Date: Sunday, 22 February 2015
Venue: Nairobi National Museum’s Louis Leaky Auditorium
Time: from 4:45 to 7:00 pm.
The Humboldt Forum will be dedicated to the dialogue of the world’s cultures.
The discussion is organised within the framework of an official visit of the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Frank Walter Steinmeier, who will participate, as well as Professor Dr Hermann Parzinger, the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Professor Dr Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the President of the Goethe-Institut.
A wider delegation with representatives of the German business and cultural spheres will also be present.
Date: Friday, 13 February 2015
Venue: British Institute in Eastern Africa, Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa
Time: 3.00 pm- 5.00 pm
Entry: by RSVP – seminars@biea.ac.uk
Panelists: Dr. Firoze Manji (Pan-African Baraza), Dr. Christine Sagini (Parliamentary Health Committee)
Moderator: Wangui Kimari (York University)
About
From the Live Aid concerts of the 1980s, and again last December, to Kony2012, large-scale aid media events and philanthropic practices and discourses have proved remarkably persistent features of global North-South relations, despite being subjected to repeated critiques from both ends of the political spectrum. For example, Bob Geldof and his colleagues, unrelenting in their production of “quick fix” mechanisms for Africa, have faced considerable criticism for the recent “Band Aid 30” song recorded and sold to raise money for international efforts to contain the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, echoing resounding criticisms of previous, similar initiatives more than two decades ago. His two word “fuck-off” message to recent criticisms illustrate the contradictions and conceit that lie behind these charities, which hark back to their genesis in the philanthropy of industrial, class and merchant Capital during the Victorian era, and appear in some respects to have endured largely unreformed since. Moreover, these aid-as-spectacle events occur concurrently and conflictingly within and alongside the effects of continuing and expanding structural inequalities and neoliberal policies, such as the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1990s, exploitative trade agreements and mineral extraction, and the militarization of the continent under the imprint of ‘security’ agendas, which emerge from the same global North-South dynamics as the new celebrity endorsed philanthropy. Enter Ebola. The recent announcement—met with relatively little fanfare on the continent—that the US would send troops to help stem the spread of Ebola, was also couched in terms of historical philanthropic practices and discourses that purport to bring “Christmas” goodwill to those in need, but in ways that arguably benefit the donor most, particularly long ailing rock stars, all the while reifying longstanding images of a savage and pathetic Africa.
Engaging with these events, our forum seeks to attend to the following questions: What imperial effects, international capital processes, stereotypes and local agency on the ground do such aid endeavours presuppose, entail, reveal, and disguise? How, and by which measure, ought we to evaluate the effectiveness, “good” or desirability of aid, particularly “celebrity aid”, this new philanthropy, as a mode of international engagement in Africa and beyond? What political opportunities for both would-be donors and recipients does this aid model, or even AID in general, open and foreclose, and at which scales, within which temporal horizons? What, then, is the way forward for “aid” on local, regional and international fronts?
How has the New Media act affected journalism in Kenya?
In December 2013, Kenya’s National Assembly passed the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Act (KICA), and the Media Council Act. The new media law enables a new government-controlled board (Communications and Multimedia Appeals Tribunal) to revoke journalists’ accreditation, and fine journalists up to 500.000/= KSh (media companies up to 20 million KSh) if they breach a government-dictated code of conduct.
Journalists and members of Parliament, moderated by Peter Murimi (investigative journalist and film maker), will examine the challenges the media face operating under this act.
About
Interested in hearing about Nairobi’s great public spaces such as the skating park in the CBD or community places in Kibera? Then join us on Friday the 28th of November to hear more about Placemaking in Nairobi.
Placemaking improves the quality of public spaces and the lives of the community in tandem. It is a co-creation approach that capitalises on local community’s knowledge, assets and ideas to promote inclusive and prosperous cities. The conversation will be facilitated by Placemakers, a Dutch non-profit organization working in-situ to improve public spaces by research, design and programming in co-creation.
Their research is part of the international knowledge exchange program ‘Making Cities Together,’ that aims at connecting and strengthening local scale projects so that they reach a critical mass to effect real change at an urban scale. Making Cities Together is organised by The International New Town Institute, the International Federation of Housing and Planning, and Placemakers.
Placemakers will present the findings of their Placemaking initiatives inventory on public spaces in Nairobi that they conducted in conjunction with the Technical University of Kenya. After presentations there will be round table discussions to share ideas.
