🚀 Let's talk about African startups

I told you I love podcasts, especially long-listens like Suave by Futuro Studios (it won the Pulitzer)! I told Deutschlandfunk Kultur about it, too; listen here (German). In the meantime, here's what happened last week:

• How African startups contribute to clean drinking water on the continent
• Indigenous people in the United States are finally talking about their experience at the so-called boarding schools
• The protests in Sri Lanka from the Tamil perspective and what Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy has to do with it
• Plus: the very first female President of Hungary, another milestone in the fight against malaria, first plants on the Moon, no more so-called conversion therapy in Greece and new courts in Mozambique

what happened last week

We need to take a closer look at entrepreneurship in Africa
I know you're looking for good news. My love language is providing you with some each week. In this issue, I want to talk about 'the very worrying toilet situation' in Africa and all the things that are being done to solve it.

Ok, I'm in.
Cool. So, I am a huge Quartz Africa fan. In their latest issue, they talked about all the noteworthy African startups in sanitation and I'm going to summarize it for you. Because, wow.

Why this matters:
Yes, there's a lot of fighting in Africa. A lot of poverty, too. There are also so many social movements and innovative entrepreneurship, too, who are working on providing the solutions to the continent's long-standing problems.

Tell me more about sanitation in Africa
It's a huge challenge. Here are some numbers:

• A lot of people do not have access to clean drinking water. According to UNICEF, some 783 million people worldwide do not have access to safe toilets (meaning, toilets that are built in a way so your sh*t doesn't mix with drinking water), and thus clean drinking water. Among those 783 million people, some 340 million live on the African continent, mostly in the East and South.
  • Dig deeper: There are many reasons why this is the case. For example, sanitation services are expensive, and many countries cannot afford it. Plus, climate change creates more frequent floods and drier droughts and those two are the evil twins behind a lot of natural disasters in Africa, that only make things worse than they already are. And, there's been more fighting, too. Millions of people have had to flee because of it, and the places they flee to (such as refugee camps), they also have sh*tty access to these basic needs there.
• Development aid is not cutting it. Most development aid goes to countries and regions that are already doing well.

As a result, some startups in Africa are taking responsibility for finding a solution. Here are just a few examples:

• South Africa: Loo Afrique. This company makes toilet technology that saves water, improves hygiene, and incorporates greywater usage into everyday living. In 2019, Loo Afrique won R300,000 ($20,500) from the Gauteng Accelerator Programme Innovation Competition. It also receives funding from South Africa's Water Research Commission.
• Egypt: Water Will. This startup creates filters to eliminate impurities, odors, bacteria, and heavy minerals often found in the water in rural Egypt. Their pots are treated with silver nano particles, which they then sell to rural communities.
• Kenya: Sanergy. This startup collects urine and other biowaste and converts it into biofuel and other useful products. Japan last year gave them US$2.5 million. Another startup in Kenya is HydroIQ. This virtual network helps homes, utilities, businesses, and industries use, manage, and pay for water efficiently. It is one of three startups selected by Google as part of its Startups Accelerator: Africa program this year, meaning they got hella $$$.
• Rwanda: Water Access Rwanda. They're up and running since 2014, and very successfully, too. This startup has provided clean water access to more than 312,000 individuals, businesses, schools, and farms in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Uganda. The Jack Ma Foundation has funded it.

In other Africa-related news

Somalia:
Four people were killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab said they did it. It's a super sensitive time for the country as it's (finally) election time.

We are finally talking about what we did to Indigenous people in the United States

• Refresher: You probably haven't been taught this at school but... The United States government has a long history of trying to eradicate its Indigenous people. Beginning in 1869 and until the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their homes and families and placed in more than 400 so-called 'boarding schools' across 37 states in the United States. The government and churches ran them. The goal was to assimilate these children into European American culture by force, so they lose their language and culture and to break up Indigenous families. Vox once did this 14-min mini-documentary on "How the U.S. stole thousands of Native American children" that's worth watching.

A new report found marked and unmarked burial sites of Indigenous children at 53 different so-called boarding schools and finally detailed in a report, for the very first time, the brutality and treatment that Indigenous children suffered when they were forcibly moved to so-called boarding schools.

Why this matters:
This is a very important step toward healing intergenerational trauma. Indigenous people deserve to grow and heal. Only...