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Capitalism and Its Discontents: My Observations in Uganda and Kenya
12 min read. We are witnessing the operation of a more fully fledged, institutionalised, normalised capitalist social order, and an intensification and deepening of processes that will render these countries, for the time being, ever more capitalist. Capitalism is now more fully operational and thus, so to speak, causal i.e. it needs to be taken into account when discussing the drivers and characteristics of contemporary life in African countries.
Jörg Wiegratz
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The world, including Africa, has arguably never been more capitalist than at the current juncture. And yet, the scholarly and public debates in and about Africa, as far as I am aware, are nowhere near in tandem with this reality. In countries such as Uganda and Kenya, that I both regard as capitalist countries, there is hardly any explicit public debate about how capitalism shapes and alters these societies. The very basic question (are we a capitalist society?) does not get discussed in public forums.
In Kampala, despite the capitalist character in the culture of everyday life that is intensifying by the day, public debate is about almost everything except capitalism. Government officials, public servants, technocracts, political, religious, and business leaders and national observers and commentators rarely use the C-word in their public analysis, speeches or statements.
This low intensity of an explicit capitalism debate is not necessarily unique to these two countries or the region. Colleagues who do research in Central Asia tell me the situation is similar in that region too. And in my home country, Germany, this topic is hardly ever discussed head-on by government officials and mainstream parties either; official discourse there circles around the term "social market economy".
In Kampala, despite the capitalist character in the culture of everyday life that is intensifying by the day, public debate is about almost everything except capitalism. Government officials, public servants, technocracts, political, religious, and business leaders and national observers and commentators rarely use the C-word in their public analysis, speeches or statements. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni once in a while offers a brief take on the matter by declaring that Uganda is pre-capitalist and the analyst Andrew Mwenda from time to time touches upon the topic too.
Plus there is a group of other public intellectuals who are making various aspects of capitalism the explicit focus of some of their analyses, including Fred Muhumuza, Moses Khisa, Charles Onyango-Obbo, Kalundi Serumaga, Mary Serumaga, and Yusuf Serunkuma. But that, more or less, is basically it in terms of focused, explicit articulations on the matter in the analysis that makes it into the (English language) media space. To date, the weekly prime time talk shows on NTV and NBS as a rule of thumb do not frame debates in terms of capitalism, neither does the weekly media roundtable. The general silence regarding capitalism in Africa (CiA) doesn't stop there, or on the continent for that matter. It also extends to university campuses where it suppresses intellectual creativity (as I have argued previously).
And yet, many African countries are by now capitalist societies and analytically need to be treated as such. A number of social phenomena in these countries can be seen to be typical of a capitalist society, such as inequalities and uneven spatial development. These are to some degree comparable to similar phenomena in other capitalist countries across the world, including the Global North. There are striking similarities now across the North-South axis when it comes to some of the experiences of capitalist everyday life. Let me go deeper here…
Sometime ago, I attended the grand finale of a best comedian-type competition show of a Ugandan TV station (NBS The Comic, Season 2) in a big packed show tent in my neighbourhood in Kampala. It was a live event that had major elements of similar TV show competitions that I have viewed back home in the UK: prominent judges; an excited, participating large (young) audience that votes for their winner via mobile phones; ecstatic prominent organisers/MCs; corporate sponsorship; stars' performances; votes of thanks to the sponsors; proud winner with a cheque and new car to go home with, etc. Witnessing the event reinforced my view that an intensified analysis of CiA is needed and that I had to focus and sharpen my analytical lenses and fully recognise and make sense of the fact that these social phenomena are typical of contemporary capitalist societies everywhere. In other words, these different social phenomena and the societal order as such need to be recognised analytically and studied empirically from the perspective of "capitalism".
