Missing Rain

The weather in East Africa is changing and becoming more difficult to predict. For example, the temperature in Kenya is rising. According to an ILRI report, climate model simulations under a range of possible greenhouse gas emission scenarios suggest that the median temperature increase for Africa is 3–4°C by the end of the 21st century, which is roughly 1.5 times the global mean response. At the same time, the rain is becoming more intense, threatening to destroy crops and wash away nutrition. As a result of climate change, Kenya could see significant areas where cropping is no longer possible and the role of livestock as a livelihood option increases.

The Swedish and Danish foreign aid agencies have funded the development of The Kenyan National Climate Change Response Strategy. The recommended actions range from adaptation and mitigation measures in key sectors, to necessary policy, legislative and institutional adjustments, to ways of enhancing climate change awareness education and communication in the country, to necessary capacity development requirements, and to ways of enhancing research and development as well as technology development and transfer in areas that respond to climate change, among many others.

According to The Adaptation to Climate Change and Insurance (ACCI) Project, a bilateral Project between the Kenyan and German Governments, rain-fed agriculture, which accounts for 98% of the agricultural activities in the country, is the backbone of Kenya’s economy. It is very vulnerable to increasing temperatures, droughts and floods, which reduce agricultural productivity. Increasing temperatures are also likely to affect the growing of major crops in the country and threaten the livelihoods of farmers and processors.

A very good illustration of the predictions have been put forward by Chris Funk in his article Current Climate Trend Analysis of Kenya.

The World Bank has gathered a lot of statistics concerning the weather that you can play around with, but how about predictive tools?

The climate change of course also means that the market for weather prediction software is growing. This is something the Swedish start-up Ignitia is taking advantage of. The CEO Liisa Petrykowska, is one of only seven Swedish Ashoka fellows. Together with four other researchers, she developed a model that using data from satellites from Eumetsat, Nasa och Noaa provides a very accurate prognosis.

"Noticing that global models for weather predictions were made from simple algorithms, the research team quickly realized that part of the solution would be to calculate a different, unique algorithm for the tropics. Using the convective process—a process that wasn’t naturally used to predict weather but rather measured the moisture in the air—in addition to the same satellite images and geo-stationary data that had previously been available, the team put together different equations that represented the reality of the region. Factoring in pressure and temperature differences, Liisa’s scientific team was able to create a new algorithm that predicted tropical weather with an 84% accuracy—a rate that had previously been unheard of for the region." Ashoka

According to Dagens PS, this can be compared to the accuracy of the African television (30%) and the BBC (39%). The company has received support from the Swedish innovation funding agency Vinnova and the incubator STING. It has also been featured in a lot of Swedish media such as Ny Teknik and Dagens Industri.

Not only the technology is novel, she has introduced a new business model as well, adjusting to her main customers (low-income farmers):

"Liisa’s business model includes three ways in which someone can receive the text message weather forecasting service—direct payment, corporate payment, and third-party reselling. First, individual farmers can subscribe directly to the service. Liisa uses a very low pricing model, costing approximately .026 cents per text message. Thus, farmers who subscribe individually pay less than $1/month and an average of $5/season. Second, corporations or organizations can subscribe to the service. Within a short period of starting the SMS service, Liisa already had seed companies, pesticide companies, USAID, and IFDC (International Fertilizer Development Center) wanting subscriptions to the service. Third, Liisa’s strategy also includes third-party reselling. For example, farming co-operatives can subscribe and then re-sell the information." Ashoka

According to Epoch Times, one of the "secrets" behind Ignitia is to help farmers overcome their suspicion of science and their faith in the weather gods. Apparently, Liisa suggests to use the traditional methods in combination with the app, although only sacrificing half a chicken.

From Nairobi March 2015

I think the story of Ignitia is very good when it comes to how to go from research knowledge to impact. Cross-disciplinary research team, novel use of existing knowledge assets in combination with new knowledge, iterations, proof-of-concept trials, close conversations with potential users, collaborations with international organisations, patient investors, use of mobile technology, novel business models together with a social impact ambition paves the way. Should you like to have a go at getting a piece of the action yourself, USAID has put together information on current ICT weather apps and recommendations for practitioners.

By coming to Nairobi in May, I apparently came in the month with the most rainfall, and for sure, I got wet. This is what Expert Africa calls The Long Rain, with the shorter version occurring in November-December (note to self: try to avoid going back to Nairobi then, since I've had enough of rain in Sweden).

