Guest post from Mwanahamisi Singano, a feminist activist  Member of FEMNET The world is witnessing an unprecedent health pandemic.  With more than 440,318 confirmed cases of COVID19 across the world, and almost 20,000 deaths (at the time of publication), the world is shutting down. Everyone is being asked to stay home and be safe, but one thing that everyone has forgotten is that homes are not

Guest post by Vanita Suneja of WaterAid Covid-19 is currently   occupying our collective mind space.  Apart from avoiding mass gatherings, the foremost message given through public media and health advisories across the world is on hand hygiene. We are being been advised to clean our hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water or with alcohol-based sanitizer. Hand washing is

CAD: Corona Attention Deficit. Is it a thing? Certainly feels like it – my aim this week is to stop endlessly browsing social media and take advantage of lockdown to get stuck into some serious reading. In the meantime, here are some of the fruits of my twitchy social media-hopping…… Coronaviral: the best memes, tweets and cartoons to get you

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By Prachi Srivastava, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario Nous sommes en guerre. ‘We are at war’—President Macron, 16 March 2020. With global attention rightfully focused on immediate health impacts, the fact that COVID-19 has brought about an unprecedented immediate global education emergency of unimaginable magnitude, is now catching attention. On 4 March 2020, UNESCO released its first update on

This is an edited-down version of a post by Paul Richards that first appeared yesterday on African Arguments, launching its promising new ‘Debating Ideas’ series. Covid-19 is a flu-like illness (symptoms include fever, cough, and breathing problems) caused by a corona virus (SARS CoV-2). Like Ebola, the virus causing Covid-19 circulates within populations of bats and crossed over to humans

If you were to buy just one issue of The Economist a year, the edition just before International Women’s Day is usually a good bet. Even though it seldom mentions IWD directly, the issue usually sneaks in some fascinating gender-based pieces (eg this 2017 article on gender budgeting). This year it ran pieces on femicide in Latin America; sexism and

If you want to step back and think more broadly about Coronavirus, the Universe and Everything, you could do worse than start with Plagues and the Paradox of Progress, by Thomas Bollyky, which combined a ‘germ’s eye view’ of human history with some powerful reflections on the challenges that face us over the coming decades. First the history. The book

Only one topic really, isn’t there? London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health are offering a free on-line course (MOOC) on Covid 19 – they are world leaders. Starts week of March 23rd. How Can Africa Prepare for Coronavirus? Learn from Liberia’s Experience with Ebola. What Ebola taught me about coronavirus: panic will get us nowhere Some non-coronavirus stuff: An

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Madhumitha Ardhanari is a 2019-20 Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics. She has worked as a sustainability strategist and futures researcher at Forum for the Future, and has five years of experience coaching businesses and organisations to adapt to long-term sustainability challenges. Until six months ago, I didn’t care much

Guest post by Séverine Deneulin On the 12th February, Pope Francis released Querida Amazonia, a poetic love letter to the Amazon region and its peoples, and from them to the whole world. The letter is one outcome of a gathering last October of 200 religious leaders working in the Amazon region, indigenous peoples and other representative of local communities. The