And further, that capitalism is not peripheral or irrelevant but central to these phenomena. That phenomena x, y, z (say, this national, corporate-sponsored comedy competition) cannot merely, or predominantly or easily, be grouped under some of the most widely used analytical frames in what is called African Studies or Development Studies that together dominate scholarly debate about the dynamics on the continent: development; democracy/democratisation; security, (post-)conflict; poverty; crisis; politics; authoritarianism; and so on. Instead, these phenomena need to be analytically categorised as capitalism i.e. as phenomena of capitalist economy, polity, culture, and society. The comedy show, for example (and many similar shows), can be seen to be part of what can be called entertainment capitalism in Africa, part of the advertising and marketing complex of global capitalist culture. This show has, of course, not only highly cultural but also political dimensions, functions and effects, in the way shows such as The Voice in the UK and elsewhere in the North have within the capitalist societal context there. That is to say, there is a cultural political economy at work in these cases.
One term that has been used is "africapitalism". It is suggested that capitalism can be turned into something very positive for the African continent and its people (including the subaltern classes) if a, b, c (e.g. indigenisation of capitalism) happens i.e. that the private sector wants and can contribute to socially progressive, sustainable, long-term development on the continent.
My heightened attention to and search for everyday phenomena of capitalism in Kampala and Nairobi led me to think about the available analytical categories and options. Consumerism? Commercialisation? Uneven and combined development in capitalism? Market society? Corporate state? Market state? Competition state? Economic and cultural globalisation? Cultural diffusion? Cultural mélange? Capitalist social order? Afro-capitalist civilisation?
The one term I have used for years to orient and frame my research is "neoliberalism". I have explored the embedding of neoliberalism in Uganda i.e. the making and operation of a capitalist market society there. But maybe there is a need for a different, more suggestive term – a term that reflects more the particular glocal character of the current phase of CiA of this continued spread, intensification, institutionalisation, reproduction and modification of the capitalist social order (CSO). Could one say that many of the examples I had noticed more and more, and so intensely, during my extensive stay in the two capitals in 2018 were pointing to the continuous building, expanding, locking in and managing of CSO, including capitalist culture? That the advancement of what we academics term as "market society project via liberal reforms and programmes" was a crucial part of the contemporary advancement and consolidation of ""capitalist civilisation' (Immanuel Wallerstein) of ""market civilisation' (Stephen Gill) in Africa or Afro-capitalist civilization.
"Civilisation" is a particularly loaded, tricky and controversial term, and is linked not only to the recent "clash-of-civilisations" argument (Samuel Huntington) but also to the discourse of the advancement of "Western civilisation" on the continent during the colonial period. Still, well-known analysts of capitalism, such as Wallerstein and Gill, have, as I have indicated, brought the term civilisation into the analysis of capitalism. Also, Erik Hobsbawm's Age of Capital, 1848–187 is published with a History of Civilization label at the bottom of the book cover; while Fernand Braudel titled one of his major books The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th Century.
So capitalism/markets and civilisation have been linked in scholarly debates (see also the work of Karl Polanyi and Max Weber). But can one talk of Afro-capitalist civilisation (ACC), Euro-, South Asia-capitalist civilisation, and so on (in order to highlight region-specific origins, trajectories and specificities of capitalism)? Can one analyse how ACC is related to global capitalist civilisation? Can one argue that the neoliberal era has also been about the further expansion, build-up and management of ACC?
One term that has been used is "africapitalism". It is suggested that capitalism can be turned into something very positive for the African continent and its people (including the subaltern classes) if a, b, c (e.g. indigenisation of capitalism) happens i.e. that the private sector wants and can contribute to socially progressive, sustainable, long-term development on the continent. A blog piece about this philosophy is titled "Capitalism with African values". The Nigerian banker, entrepreneur and economist, Tony O. Elumelu, who coined the term, runs The Africapitalism Institute. I haven't delved into the respective literature yet (see here, here and here), but the term's definition seems rather business and management speak.
That said, however, as much as one is intrigued by the contemporary features of CiA and tries to grasp the specifics of the current era of capitalist restructuring and reality on the continent, the process of spreading and embedding CiA goes back very far. There has for long been a flow of capitalist tropes, ideas, norms, and practices of financial capital, labour, and commodities, an expansion of commodity production and circulation, and so on. That is to say, not everything we see in neoliberal Africa, especially culturally, is new as such.
