30/01/14

Bang! The AK-47, African farming and gender equality

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Copyright: Internews Europe

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This month’s podcast covers four items, starting with a voice-based system that is transforming agricultural trade in Mali. Radio Marché works by directly connecting farmers with buyers through a software platform that turns information collected from mobile phone calls into radio transmissions.

Next, following the death last month of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, the podcast examines the gun’s role in liberation and banditry.

Then food expert David Bennett explains why African agriculture needs trade more than aid. He talks about how to improve food security by using funding to attract young people back to rural areas and make local farms more profitable.

Finally, gender bias in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics contradicts the aspirations of scientific objectivity. To help counter this, Shirley Malcom, co-chair of the gender advisory board of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, argues that gender equality ought to be part of basic science training.