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had Toto, "Africa"

Tales That Sting

When I first moved to Stockholm in 1996, I decided I wanted to try something completely different. So I signed up for a singing-class: "Afro-American Rock and Pop Songs". The week before my first class, I went on a holiday to Lefkas in Greece with my friend and flatmate Marie. We had a great time since it was off-season but still very nice weather. Unfortunately, I caught a very bad cold. When I came home I could hardly speak, and singing was out of the question.

I went to the lessons anyhow. In the beginning I just listen to the instructions and mimed. Much too soon I tried to sing, why it took more than a year for my voice to recover completely. Towards the end of the course, we were told to pick a song to sing on our own. I'm sure I was tempted to select one song from the then recently released Sting album "Mercury Falling", probably "I Was Brought To My Senses", a song that later became one of my favourites. However, I went for the more upbeat "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free".

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don't even think about me
If you love somebody, set them free

Sting

From Läckö 2012

I've recently ordered "A Sting in the Tale" by Dave Goulson. Partly because the content seems to be very relevant to me because of its focus on sustainability, but mostly because the cover is so beautiful. Reminds me of Maj Fagerberg's illustrations, that evoke the sounds and smells of childhood summers in the southern parts of Sweden.

"You can publish experiments in high quality journals again and again but they are only read by a few dozen scientists who work in your field. It achieves little or nothing in the real world", Dave Goulson

Goulson has published more than 200 scientific articles on insects, but he's also worked really hard with respect to utilisation, in addition to writing popular books. Concerned with the steep decline of bumblebees he started the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006. It provides useful tips on how to design a bee-friendly garden. I would just love to have a bumblebee nest at my allotment! Sadly the Bee Kind tool seems to be only for UK fans.

A review of Goulson's book by The Guardian, points out how much we depend on the eco-services provided by creatures like bumblebees. Another good reason for why to give them a helping hand!

"Ketchup. Nothing better illustrates the mess we've made of managing the environment on which our survival depends. When you next plop it over your chips, as Dave Goulson points out in his enlightening account of a life studying bumblebees, consider that it was probably made in the Netherlands from tomatoes grown in Spain, pollinated by Turkish bumblebees reared in a factory in Slovakia." The Guardian

And out of the confusion
Where the river meets the sea
Something new would arrive
Something better would arrive

Sting

Deserve to Live

A couple of months ago, a well-known and admired headmaster at our local high school passed away. He was not very old and died after a rather sudden illness. Although I didn't have him as a teacher when I was a kid, I knew of him. I remember feeling somewhat embarrassed by the fact that he had been one of my mother's pupils, when she had first come to Mölnlycke.

He was the strong, silent kind of leader. One that made you smile. A level 5 leader, using Jim Collins' terminology:

"The term "Level 5" refers to a five-level hierarchy. Level 1 relates to individual capability, Level 2 to team skills, Level 3 to managerial competence, and Level 4 to leadership as traditionally conceived. Level 5 leaders possess the skills of levels 1 to 4 but also have an "extra dimension": a paradoxical blend of personal humility ("I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job") and professional will ("sell the mills"). They are somewhat self-effacing individuals who deflect adulation, yet who have an almost stoic resolve to do absolutely whatever it takes to make the company great, channeling their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution and its greatness, not for themselves". From Jim Collins

We sometimes have opinions about who should live longer and who should die sooner. None of the countries in EU practice the capital punishment since it is against the rules for EU membership and the goal is even to achieve a universal abolition. In the whole of Europe only Belarus use it. In the U.S. 32 out of 50 states still practice it. Methods vary by state, federal, and military policy, but include lethal injection, hanging, firing squad, the electric chair, and the gas chamber. This puts the U.S. into the same league as China, Sudan, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. 

There are many very good reasons against the capital punishment. One wrongdoing can not be corrected by another one. There is no such thing as a perfect legal system, why somebody totally innocent may and probably has been executed. Since we don't know what awaits us after death, how can we be sure it is a punishment? Also the capital punishment does not prevent people from committing crimes.

"The death penalty brutalises the people who administer it", James Guthrie, The Death Penalty Project, in an article in Intelligent Life

In the second part of David Edgar's play about the nazi architect Albert Speer (my uncle Henric played Hitler, and had many concerns about that), as I recall it, Speer argues that there is more to a human being than the worst thing he has done in his life. Being Hitler's second in command he narrowly escaped hanging after the Nuremberg trials. Although there is much in the character to loath, I must admit that I agree with him on that. Or, I suppose, I too ask for forgiveness for my wrongdoings and hope that my good deeds count for something.