But again, my argument is this: In countries like Uganda, capitalism is now more broad-based, established and advanced (i.e institutionalised) than during earlier periods. And this difference has analytical significance. The neoliberal era has made the country more capitalist, and, crucially, normalised capitalism further i.e. rendered capitalism more (not absolutely) natural, ordinary, hegemonic. This process, as James Parisot detailed for the case of America, is particular to any country that goes through capitalist restructuring.
The neoliberal era has arguably brought about an acceleration and deepening of commodification, commercialisation, and marketisation in many countries in Africa, especially in urban areas (above all in the big cities/capitals). Scholars call the latest phase in this process "Neoliberalism 3.0 i.e. the "deep marketisation in the South'. In short then, a country like Uganda has arguably never been more capitalist, and is becoming ever more capitalist by the day. And some of the ways in which Uganda or Kenya and the social classes there are integrated into global capitalism are specific to the current era; some of these are cutting edge capitalism (e.g. M-Pesa).
In Kenya too there is a major capitalist wave, thanks to the effects of the period from the late 1980s onwards, the period of embedding and locking in the neoliberal variant of CiA. This significant and hard to reverse institutionalisation of capitalism in African countries such as Uganda and Kenya is perhaps one of the most fundamental outcomes of the ongoing neoliberal era…
The neoliberal project of social engineering has made a significant difference in this regard; the policies, programmes, discourses, technologies, and practices accelerated and shaped the process of the institutionalisation of CSO in Africa in the current period. Neoliberalism here and elsewhere has put in place or resulted in "a new institutional architecture for managing capitalist social relations", as Damien Cahill and Martijn Konings put it. Crucially, neoliberal capitalism has seeped deeper into Ugandan culture and transformed part of this culture in the process, including crucial matters of moral-economic order (values, norms, subjectivities, practices etc.). Capitalism makes and shapes everyday life, including moral economies of earning a living, more and differently now than prior to neoliberal reforms.
In Kenya too there is a major capitalist wave, thanks to the effects of the period from the late 1980s onwards, the period of embedding and locking in the neoliberal variant of CiA. This significant and hard to reverse institutionalisation of capitalism – i.e. making capitalism more embedded, pervasive, powerful, normal, acceptable, cherished, and desired (yet at the same time still ridiculed, critiqued, and resisted) – in African countries such as Uganda and Kenya is perhaps one of the most fundamental outcomes of the ongoing neoliberal era, as is highlighted in a new book that I co-edited with Giuliano Martiniello and Elisa Greco.
Looking back at the last three decades from this angle then, one can conclude so far that – as Graham Harrison and others told us early on in the process – neoliberalism was never just about a particular policy, a right or a ballot, or a style of people-state communication (as donors and other proponents of liberal reform told us). It was about something more fundamental and contentious: about hammering capitalism into Africa for good and thereby moulding class, property and power relations and patterns of social domination, surplus appropriation, and resulting social inequalities and conflicts. Picture a living room with all sorts of furniture. Neoliberalism has brought about a massive moving around of furniture, and throwing out of some and bringing in of other furniture. There is more capitalist furniture (the pillars or institutions of CSO) in the room now (while non-capitalist furniture is still there too of course). And a good share of that furniture was put there by foreign actors, including Western governments, donors, and corporations.
That is to say that pro-capitalist forces and actors in the country are more numerous (especially local ones), powerful and resourceful now, three decades into neoliberalism. In various issue areas, they have the high ground. Capitalism (or its manifestations) is to a considerable degree common sense and taken for granted. Various Ugandan actors – directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously – embrace, endorse, advance, celebrate and/or defend it (or versions of it), in the name of development, modernisation, competiveness, growth, productivity enhancement, entrepreneurship, poverty reduction, survival, empowerment, national sovereignty etc.
The argument is not that capitalism swept everything away (and that it is all there is now) but that it has expanded and advanced and thus become more influential in shaping societal and personal life, again, especially in urban areas. It is significant that the national football league, the Uganda Premier League, now has a multinational corporation as a sponsor (Chinese technology and media company Star Times that operates in 30 African countries), and TV rights and the rest of it are part of the package, while members of the national men's football team take part in betting adverts. Sponsors of the team include Betlion, a mobile betting company, Airtel, National insurance Cooperation, Nile Breweries, Bidco, Rwenzori and Eco bank. In other words, commercialization of this popular sport is advancing in Uganda, and elsewhere in the region. It is significant that a multinational bank runs and sponsors interventions in the education system (e.g. a national school competition). And that Coca Cola has made it into the State House.
