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Cameroon: Inventors, Makers and Creators

A post on AfriGadget blog brought to our attention the work of few Cameroonian craftsmen and makers through videos taken by Bill Zimmerman of 27 months, a blog documenting “Cameroon from a technologist's point of view”.MORE

LATE as heck I know, but interesting, yes?Christmas recipes in Global Food Blog

Christmas means ‘coming home’ to many people - but when that isn’t possible, preparing a magic meal can be a consolation. Bloggers of many continents have shared their favorite holiday recipes. With these you can dream yourself back home or even visit a place you’ve never been to before. Where are you celebrating Christmas this year, and what are you serving?

Local specialties and secret family recipes for Christmas food are exactly what you need to create just the right feeling - whether it’s Brazilian breakfast rabanada, American sour creme coffee cake or Bulgarian pastry, banitsa.

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Video: Sports of the World and Games People Play

More than two years ago we wrote about national sports. Today we revisit the topic to learn more about the sports and games that people play in different parts of the world.MORE

France's mysterious Maison Mantin: A mansion in Moulins shuttered for a century opens as a museum.

MOULINS, France — For most of the past century, the French town of Moulins has lived with a mystery: What lay behind the locked doors and shuttered windows of the Maison Mantin?

The imposing 19th-century mansion was sealed up shortly after its owner, the wealthy Louis Mantin, died in 1905. His collections of artwork, furniture and antiquities were left to attract dust, mold and woodworm.MORE

EGYPTWomen and Men, Shoulder to Shoulder

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26, 2011 (IPS) - The momentous events of Tahrir Square, Egypt also signify a huge step forward for gender equality in the region, women's rights activists said Friday.

Nora Rafeh Refa Tahtawi, a youth activist who participated in the Tahrir protests and is now in New York for the two- week Commission on the Status of Women at U.N. headquarters, recalled that women stood side by side with men, all sharing the feeling that they belonged to the same movement with the same goals.

Dr. Azza Kamel, a prominent Egyptian women's rights activist, was also part of the movement that toppled president Hosni Mubarak earlier this month.

The Egyptian people simply want "freedom, justice, dignity", Kamel told IPS, and "this is the first time that women deal with dignity as equals with men."

"There is no room for ethnic tension," she added, highlighting the idea of "family" described by Tahtawi with the formula "one heart, one hand, one brain".

"No one will manage to divide them [the Egyptian people] now," Kamel said. MORE

Higher education: India's own Ivy League?

MUMBAI, India — You may not be able to take the Harvard out of Cambridge, but what are the odds India can grow its own Ivy League?

In an effort to boost the country’s presence on the global stage and improve the quality of its higher education, India has announced plans to create a so-called Indian Ivy League. The government hopes to build world-class universities that compete with the likes of Yale and Princeton, according to Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.

The creation of Navratna Universities also aims to satisfy some of the increasing demand in India for higher education as the pool of lower middle-class and female students in this rapidly developing country grows. MORE

Azerbaijan invests in education infrastructure
Oil wealth trickles down to help communities shattered by war.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — English teacher Gulsham Huseynli is grateful for the little things, such as projectors and wider hallways. For two years, she has been teaching in what was effectively a two-room schoolhouse — teachers took shifts offering classes from two kindergarten classrooms.

It wasn't always like this. The Mingachevir school was once one of the best-known elementary schools in Azerbaijan. But after a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, the school became a home for refugees. The overuse brought the once-beautiful building into disrepair.

When the school reopened, hundreds of students used the local kindergarten as a classroom. But thanks to a rebuilding project undertaken by the government, students returned this year to an entirely new campus. There is a big gym, some labs, even rooms for after-school activities like a chess club.MORE

EL SALVADOR Women at the Forefront of Grassroots Organising

CIUDAD ROMERO, El Salvador, Feb 23, 2011 (IPS) - Women are playing a leading role in a powerful social movement addressing natural resource protection, adaptation to climate change, and corporate accountability in this coastal village in El Salvador.

Cristina Reyes is currently in her second term as president of the local community council in Ciudad Romero, located in the department (province) of Usulután, on the Pacific Ocean.

Her work bringing electricity, potable water, roads and services for women to her area helped get her elected as head of the community council.

Her life before this -- and the lives of many others living in this area -- reads more like an epic story of adventure, survival, and resistance. MORE

Men Slowly Evolving from Breadwinners to Bakers

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21, 2011 (IPS) - The domestic role played by half of the world's population has long been overlooked by policy-makers, with research and reports on gender roles focusing almost entirely on women.

The "Men in Families" report released last week by the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs seeks to redress this imbalance by looking at the role men play in families globally and suggesting policy changes that can encourage men to be more engaged in family life.

"Men play a number of roles within families, they are disciplinarians, educators and caregivers. However, state- level policy has focused on the role of men as providers," said Gary Barker, co-author of the report and director of Instituto Promundo, a Brazilian nongovernmental organisation that works to promote gender equality.

The key message of the report is that men can have an enormous positive influence on their families.MORE

Kenya: Sue: The Kenyan prostitute building a brand online

The Kenyan blogosphere has just recently been graced by not your usual blogger and not your usual genre: a street prostitute's experience and opinions including how the blogger allegedly escaped arrest by the police. The Blog is Nairobi Nights written by a self confessed Kenyan Prostitute under the pen name “Suzy”.

I had the privilege of interviewing her online. In this interview she reveals more about her blog, some issues of concern to Kenyan prostitutes including security, legalization and what drives her to blog. here's her take on these issues :

This is how she describes herself:

My name is Sue. I practice along Koinange Street, Nairobi. These are thoughts, observations and experiences from my prostitution world. Nothing of the soft, sympathy seeking topsy turvy kind. But straight talk, hard facts and real anecdotes. They are worth something.

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Al Jazeera's Frames: The Seed


Natabar Sarangi's mission is to find, save and share his indigenous rice seed with local farmers

Filmmaker: Jason Taylor

Sixty years ago India had more than 100,000 varieties of rice. Today there are little more than 3,000. The demise of seed variety is just one of the many issues farmers around the world are fighting against.

Agriculture has become agribusiness and more than one billion farmers' livelihoods and environments are now being threatened worldwide.

But Natabar Sarangi fights for the survival of a sustainable agriculture system with the knowledge of over 10,000 years. He continues to find, save and share his indigenous rice seed with local farmers. To date he has managed to re-introduce over 350 varieties.

He is just one of a growing number of farmers throughout the world who realise that if we do not begin to repair the damage taking place to our agricultural systems and our environment, we will lose not just our cultural identity but our fundamental right to a truly sustainable system of food security.

The Seed aired from Saturday, January 22, at 2055GMT.