From Berlin Augusti 2009

"The notion that there is a thing called evil which separates the wicked off from the rest of us is a comforting illusion. The uncomfortable truth is that to understand does involve recognition and even empathy. It does require seeing the world through the eyes of the wicked person, and thus finding those impulses and resentments and fears within ourselves that could - we painfully have to admit - drive us to commit dreadful acts under different circumstances." David Edgar

With the capacity of doing both good and bad things during a life, who can tell what good someone sentenced to death can bring to this world given the chance?

The last Swedish execution took place in 1910, and it has been abolished for peacetime offences since 1921 and for wartime ones since 1973. 

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

From Berlin Augusti 2009

The Cruellest Month

In Sweden we talk about "April weather", indicating the kind of swift changes from almost summer temperatures to bitter winter snow that can take place during this month. In that sense, April is cruel, one moment hinting the blissful days to come and in the next taking it all away with a cold wind.

I'm not sure that this is what T.S. Eliot meant with his famouse first verse of "The Waste Land", although there might be a hint of it.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

It's not an easy poem to read nor understand, and probably never was intended to be so. David Peck even calls it elitist in his summary (how great it is with all this stuff on the webb to guide you as both teacher and student) since it's filled with metaphors and references to classical works.

"Describing a series of failed encounters between various men and women, Eliot creates composites of fertility archetypes who ironically are incapable of offering spiritual nourishment to a dying world. The characters drift in and out of meaningless relationships; the men and women are impotent, shallow, vain, excruciatingly ordinary. Culture is reduced to common clichés; the well of redemption becomes a “dull canal.” The world is filled with “a heap of broken images” where “the dead tree gives no shelter.” The only salvation appears to be in personal responsibility, self-control, and a faith in cultural continuity based on common Western European values."

However, there might be other reasons for April to be perceived as a bad month. One suggestion is because the annual deadline for Americans to mail their tax returns, and checks, to the Internal Revenue Service is April 15. Also Swedish citizens spend a good deal of April thinking about how to fill in their Income Tax Return that is due May 4 (not me though, I've already sent my text message). Easter is also often celebrated in April, and it didn't go so well for Jesus, unless you think he is better off in heaven of course. April Fools' Day may also end in tears if you're not careful. Earth Month celebrates its 45th Anniversary this April and the theme for the year is "Our Planet In Peril".

Many draw parallels between "The Waste Land" poem and F. Scott Fitzgerald's book "The Great Gatsby". It didn't end so well for the main characters. Not even its author, although apparently Eliot was a great fan, according to his letter to Fitzgerald. However, the latest film did make a $58.6 million profit. Maybe luck will change for April too.

From Säveån April 2015

Less is Moore

When I did my .com journey in the late 1990s, the whole management team I belonged to was required to read two books full of mixed metaphors: "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado". 

The first book points out that as a product goes through the technology adoption life cycle there is a credibility gap (the chasm) in moving from the visionary market with the innovators and early adopters to the more lucrative majority markets and perhaps even catch the laggards. The solution is to adopt a bowling alley strategy, where you try to address several markets at the same time and use a successful leap in one to give you cred in the next.

So after making the jump and trying to survive in a Tornado, you also have to start thinking about who you want to become in the jungle, i.e. how you position yourself in relation to the competition. The gorilla is the market-share leader whose position is sustained by proprietary technology. The chimp's market share position is subordinate to the gorilla in a market where both vendors have proprietary technology that is incompatible with the other's. A monkey company focus on to reproduce the gorilla's in-market offering as best it can and sell it at a substantial discount.

From Marsvinsholm 2011

When the financial bubble burst around 2001, I believe we were inside the tornado with balls and pins flying. Although it might have looked like monkey business to outsiders, especially in retrospect, it was hard work indeed no matter what kind of primate you considered yourself to be. Although we walked away with less money than we had hoped, we got a really good crash course in what it's like to work in a high-growth company and how to manage really difficult set-backs.

A company that have been successful in crossing the chasm is Intel. They seem to have balanced the two laws of Moore in a good way. It must be fascinating for Gordon Moore to see his prediction that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit will double approximately every two years continue to be fulfilled. However, apparently he thinks that the rate of progress will slow down in the next decade or so. 

His second law concerns the capital cost of a semiconductor fab, where he has predicted that this will also increase exponentially although the unit cost drops. Of course, the urge among marketing people and product developer to fulfill the first law surely has driven the costs, and the success in the tornado alley has made it possible.

Intel's language is not very rich with metaphors, although you get kind of hungry reading about all these chips and wafers...