Notably then, some of the pro-capitalist actors are creations of neoliberal intervention and to various degrees orchestrated, designed, financed, supported and/or empowered by foreign actors. The Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU), founded in 1994, was (and remains) a key vehicle for World Bank interventions in the country concerning private sector development. The PSFU was part of the Bank's strategies to ensure the acceptability of capitalist restructuring and to prevent policy reversal: "The mix of sensible …. policies which have been introduced in recent years will need to be maintained. Private sector confidence and the credibility of government's handling of the economy take a long time to be established, and would be lost far more quickly should policy reversals be made. … [T]he Government will try to widen support for the measures being adopted. This is not a technical problem, but rather requires achieving a wider degree of understanding and endorsement of the strategy, amongst key interest groups and the population at large, to build the support needed to sustain sound policy over the longer term. Tools to perform this task are included in this project (i.e. the Private Sector Foundation Component)." Set up during the neoliberal era were also other things like "investment clubs" in schools (from primary level up) boosted by banks, government and others in the name of advancing financial literacy and entrepreneurship amongst children and youth.
I had noticed (and studied) capitalist social phenomena in Uganda in previous years too. I first came to the country in 2004 but it became more noticeable in 2018. The show scripts, the adverts, the economic protagonists, the corporate-speak and propaganda, the discourses of the powerful, the social media rhythms, the aspirations and emotions concerning money and individual success on display. For example, the TV shows I came across had (partly not surprisingly) a global feel i.e. strong parallels with show formats elsewhere. (Look for instance at this format called DFCU Battle For Cash'. I am far from being an expert of these sorts of reality shows, but it instantly and strongly reminded me of Dragon's Den and The Apprentice. Then here other Ugandan shows: Make My Home; The Property Show; (see here and here for Kenyan equivalents); Money and Markets; Supa jackpot show; NSSF Friends with Benefits; and finally Be My Date. Also check out Nairobi Diaries.
Also listen to minutes 0:55 to 1:12 of this clip: "Uganda is ready for business as a country. We value investors. The investor and the customer are the most important people in Uganda. People who bring capital, create jobs and bring revenue for the state," says Uganda's Prime Minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, there.
In addition, people with android phones in London, Berlin, Kampala and Nairobi now use fairly similar apps on their phones (and perhaps somewhat similar news feeds from global news providers, Twitter etc.). Some of the most widely used apps are designed and managed by major capitalist corporations. In other words, sections of Ugandan and Kenyan middle and upper classes enjoy some consumer patterns that are similar to their counterparts elsewhere
Let's look once more then at examples. Again, this is my basic observation: in countries such as Uganda and Kenya, and especially in their major cities, one can find plenty of (cutting edge) social phenomena that are typical of contemporary capitalist society across the world. The mix and type (and concurrency) of similar phenomena is striking. This is significant in the larger history of the spread of global capitalism, and the march towards a "world market of a genuinely global scale" (Paul Cammack).
In addition, people with android phones in London, Berlin, Kampala and Nairobi now use fairly similar apps on their phones (and perhaps somewhat similar news feeds from global news providers, Twitter etc.). Some of the most widely used apps are designed and managed by major capitalist corporations. In other words, sections of Ugandan and Kenyan middle and upper classes enjoy some consumer patterns that are similar to their counterparts elsewhere (thanks also due to the globalised cultural demonstration effect).
Some of these phenomena are captured in aspects of the notion of and debate about Afropolitanism; here, as one analyst put it, there is "an image of an Instagram-friendly Africa…African versions of American or European cities. Afropolitanism it appears is grounded in the ability to engage in the same pastimes one could expect to enjoy in a Western capital…you can now have the Hipster Africa Experience". On top of that, we have the core characteristics of capitalism present anyway: capitalists owning the means of production, workers selling their labour and being exploited by capitalists (both local and foreign), class conflict between workers and bosses, private ownership as a core legal institution, etc.
