According to Foreign Policy's Passport blog:

The pirates have set up an exchange in Haradheere, the main port used by the bucaneers, where shares are traded in a whopping 72 pirate outfits. The profits have so far bought countless SUVs, other luxury goodies, and even a slice of revenue for the local government programs. Says the pirate interviewed [by Reuters]: "The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials ... we've made piracy a community activity."

Well no wonder piracy won't go away. Given the options (poverty, militancy, theft), who wouldn't become a pirate? Besides, one wouldn't want to disappoint the shareholders.

At what point does a pirate economy just become a regular old economy?

via FP Passport

Some African nations, like Ethiopia, will have little to worry about. Although a new report published today in Global Environmental Change says the country's average temperature will go up by several degrees over the next half century, Ethiopia already grows crops that can withstand that kind of heat. But other nations, like Chad, will get hot enough that the local strain of maize will no longer grow.

And this situaiton will escalate very quickly. New Scientist reports:

[The researchers] found that farmers in Africa will face average temperatures outside the current range of experience in their locality in 42% of years by 2025 – and 97% by 2075. Since temperature strongly affects crop yields, farmers will need to find new varieties adapted to these higher temperatures, Burke says. Future rainfall showed more overlap with current conditions, largely because rainfall already varies more from year to year.

But scientists emphasize that this situation is not catastrophic. There are plenty of other nations where maize and other local crops are grown in higher temperatures. And that's where this idea of the "genetic prospector" comes in. This would be a person who would go out in the field, to warmer crop-growing nations like Cameroon or Nigeria, and find strains of maize that are heat-resistant. Or at least, resistant to the kinds of temperatures Chad can expect as early as 2025.

The problem, as research report author Marshall Burke explains, is that few of these nations have agreements about sharing crop strains or collaborating on agricultural science projects. There isn't much knowledge-sharing, and therefore a nation like Chad may find its people starving in bad crop seasons. But genetic prospectors, who could go out and find replacement strains, could stop the starvation cycle and food riots before they start. (Already, some African nations like Somalia have had food riots when crops failed last year.)

Given the lack of coordination between the agricultural scientists and farmers of affected nations, I think "genetic prospector" may be too hopeful of a term. I think what we're likely to see are genetic poachers, desperate people who sneak into neighboring ecologies in search of climates that match their own - and crops that thrive there.

This sounds to me like the plot for a perfect futuristic action movie: His family's crops have failed. There is nothing left for our brave young man from Chad to do but become a genetic poacher in Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigeria wants to closely guard its heat-friendly crops, and sell their genetic profiles only to the richest agribusinesses. This becomes an even more dire situation when you consider how many of those agribusinesses are owned by foreign nations who take a huge cut of every harvest. Will our brave Chadian lad survive to bring the genetic material home?

Via New Scientist and Global Environmental Change

Image of a village in Chad via Wunderground.

Every year, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge asks designers, architects, inventors, students, scientists, and just about any one else to submit ideas that could help solve the world's pressing problems using Fuller's idea of "design science." The finalists have just been announced. Most of the entries focus on the developing world, but some propose solutions to problems like getting packages around in New York City (use special routes that go through subways) and broadcasting PSAs about the environment effectively.

The project you see above is called Sahara Forest. Its creators write:

The purpose of our scheme ‘The Sahara Forest Project' is to reverse the trend of desertification, grow food crops and, through the climatic benefits produced by revegetation and carbon sequestration, to address climate change. The project combines two proven and economically viable technologies, the Seawater Greenhouse and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), for the first time. The Seawater Greenhouse is an ingenious technology that creates a cool growing environment for food crops in hot arid regions and is a net producer of distilled water from seawater. Designed by Charlie Paton with three pilot versions built, the scheme essentially mimics the hydrological cycle in miniature. Seawater is evaporated from cardboard grilles at the front to create cool humid conditions within the greenhouse and is then condensed as distilled water at the back. CSP concentrates the sun's heat to drive steam turbines and produce zero-carbon electricity. A 300km by 300km square of the Sahara desert would be sufficient to generate all the world's electricity needs. The two technologies are powerfully synergistic: They both work best in sunny regions, the Greenhouse produces surplus de-ionised water that CSP plants need to maintain maximum efficiency while CSP produces large amounts of surplus heat that can be used to increase the amount of seawater evaporated and thereby extend the area of land that can be irrigated.

