Edition 119: The child of a snake is a snake
Hi there, I’m Anjali Ramachandran, Director at Storythings and co-founder at Ada’s List. At some point you’ve signed up to this newsletter about interesting news and projects from the mostly non-Western parts of the world. It’s been a while since I last wrote, so I don’t blame you if you’ve forgotten signing up - just click the link at the bottom of this email if you’d like to unsubscribe. I hope you stay, though!
What’s Up
We’ve just released 3 documentary videos of people facing financial exclusion in Brazil and Colombia, for Experian. Yilmary Perdomo had to flee Venezuela with her family due to the crisis there. Previously an occupational therapist, she now cooks from home as a business. Banco Uniao Sampaio is a community bank in Sao Paulo that steps in with loans in the community currency, the Sampaio, when banks won’t approve loans for residents. Candy Farías Olivero also left Venezuela with her partner, hitchhiked more than 500 miles to Bogota, Colombia, and is doing her best to rebuild her life in another country. All that and more at Identities of the World.
If you’re an organisation who’d like to see your female employees thrive, consider becoming a part of the Ada’s List Partner Network.
Today’s edition has been supported by Uncanny Valley and the Future London Academy.
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener is the defining memoir of our digital age -- a glimpse into startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. Through a personal story of aspiration and disillusionment, Anna charts tech's gradual shift to becoming a threat to democracy. Rebecca Solnit says Anna Wiener writes like "Joan Didion at a startup." Order your copy of Uncanny Valley today.
Learn Innovation from McKinsey, Ogilvy, Deliveroo and Futurice. Join a 5-day immersive design thinking safari in London. Talks, workshops, office visits, fireside chats and networking. Explore the latest service design frameworks, research tools, corporate accelerators and data ethics. Only 30 participants, all senior professionals from around the world. Book your place now.
Links
The world is burning, literally and figuratively. In Lebanon, people came together to protest corruption, with Baby Shark becoming an anthem even as the government was forced to scrap a proposed daily tax on calls made through platforms like WhatsApp.
The BBC has launched a ‘dark web’ mirror version of its site on Tor for countries that operate heavy surveillance of the internet.
Rose M. Mutiso, Research Director of the Energy for Growth Hub gave a fantastic TED talk breaking down what energy poverty is, why it’s a systemic problem and not a simple one that can be easily solved, and how misdirected concerns about climate change are leading to a paternalistic attitude (again) to energy in Africa.
Google’s new chatbot Meena was trained on 40 billion words and 341 GB of data including social media conversations. In a blog post announcing Meena’s achievements, the Google engineers acknowledged that they need to work on safety and bias before releasing an external research demo.
A look at how India’s young people are risking their credit histories by borrowing money from app-based fintech firms - who in the end act like traditional debt recovery agents.
A beautiful photographic essay looking at how young people in Durban, South Africa, are turning to surfing to stay off the streets.
Coronavirus is causing video conferencing tools like WeChat Work and Zoom in China to crash as workers turn to them by the millions to keep work going.
Allert is a translation app for people with food allergies that allows them to let people around them know their allergies when travelling, available in 44 languages. Useful.
Geek+, a logistics provider powered by robotics, has partnered with Nike to announce same-day delivery for Nike products in Japan. As this newswire piece says, “The smart robots carry Nike products and packages directly to the warehouse worker, reducing costs, increasing picking efficiency and making daily work easier on the warehouse operators.”
Amidst all the talk of connected cars, the possibility of hacks is very real. Tel-Aviv based Upstream Security has got a $30 million Series B round funded to protect connected cars from misuse or threat.
Opportunities and events
The Wikimedia Foundation are looking for multi-lingual translators (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Spanish) for project-based contracts, who can work remotely.
Founders Factory are looking for a Head of Growth in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Applications close today for the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CITI) Women in Business programme, for Western Cape-based female founders aged 25-50.
The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data are looking for photographers, videographers (based in East Africa, West Africa or Latin America), copy editors, a junior video producer, and a Full-Stack PHP Developer.
Omidyar Network are looking for an Investment Associate in Bangalore, India.
If you’re an organisation working on gender equity and inclusion in the Global South in health, economic or educational opportunity, consider applying for Co-Impact’s systems change grant by March 31st, 2020.
From the community
Duncan Geere points us to his work on Information is Beautiful’s Beautiful News Daily infographics. Check out A Quarter of the World Now Has Tax-Free Menstrual Products, Arab Women and Men Both Believe Women Should Have Equal Legal Rights, and Extreme Poverty in Bangladesh Has More Than Halved.
The title of this edition
…is from this Wired piece about governments across the world rightly doing an about-turn on digital ID systems, given the Kenyan government’s ruling last week blocking the rolling out of their Huduma Namba digital ID programme in its current form. I’m really interested in digital ID, as part of our work on Identities of the World, so if you have any interesting links feel free to send them across.
Endnote
That’s it for this edition! I’ll be back sooner next time - feel free to send me any links to projects you’re working on that might be of interest to this audience, or if you’d like to advertise drop me a line as well. Do share this with like-minded folks on Twitter, LinkedIn, email or the platform of your choice - the more the merrier.
Later,
Thank you once again to the supporters of today’s edition: Uncanny Valley and the Future London Academy.
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener is the defining memoir of our digital age -- a glimpse into startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. Through a personal story of aspiration and disillusionment, Anna charts tech's gradual shift to becoming a threat to democracy. Rebecca Solnit says Anna Wiener writes like "Joan Didion at a startup." Order your copy of Uncanny Valley today.
Learn Innovation from McKinsey, Ogilvy, Deliveroo and Futurice. Join a 5-day immersive design thinking safari in London. Talks, workshops, office visits, fireside chats and networking. Explore the latest service design frameworks, research tools, corporate accelerators and data ethics. Only 30 participants, all senior professionals from around the world. Book your place now.