I have argued that despite all the global and local differences and inequalities, historical and current local specificities, and the uneven geographical development in global capitalism, there are striking similarities (and concurrencies) now across the North-South axis when it comes to capitalist everyday life. My point here is not to insist on a particular pattern of similarities and differences concerning social phenomena of CiA and capitalism elsewhere, to discuss these phenomena along binaries of good/bad, better/worse, to suggest which analytical terms are most useful, or to say whether this is about "catching-up" or "leading" vis-à-vis certain phenomena. My point is that current capitalism is altering African countries such as Uganda and Kenya in significant ways and that it is these alterations that need more analytical attention, explanation and discussion.
We are witnessing the operation of a more fully fledged, institutionalised, normalised capitalist social order, and an intensification and deepening of processes that will render these countries, for the time being, even more capitalist. Capitalism is now more fully operational and thus, so to speak, causal i.e. it needs to be taken into account when discussing the drivers and characteristics of contemporary life in African countries.
By Jörg Wiegratz
Dr. Jörg Wiegratz is a Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Leeds
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Unlearning Fear: The Mystery of Creativity
11 min read. When we challenge idiocy and cowardice, we liberate the courage of fellow human beings. When we shake off fear, we discover that the emperor's power was always contingent upon our complicity. This is the lesson of Kenya's history that is activated by creative education.
Chief Nyamweya
Counter-intelligence analyst Gregory Treverton once described two kinds of problems: puzzles and mysteries.
Puzzles are problems that have definite answers, such as: What is the capital city of Kenya? or How many kiosks in Nairobi sell unga? It might be difficult to pin down an exact number, but the answer can be estimated provided you define what a kiosk is. Puzzles can vary in complexity, but they all share the fact that they have definite answers. Crossword puzzles may be frustrating, but the solver at least has the satisfaction of knowing that the correct answer for the blank boxes exists. This is also the exact kind of problem most of our institutions are optimised to solve.
A mystery, on the other hand, is a problem with no definite answer because the answer depends on a future interaction of an unknown number of factors. For example, will there be kiosks in Nairobi in three years? If yes, how many? Who is going to supply them unga then? The answers are contingent on architecture, policy, or economics, and if you are an aspiring unga trader, they are also contingent on your choices today. This is an unsolvable problem because it contains too much information. To treat this mystery the same way as a puzzle would be akin to trying to thread a needle with water.
Our journey toward urbanisation has been one of using our puzzle-solving abilities to expand our sphere of certainty within an infinitely dark ocean of uncertainties. Our sphere of certainty up until now has included statements such as: "If I go to school and study hard, I will get a nice job and be able to afford to buy unga not only for myself, but for my family as well." "The unga I buy from the kiosk is healthy." "There is a hospital to go to in case the unga I ate is not healthy."
As the answers to these questions become more unclear for many Kenyans in our unstable economy, we are beginning to question the puzzle bias of our education system and seeking to unlearn the current education model and replace it with a creative education model better suited to framing the mysteries of our time.
Unlearning the puzzle bias
The puzzle bias of our education system is reflected in the fortress-like security at the gates of the offices of the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC). Tragically, as youth unemployment figures steadily rise, the message that has arrived late is that the armed infantry units at the gates of KNEC may be guarding an empty house.
Perfect examination scores are increasingly less correlated to career success. Adaptive intelligence that comes from creative education is becoming a much more reliable predictor of success. This is something that should be shared with exam candidates, many of whom have committed suicide because they perceived exam failure to be the end of their world.
We are in the process of entering an electronically mediated world in which all puzzle problems are being delegated to computer programmes that are more intelligent than our best performing human actuaries. Universities are quickly ceding their role as centres of knowledge creation and distribution to decentralised and distributed networks of creative ecosystems powered by technology. Those universities that survive and thrive will be those that are effective platforms for a creative student body. The shift required is analogous to the shift from "monoculture" farming of pupils that privileges puzzle-solving to a "permaculture" approach to education in which creative ecosystems allow students to creatively collaborate with their peers in solving mysteries in unique ways.