Here is a seawater greenhouse in action in the Oman desert.

via Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said her country would be doing aerial spraying of the army worms, but it may be too late to prevent their spread to Sierra Leone and Guinea. The worms are actually a breed of caterpillars that can lay 500-1000 eggs at a time - which means they can devastate an entire crop in 48 hours. And it's not just crops that are affected. Streams and ponds that locals depend on for water have been completely polluted by worm feces.

This story is similar to ones we've heard recently about jellyfish swarms.

It's unclear whether the army worm invasion is simply a cyclic infestation or whether there might be other environmental causes. In the meantime, Johnson-Sirleaf has asked for aid from the U.N. to combat the creatures, whose destruction of the food and water supplies have already affected hundreds of thousands of people.

via BBC News

This is lava from Erta Ale, an active shield volcano in the East African Rift. (It hasn't erupted since 2005, but lava flow persists.) In this region of Africa, saltwater from the Red Sea will flood the area, and localized earthquakes continue to affect those who dare to live anywhere near this region. You can view the full breakdown of how an ocean is born here, with more stunning photography from Haddock. In the meantime, try to prevent these sulfuric pools from reaching your bedside.

Birth of an Ocean: How It Works [Scientific American]
Scientists Witness 'Ocean Birth' [BBC News]

This is a before picture of what the area was like that locals chose for their farm. Working with a group called Green Dreams, the locals set up a plan to clear the garbage, start a vermiculture with the worms they found under the garbage, and plant vegetables in the cleared area. Trash became compost.

They planted seeds after using PVC pipes to create perfectly round holes that they could drop the seeds in.

And three months later, they had this farm, complete with a lot of worm goo (tasty for plants) from the vermiculture to use as fertilizer.

Obviously this farm was helped along with outside help from Green Dreams, but now the people they trained are selling their services to other parts of Kibera, teaching other groups to grow their own food. Another thing that was unique about this farm was that many of the people who worked on it were ex-cons who apparently helped guard the area — so future farms in other cities might consider incorporating some element of security too.

Farming Innovations in a Slum [via AfriGadget]

Top image of Kibera via Frances Woodhams.

The device was invented by eighteen-year-old Morris Mbetsa, who lives in Mombasa, Kenya, where auto theft is a tremendous problem. Mbetsa is a self-taught hardware hacker who presented his work at Barcamp Nairobi in June. Later, it was picked up in a television report (below). Mbetsa is currently looking for funding to mass produce his device and sell it. Once he adds AI to it, the Block&Track will be able to decide when you're doing something wrong in your own car, and quickly send surveillance tapes to the police which contain evidence of your crimes.

Image above via MAKE magazine.

Self-Taught Genius Invents Anti-theft Device [Afrigadget via Core77]

According to SciDev.net:

Lesley Cornish, from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and AMSEN's academic director, says much of the money will be spent on bursaries and travel expenses for students to visit tutors at participating universities — including the University of Botswana, the University of Nairobi in Kenya and the Federal University of Technology in Nigeria.

AMSEN will provide students with a pool of research mentors and facilities in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa, Cornish told SciDev.Net.

She adds that, aside from purchasing equipment, "an amount has also been earmarked to retain staff and researchers so that they can help build up their universities".

This could be the first stage in moving away from a post-colonial era in Africa to an era where the lingering effects of colonialism are no longer felt at all. Image via Platinum Today.


