Adopt an Acre of Rainforest

Well this is a new one - Adopt an Acre of Rainforest. I've adopted plenty of other things like a star and a piece of sky and..., but an acre of rainforest, never before.

Obviously these Adopt-schemes work well and are good for raising awareness. As the website explains: Adopt an Acre® is a program of The Nature Conservancy that provides critical funds for rainforest protection and restoration.

Every year, Adopt an Acre® chooses an imperiled rainforest site that is in critical need of protection.

Since its beginning, the Adopt an Acre® program has protected hundreds of thousands of forested acres worldwide.

Once you adopt your acre(s), you'll receive a personalized certificate, more information about the program, a car magnet and a subscription to our quarterly magazine, Nature Conservancy.

But don't take my word for this virtual adoption program - no, you don't ACTUALLY own the Acre of Rainforest you adopt.

The also have an update on last year's Adopt and Acre Africa program . During the 2006 and 2007 season this program resulted in the adoption and preservation of more than 24,000 acres in East Africa's Rift Valley.

Social Networking on the African Continent

Social networking on the African continent is certainly taking off.

I found this interesting post on the White African blog about African (outside South Africa) social networking sites. One of the responses was from Global Voices online - the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

(This is not much of a blog post, just a few links so that I'll know where to find them, when I want to do a REAL story.)

Biking Through Africa

Eric is French and Amaya is from Montana in the USA. They met in Laos and decided to continue their travels around Asia together. A need to replenish their financial resources eventually brought them to Europe where they got married. They are now on a journey through Africa, a 30,000 kilometer cycling adventure traversing 30 countries.

I've been keeping track of them and was pleased to hear that they have done over 22,000 kms and have made it through the war-torn DRC. They wrote this post from Gisenyi, Rwanda.

Africa to become world leaders in IT

Published: 07-JUN-07

What are the IT services challenges in the African continent?

Infrastructure is not what we are used in South Africa or the rest of the world, both in terms of availability and reliability. The business or in-dustry infrastructure is also lack-ing, for example bank clearing agencies and electronic mediums for communication. However, these are the challenges that create the opportunity for Africa to skip one step in the evolution of IT and business architecture and actually embrace new technology earlier. In mobile telecommunication, South Africa has kept up to date with the latest technologies and has made it affordable to most of the population.

In countries that have poor infrastructure like electricity, how have you developed solutions to get around this?

We are servicing the administration hubs of financial services and more specifically life assurance, which are less prone to these types of infrastructure limitations. What we find is that back office administration is usually central and other areas are serviced via the Internet with the option of using mobile devices as a back-up. We are just entering the mobile era and are of the opinion that Africa could become a world leader in this field.

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World's first borderless mobile network expands into Central Africa

Leading pan African mobile phone network expands its One Network to include Central Africa and more than 160 million people in six countries.

Nairobi - Celtel International, the pan-African mobile telecommunications company, has announced that it was expanding One Network, claimed to be the world's first borderless mobile network, to include the Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Democratic Republic of Congo. This comes nine months after the successful launch of One Network in East Africa.

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Is English the new Esperanto?

"In Africa more than anywhere else, the ideas that English carries destroy solidarity and social cohesion, dumbing down people to the point where they accept western rules and regulations to organize their economic landscape even though local conditions totally prevent their application."

Read this provoactive and interesting article by Esperanto promotor Charles Durand.

Read more about Esperanto.