Program
• Placemaking initiatives in Nairobi inventory presentation – Placemakers
• Address on the 60 public spaces program – Nairobi City County
• Views on the importance of public spaces – UN-Habitat
• Round table discussion
• Cocktail
About
Salim Amin, son and only child of Mohamed “Mo” Amin, undertakes a journey of recollection and reflection into the life of the frequently absent, globe-trotting father he loved, revered and feared. In his late teens, Mohamed Amin abandons his studies to pursue a career in photography which, over the course of thirty years, will turn him into a front-line cameraman extraordinaire – and, arguably, the most renowned photojournalist of his era. Training his candid lens across continents, Mo Amin’s thirst for breaking news puts him repeatedly in harm’s way – enduring weeks of torture, automatic arms fire, explosives and, ultimately, the amputation of his left arm – to become one of the most decorated news camera-man of all time. The documentary depicts Mo as an unbending, unforgiving and unapologetically rambunctious paterfamilias whose hunger for “the story” propels him to ever greater professional heights – often at the expense of those he cherishes. The 96-minute film is underpinned by extraordinary images from the vast Amin archive – currently available at World Picture Network in New York. The stills mark and frame Mo’s life as it unfolds in a vivid and, at times, grisly tableau of international politics. Fuelled by a potent mixture of talent and ambition, Mo’s stubborn courage, innate resilience and wily perseverance loom large as he encounters horror and brutality in the course of his indefatigable quest to inform, alert and chronicle.
Date: Friday, 14 November 2014
Venue: British Institute in eastern Africa, Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa
Time: 11h00
About
A friend recently reflected that, like catholic priests, safaricom is everywhere in Kenya. The wirelessness of safaricom’s cellular mobile networks is compounded by institutional ubiquity, making it the most profitable corporate company in the east African region[1]. This project intends to explore how safaricom, as Kenya’s biggest mobile phone operator due to its market share and subscriber base, engenders particular notions of subjectivity. Its networks operate immediately as intimately particular and ultra-global in ways that challenge any conceptualizations of ‘a context’ or ‘the subject’. It is in the wide spectrum between how on the one hand, complete surveillance enabled by the omnipresence of networks and on the other, emancipation made possible by the imminence and volumes of its reach, that analyses of social networks have emerged. And it is within these wider narratives that I place safaricom as manager of networks; a profit driven agent straddling this spectrum. My research will view wireless networks not as empty conduits or modes of transmission but as actors that frame the possibilities of social and political engagement, and question how this wirelessness is articulated institutionally by safaricom, located in the current Kenyan neoliberal political history. This project wonders about the project of wireless limitlessness by exploring whether notions of subjectivity like temporality, intimacy and consumption are refashioning older historical categories like gender, class and citizenship. It is precisely in the interstice of historically resilient categories and new political formations that this project will question subjectivity, itself a theoretically contentious notion.
The primary research method is ethnographic, which includes participant observation at Safaricom offices including the R&D, marketing, call operator departments and shareholder meetings as well as M-Pesa outlets in Nairobi; semi-structured interviews with personnel at the organization, operators and users at the M-Pesa outlets, and other related agencies like the Communications Authority in Kenya and the Kenyan ICT Action Network. It will also consult newspaper and other textual archives.
Noosim Naimasiah is a graduate student at the Makerere Institute of Social Research.
Her work in mainly on political theory and culture. Noosim’s presentation is on her PhD proposal with her field work starting in January 2015.
For more information and to RSVP please contact seminars@biea.ac.uk
In 2011, people in Somalia suffered a catastrophic famine. Since 2012, a group from the Feinstein Center at Tufts University and the Rift Valley Institute has been conducting retrospective research on the famine in Somalia, and in the Horn of Africa region more broadly, with the aim of providing empirical evidence to help prevent or mitigate such crises in the future. The research has examined the causes of the famine, how different groups in Somalia experienced it, and international responses to the crisis.
A report examining the lessons arising from this international response to the famine in 2011 was published in August. It is available here.
In this public meeting, hosted by the RVI’s Nairobi Forum, Dan Maxwell and Nisar Majid will present the key research findings and discuss the policy implications.
Entrance is by prior registration only.
Register here.
For our 15th edition Pawa 254 Hub is happy to announce the screening of the documentary ‘BEAUTIFUL TREE, SEVERED ROOTS – Seventy Years in Kenya. One Family, Seven Stories’, a film by Kenny Mann.
The film is about a family which settled in Kenya as Jewish refugees in 1942 and their contribution to the nation through the eyes of the film-maker.
The screening will be followed by a discussion which will be facilitated by Film Kenya Magazine.
About
PAWA Film Forum is committed to showcasing independently produced, often non- commercial work that has little opportunity of reaching the general public; highlighting social, political, cultural and historical realities. By featuring the voices and visions of truly independent media artists from Kenya and beyond, we aim to expose diverse audiences to a range of artistic expressions, cultural perspectives and critical inquiries.