African Science on the Rise [SciDev]

This image is of a cumulonimbus cloud over Africa. It has a similar shape to that of the thunderhead, though it doesn't necessarily have to cause thunderstorms. Often it will, however.

You can see a ton of other images in this series at the Boston Globe.

The Sky, From Above [Boston Globe]

According to Scidev.net:

Farmers in all three countries said they have suffered from an increasing shortage of surface water. Wild swings in the weather, between persistent drought and torrential floods, have also been reported . . . Everhart Nangoma, one of the case study researchers at the European Union offices in Blantyre, says farmers in Malawi now spend more on expensive, fast-growing varieties. They also plant a minimum of two crops in their gardens to ensure at least some harvest.

Others are banding together to create DiY rainwater harvesting tanks, while still others are "switching from wheat and potatoes to quick-maturing crops such as beans and maize." Many have begun planting inside forests.

African Farmers Adjusting to Climate Change [Scidev]

Nature's full of clawed animals, but the frogs' defense mechanism is unique in the natural world because their claws literally rip through the skin when extended. They're also made of bone instead of keratin (sorry, no adamantium claws are known to exist in reality, except for this guy). Researchers aren't sure if the claws are retractable or not, and as Yong notes, they may never really want to find out:

The clawed frogs belong to a family called Arthroleptidae that were discovered in Central Africa more than a century ago. At first, people wondered if the claws just stuck through the skin as a side effect of the preservation process. Alternatively, the frogs may have used them to grip or climb. Their true function as defensive weapons only became clear when naturalists first described actually picking up and handling live animals.

Doing so is a mistake, and anyone who makes it is punished with a series of deep, bleeding wounds inflicted by the struggling animal as it kicks out violently with its claws. The ability is well known to the people of Cameroon, who only ever hunt the frogs with machetes or spears.

In the X-Men movie, Wolverine, when asked if it hurts to pops his claws, answers, "Every time." One can't help but think that the same is true for the frogs.
...
However, many amphibians have extraordinary healing abilities that can even regenerate severed limbs. It may be that the clawed frogs, like their comic-book counterpart, have a 'healing factor' that closes up the wounds that open every time their claws are used.

Source: Not Exactly Rocket Science

According to the International Herald Tribune, bad weather and skyrocketing fuel costs have made it harder for locals to grow and transport staple foods. But the problem is also pure politico-economic:

The protesters in Mogadishu on Monday included women and children who marched against the refusal of many shopkeepers to accept the country's old 1,000-shilling notes, which are worth 74 U.S. cents. Many of the protesters blamed the shopkeepers' refusal to honor the bills for sharply rising prices.

Shortly after the beginning of that demonstration, tens of thousands of people took to the streets, hurling stones that smashed the windshields of several cars and buses. Demonstrators threw rocks at shops and chaos erupted at the city's main market. Hundreds of shops and restaurants in southern Mogadishu closed their doors for fear of looting. "Traders have refused to take old notes," Hussein Abdikadir said as he rolled a tire that he intended to burn.

"Food prices are high and we have nothing to eat. We will protest until the traders agree to take the notes and sell us food."

Shopkeepers in the sprawling Bakara market, which also houses a well-known open-air arms bazaar, say the interim government and unscrupulous businessmen are responsible for runaway inflation. "Businessmen blame the government, which does not control the security and circulation of money," said Abdirahman Omar, a money-changer.

2 Die in Somalia Riot Over Food Prices [International Herald Tribune]

This is a story that requires few words to tell. Here's a larger map of the region. UN Satellites Photograph Human Exodus [War and Health]

The toilet sounds great and I like the idea, but calling it the "dignity toilet" just underscores one of the basic problems with this design: nobody really wants to carry their poop around on their back like a Timbuktu bag. But if you ignore this issue, there's something truly ingenious about the bottom part of the toilet, which lets you mulch your waste into the soil without ever getting your hands dirty:

Sanitary Facilities for Africa [via TreeHugger]