JOHANNESBURG — A FEW weeks ago, as I was leaving my office, I stopped at a traffic light and watched a young woman cross the street in front of me. She wore a pair of jean shorts cut fashionably high, and I could see the crease of her left buttock extend each time she took …
FOR IDJWI, AN ISLAND ON THE RWANDA-DRC BORDER, ISOLATION HAS BEEN A GIFT. Idjwi – For many of the world’s 7 billion people, it would be hard to imagine a world without the Internet. In just a couple of decades, our lives have become so intertwined with the World Wide Web that it’s difficult to …
Nairobi, Kenya — Terrorism is a global reality, and for me as a Kenyan, this struck close to home in September with the siege of the Westgate mall. Yet in many ways, growing up in Nairobi I was always in the midst of terror. As a boy living in extreme poverty in Kibera, one of …
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. While the African Union concentrates on strategies to mitigate the devastating financial effects climate change is having on Africans, I worry instead about its impact on our bodies. As a doctor working in my native Ethiopia, I see the …
Nairobi, Kenya — There are a variety of reasons why women in traditional or less-developed societies give birth to many children: religious, cultural, economic, status and lack of adequate information. But one reason that seems so obvious once you think about it — but which seldom tops the list — is the fear that the …