July 2014

By the year 2030, there are going to be more people living in urban areas than in rural areas. This is something that we have always known. The world health organization [WHO] says the urban growth trend peaked in the 1950’s. It also mentioned that the global urban population was expected to grow roughly 1.5% per year, between the years 2025-2030. By the middle of the 21st century, the urban population would almost double, increasing from approximately 3.4 billion in 2009 to 6.4 billion in 2050. In a report, WHO also said that almost all urban population growth in the next 30 years would occur in cities of developing countries. Between 1995 and 2005, the urban population of developing countries grew by an average of 1.2 million people per week, or around 165 000 people every day.

by Ruth Aine - 30 June 2014

In my last year or so of secondary school, which was a long time ago, the school administration introduced guidelines to help us sort out our waste. That meant two dustbins for each dormitory. Aplastic one for organic waste and a non-plastic one for non-organic waste. In a school of over 500 girls, one would think that this would be easier than it would be for boys, for example. But it was not. It was still a lot of work. Occasionally one would find the waste interchanged and no one would volunteer to sort it out, because it was definitely no one’s business. I do not know if it was the setting or rather about school girls just being naughty, but one would have expected better.

by Ruth Aine - 18 June 2014

Trekkers bounce on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in search of snow.

Two weeks ago, a couple of friends got together to trek to the highest point of Mount Kilimanjaro. The mountain has always had a spectacular view of ice from atop the peaks. They were shocked, however, to get there and find that there was no more snow. The mountain has had a snow cap since the last ice age 11,000 years ago. Farmers during the last decades have been burning down forests to make way for crops to support the growing population in Tanzania.  The highest point at Mount Kilimanjaro is called Uhuru Peak and is 5,895 meters above sea level. After months of training and preparing for the trek to catch some snow on top of the mountain, I can well say that they bounced.