From Höstmarknad sep 2014

Women as Remedy

In a recent article in the Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation, David Ndii compares corruption to cancer. Having been intrigued by the book title "The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" (by Siddhartha Mukherjee) he draws the parallel to corruption:

"The cancer metaphor is often applied to corruption. It is surely the emperor of all our national maladies. The metaphorical parallel goes beyond that. Cancer treatment is as traumatic as the disease itself. And so it is with corruption. Cancer fights back. And so does corruption."

According to Ndii, distributed corruption is better than when it's concentrated at the top. He also thinks that, similar to cancer, corruption will always be part of the human society.

"Fifth, we cannot eradicate corruption — it is human nature — but we can clean up Augean stables."

"Love it or hate it, the bribery epidemic is evidence that the Kenyan Parliament has come of age. There are two good things about this. First, the nature of political competition makes corruption in Parliament more difficult to cover up than corruption in the Executive. And second, we can vote out corrupt MPs if we chose to. We can’t fire bureaucrats."

Ndii means that the current president is at a crossroads. Although not tainted himself (yet) by corruption, he still hasn't put that much effort into "cleaning up the swamp".

"We have chosen to reserve our highest honours to plunderers. We invite them to launder their reputations in our churches, mosques and temples. In Karen and Muthaiga, they welcome their sudden arrival and grotesque nouveau riche mansions because they bring with them government security, and of course the proximity improves the chance of cornering some more government business."

Kenya is considered a democracy where in the latest presidential election in 2013,  Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the president, although his major opponent Raila Odinga contested this, but lost. President Kenyatta very recently suspended four ministers and twelve other high-ranking officers, based on suspicion of corruption.

According to Wikipedia, the average urban Kenyan pays 16 bribes per month. A Google search on "Kenya corruption" provides you with about 34,500,000 hits. That's a lot of swamp. However, put in "Sweden corruption" and you'll get about 28,600,000 hits. This could, of course, be the effect of Sweden being considered as one of the least corrupt countries, but you never know... However, according to the Transparency International corruption perceptions index in 2014,  Sweden holds the fourth position whereas Kenya ranks as number 145 out of 175 countries.

So what's the cure for corruption? How can a country become healthy? A central motive behind the creation of The Quality of Government Institute at the University of Gothenburg was a suspicion (or hypothesis) that in all societies, the quality of government institutions is of the outmost importance for the well-being of its citizens. It brings together expertise from many fields, including political philosophy, media and opinion studies, public policy, political economy, public administration and public law. So far, they have published several reports and also made a large dataset available to the public.

According to the researchers at the institute, democracy is not enough to make sure the people living in the country are healthy. Four factors seem to be utterly important: that the tax system really funds the public good in a transparent way, that employment is based on meritocracy, that the educational system is fair and for free, and finally, gender equality in the political system.

"Although Kenya is considered a democracy with a vibrant civil society, which holds periodic and predictable, at times, controversial elections, Kenya’s performance on women’s representation has been dismal, compared with her East African neighbors. Women make only 10 percent of Kenya’s parliament, compared with Rwanda’s 56 %, Tanzania’s 36%, Uganda’s 35%, and Burundi’s 30%. Indeed, Kenya’s record falls 10 percentile points below the EAC’s regional average of 20% women representation in parliament." Akoko Akech, The Society for International Development

You obviously need to do more than just surgically remove the cancer tumors, you need to change your lifestyle. Or perhaps have a sex-change operation?

From Nairobi March 2015

God's Most Daring Angel

Edith Södergran was born in April 4 1892 in Sankt Petersburg. Her parents were from Finland and Edith their only child. At this time, Finland was an autonomous part of Russia. Her upbringing and schooling made here speak various languages such as German, French, English and Russian. However, she was never really educated in her native language Swedish.

Despite this, Swedish was her choice when writing poems. It seems that writing in a foreign language gave it another dimension, something I can truly sympathize with. According to Ursula Lindqvist, she  also "sought to liberate the Swedish soul from the decadence of previous generations and infuse it with a new revolutionary spirit". I must admit that my writing ambitions are not at all that great.

In her article "The Paradoxical Poetics of Edith Södergran", Lindqvist presents a translation of one of Södergran's most famous poems "Dagen svalnar" (The Day is Cooling Down):

"You sought a flower
and found a fruit.
You sought a well
and found a sea.
You sought a woman
and found a soul—
you are disappointed."

I can't but wonder, if Södergran though that history repeated itself after her fellow poet Elmer Diktonius left her after a short visit in 1922, illustrated by Magnus Nilsson's play "Guds djärvaste ängel" (God's Most Daring Angel).

From Midsummer Målen 2011