Perfect examination scores are increasingly less correlated to career success. Adaptive intelligence that comes from creative education is becoming a much more reliable predictor of success.
My most recent book, Art of Unlearning, uses the radically powerful medium of comics to literally draw a map of how to get out of our puzzle-minded school fortresses and into creative ecosystems. Unlearning, we inevitably discover, requires profound humility, as recovering addicts already understand.
The map begins from the foundation that all infants are born without a culture – naked, hungry and intensely curious. The principal role of parents is to take this uncultured, naked, hungry and intensely curious being and persuade it, cajole it, and terrorise it until one way or another it is convinced that the way we do things in this tribe is the natural way ordained by God. Anything that you feel like doing that doesn't fit into tribal customs is considered to be a bad idea. Adults who are thoroughly conditioned in a culture may be genuinely horrified to discover that their children were not born with their taboos already installed. This horror is intensifying so much that the youth and elders might be considered to be inhabiting increasingly separate islands of reality that speak different languages.
An authoritarian framework is the worst possible way to engage with such a dynamic information environment. It has been my observed experience that the self-appointed cultural managers, such as Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) and many county culture ministries, have absolutely no idea what is happening in the information ecosystem that lies beyond their own Twitter feeds. Their perspective is limited to one of traditional rent-seeking from artists in whose creations they have made no investment. The role of investment has been largely abandoned to foreign cultural agencies and embassies.
As the rate of information exchange in our society accelerates, all tribes are beginning to communicate electronically, bringing the conflicts in our agendas to resolution. So, for example, the musician King Kaka is now a much more powerful bridge-builder than the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) ever was.
Now that Kenyans are literally going beyond the limits of marathon times and limited leaders with limited visions, a new locus of understanding must be framed that can address our most pressing challenges: ecological destruction, food insecurity, ending political dynasties, and most of all, educating our children for an exponential world.
Who will frame our mysteries?
The choice to deliver this message in the form of a comic book (or graphic novel to be precise) was crucial. Because if one is going to opine on a vision for creative education in Kenya, one must demonstrate creative experience. We demand no less of our dentists or doctors and we should demand no less of our educators.
Illustration and visual storytelling are a domain in which I have had the most experience over the past ten years and they are well suited to taking difficult conversations out of the academy and onto the street. We must end our unconstitutional limits on creative expression such as Cap 222 (Films and Stage Plays Act). This idea of openness to new information will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable to our conservative culture, but so is all growth.
My best explanation of this point comes without words in an illustration titled "Education Factory". In it you see in one moment gleeful children entering an education factory on one end only to emerge into a wasteland on the other end, stupefied and drained of creativity. Art of Unlearning contains dozens of such moments of understanding that I believe are critical in a society that has been so violently divided by the differences in our tongues and in words. This moment of understanding is a moment that requires no permission from a "higher authority". It is a moment that cannot come too soon. Comics are in my view the ultimate mystery-framing tool. Let's get started!
Unlearning fear
Play is nature's antidote to the debilitating fear of change. All mammals spend their early life playing constantly to learn their limits. My ten-month-old son is so dangerously unafraid that I cannot take my eyes off him lest he plunge head first from the bed to the floor. At this crucial stage, the extent to which children are allowed to explore their limits imprints a lifelong attitude toward new experiences.
If as children our guardians allowed us to explore our limits safely, we will likely adopt this posture for the rest of our lives, with all the risks and rewards that this entails. But if, on the other hand – as is too often the case in our Kenyan context – the response to exploration is violence, shaming and exorcism prayers, you are likely to avoid the memory of violence by avoiding conflict or eye contact with strangers and shying away from new experiences.
Our history of extreme political violence and repression remains unacknowledged to this very day by the political dynasties that have ruled this country. They cannot be expected to hold themselves or any initiative they table accountable.
Violence was the foundation of the colonial economy and remains the foundation of our economy to this day. Creative natives were a natural threat to an architecture of exploitation and so they have been made the human refuse of our education system. With the internet, this human refuse (please excuse the slur) of creative natives is set to inherit the world and now is the time to pay attention to what they have to teach us.
