Africa's mobile economic revolution

The article here describes how the massive growth in mobile phone ownership is fuelling Africa's economic growth.

From the article:'Africa has experienced an incredible boom in mobile phone use over the past decade. In 1998, there were fewer than four million mobiles on the continent. Today, there are more than 500 million. In Uganda alone, 10 million people, or about 30% of the population, own a mobile phone, and that number is growing rapidly every year.'

Swazi HIV patients 'eat cow dung'

Some HIV-positive patients in Swaziland are so poor they are eating cow dung to fill their stomachs and make anti-retroviral drugs effective, activists say. Read the story on the BBC news website here.

Tiny blood card offers easy tests

A cheap and portable blood test could provide a breakthrough for diagnosing infections in remote areas, a study in the journal Nature Medicine says. Read the story on the BBC website here. The U.S developed device will cost about 60p and has shown almost 100% accuracy in tests for HIV and Syphilis in Rwanda.

The researchers hope the device will boost testing of pregnant women, especially in Africa.

Barely a quarter of pregnant women in low and middle income countries are tested for HIV, a figure which provides scant hoping of reaching the United Nations goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015, according to the 2010 UNAids Report on the Global Aids Epidemic.

In Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only nine and six percent, respectively, of pregnant women currently receive HIV testing, according to the report.

China's illegal children will be confiscated

A brief editorial from The Economist (found here) suggests this is one way the One Child Policy is being enforced.

It is fairly clear that although the policy has had noticeable success in it's original aim of reducing the birth rate in China, the policy has created demographic issues that will need tro be dealt with in the future.

U.S. Debt

Who does the USA owe money to and how does this affect the global balance of power?

The map here shows who the USA owe money to and how the amounts have changed over time.
The website says:

Our goal with this visualization was to show which countries are lending us money and to let people interact with data on a country by country basis to see how this lending has changed over time. For example, mousing over the large dot on China shows that Chinese lending to the United States has gone from $59 billion ten years ago to more than $1.15 trillion today, or one quarter of the total foreign owned debt of $4.45 trillion.

If the USA owes so much money to China where does that leave our traditional view that the USA is 'developed' and that China is 'developing' or an emerging economy?

The London Riots and Poverty

There has been a lot of news coverage about the London Riots this week but the causes of the riots are extremely complex. Is there a link between poverty and the riots? Have a look at the map here which shows poverty and the areas of the rioting. Is there a link?

From this same page you can also access the Guardian's interactive map about the riots.

There is an alternative map looking at deprivation and the location of the riots here.

This short post here
examines the link between the riot areas and areas of child poverty.

Emerging economies overtake developed economies?

Look at this brief summary here which suggests that emerging economies are overtaking the developed economies. In the light of America's recent debt issues it is something A2 geographers should be keeping their eye on!