my-life-my-camera-poster

Exhibition of Photography and Film: My Camera, My Life by Sir Mohinder Dhillon, Jan. 27 2017 @ BIEA – Laikipia Road

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my-life-my-camera-poster
Date: January 27, 2017
Venue: BIEA, Laikipia Road
Time: 2-4 pm

About
On 27 January 2017, the Rift Valley Forum and the British Institute in Eastern Africa will host the launch of My Camera, My Life. In his autobiography, Mohinder revisits his records of events that shaped his career as well as Kenya’s history and beyond. He documents Kenya’s independence heroes and his close relationship with top African political leaders, including Kenya’s Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. The book also highlights his records of the 1980s famines in Ethiopia, Karamoja in Uganda and Turkana in Kenya.

The Forum will host an accompanying exhibition of photographs and documentary films shot by Sir Mohinder between 1952 to 2008.

Copies of the autobiography will be on sale at the launch for KSH 4,500/=.

future-making-at-the-margins

Event: Future-Making At The Margins – Social-Ecological Transformation In Rural Africa, Dec. 14 2016 @ BIEA

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future-making-at-the-margins
Date: December 14, 2016
Venue: BIEA
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

By Detlef Müller-Mahn, Professor, Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany

About
Africa is ‘rising’ and accompanying this process are ambitious new development plans and policies. Kenya´s Vision 2030 and similar long-term programs in neighboring countries are presenting maps of the future that will, if implemented, lead to massive social-ecological transformations of rural areas.

Development blueprints aim to ‘turn history on its head’, enabling previously-ignored dryland regions to become engines of economic growth for the wider benefit of these nations. The process is simultaneously redrawing the map of marginal regions and redrawing the relations between people and environments in order to gain greater control over and make ‘more productive’ use of these environments.

The paper explores the nature and spatial politics of these processes. While on the one hand the processes are having widespread differential impacts, plans are often much less ‘total’ than is imagined, creating space for different possibilities in people-environment relations. At the same time, the implementation of development schemes is full of surprises. Future-making may be understood as a combination of practices of anticipation and imagination, with largely unknown consequences.

Bio
Detlef Müller-Mahn is a professor of development geography at the University of Bonn. His research focuses on the political ecology of land use change, risk and development in East Africa and the Middle East.

His recent projects are dealing with diverse topics, including risk management strategies of pastoralists in Ethiopia; urban governance and water distribution in the city of Khartoum; and adaptation to climate change and how it can be understood as a “travelling idea” that is negotiated at international conferences (the COP 21 in Paris 2015) and local projects (Ethiopia, Kenya).

He is currently preparing a collaborative research center on “Future rural Africa”, which will address the relationship between “future-making” and social-ecological transformation.

http://www.biea.ac.uk/event/future-making-at-the-margins-social-ecological-transformation-in-rural-africa/

Economics of Election in Somaliland

The Economics of Elections in Somaliland, Feb. 9 2016 @ Rift Valley Institute – Nairobi

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Economics of Election in Somaliland
Date: Tuesday, February 9 2016
Venue: Rift Valley Institute Office, Seminar Room
Location: Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa
Time: 2pm-4pm

Entrance is by prior registration only

About
On 9 February 2016, the Rift Valley Institute’s Rift Valley Forum will host a panel discussion launching the report of the study The Economics of Elections in Somaliland: The financing of political parties and candidates. After the November 2012 elections in Somaliland, candidates, political parties and political associations reported that spending on individual campaigns had sharply increased relative to spending in previous polls. Voters, politicians and parties expressed concern that the high cost of campaigning threatens the integrity of a fledgling electoral system. In response to these concerns, researchers working with the Rift Valley Institute conducted a study to examine sources of income and expenditures by candidates and political parties in Somaliland’s 2005 parliamentary and 2012 local council elections. The study’s findings have important implications for campaign finance regulation in Somaliland.

Moderator: Cedric Barnes, International Crisis Group

Panellists: Adan Abokor, Rift Valley Institute; Aly Verjee, Rift Valley Institute; Haroon Yusuf, Soradi and Amina Warsame, Network Against FGM In Somaliland

Voting Matters

Exhibition: Voting Matters. Citizenship & Technologies of African Elections, Oct. 12 – Nov. 8 2015 @ Nairobi National Museum

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Voting Matters
Exhibition Dates: October 12 – November 8, 2015
Venue: National Museum

Roundtable on: Technologies and Elections
An international conference on Voting materiality confronting academics, politicians, professionals of elections.

Date: October 14, 2015
Venue: National Museum
Time: 2-4 pm

Speakers:
Moses Bakari (CRECO/ELOG, Kenya)
Mohammed Bakari (UDSM, Tanzania)
James Mwirima (CEWARN, Uganda)
Tom Wolf (IPSOS – Kenya)/ IEBC representative (Kenya)

About
Contemporary elections involve ever-more modern technology. They are meant to protect what have become the fundamental principles of elections: the secrecy and singularity of the individual’s vote, the transparency of the ballot, the independence of the institutions supervising the elections.But these increasingly sophisticated elections come at a cost: when technology goes wrong, suspicions are quickly aroused.Have new technologies made elections more free and fair? Has this new apparatus transformed electoral behavior? The speakers on this panel, each one a specialist, will address these questions with regard to their own field of practice: from election polls, to electoral observation, to the organisation of elections.