What we call artists are people who consistently respond to their encounters with novelty in beautiful ways, such as sculpture, painting, literature and song. They teach us that fear is physical and its transcendance is also physical in the form of the creative human expression. This is why art is so essential to the work of healing from trauma. Art represents the proudest monument of our humanhood and is the first potentiality to be sacrificed at the altar of violence. It is very difficult to recite poetry with a gun pointed at your head.
The metaphorical gun that is currently pointed at the heads of artists in Kenya today is much more economic than it is political. The Kenyan artist fears starvation, anonymity and suicide more than she does Ezekiel Mutua's censorship crusade that is targeted only at the most visibly successful of Kenyan films, such as Wanuri Kahiu's Rafiki. Kenyans have correctly challenged the idea that one unelected bureaucrat's colonial prejudices should not be allowed to deny mature audiences an opportunity to evaluate works of art for themselves.
Not coincidentally, human survival on this planet, now more than ever before, depends upon our courage to share our creative ideas, as so many of my favourite writers, such as Dr. Wandia Njoya and Dr. David Ndii frequently do in this publication. When we exercise courage and challenge idiocy and cowardice, we have the compounding effect of liberating the courage of fellow human beings, which is expressed creatively in works such as King Kaka's Wajinga Nyinyi. When we shake off fear, we discover to our amazement that the so-called emperor is wearing no clothes and that his power was always contingent upon our complicity. This is the lesson of our history that is activated by creative education.
Losing your fear is also good business and not merely a political stance. Walk down any average supermarket aisle and notice how many different brands are competing to sell the same product. Uniqueness is the best differentiator. Similarly, creative education allows young people to seek out unique opportunities to thrive in a jobless and degree-saturated economy. This is an insoluble dilemma for a dynastic oligarchy such as ours whose existence depends on the unquestioning obedience and tribal subservience of its citizenry – while at the same time needing a tax base to finance its exorbitant salaries.
Corporal punishment and other fear-based persuasion of children must become a thing of the past. We must discard antiquated notions such as "spare the rod and spoil the child" and with them the idea that all our conduct needs to be governed by a self-appointed priesthood. We cannot continue to studiously trace movements of biblical tribes while we remain ignorant about the migration history of our own ancestors here in East Africa.
The time has come to unburden our minds and bodies from fear and fear-mongering institutions. I believe that democratising creative education for all Kenyan children is the first and most critical step in this direction. Using "creativity and innovation" as a buzzword on the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) website is simply not enough.
Unlearning comparison
From the day a student enrolls in the Kenyan education system, he or she is subjected to examinations. Examination scores are then compared against those of other students in a zero-sum competition organised by KNEC. This zero-sum competitive mindset continues into later life in our workplaces and in traffic jams. It also sits at odds with our natural human tendency to solve problems collaboratively so that the collective can benefit from as many different viewpoints as possible.
We all benefit from culinary, cultural and cosmological diversity. This is why monotheism's history of violence is so much more bloody than that of polytheistic cultures that tolerated a diversity of cosmologies.
Whatever one's particular religion, it should be clear that the internet is a platform that is much more stimulating of unique ideas than any medium before it. In an attention-deficient media landscape with numerous options for viewers, the only way to hold sustained attention is by being significantly different.
Luckily, one does not have to try too hard to be different because we already are. Nature does not create duplicates. One simply has to unlearn the habit of comparison that obscures our unique and innate aspirations. We must unlearn the shaming of those we call wajuaji or arrogant for straying away from tribal orthodoxy. The approval of the herd is thin soup compared to the thick gravy that is self-discovery. In Kenya, this means unlearning the habit of borrowing beauty standards, borrowing political frameworks, borrowing religions and borrowing Chinese loans without the consent of the people. Conformity is for sheep, and sheep are led to slaughter — a consistent lesson of Kenya's experiment in democracy for those old enough to remember. Let us try instead to foster and export our uniqueness.
The time has come to unburden our minds and bodies from fear and fear-mongering institutions. I believe that democratising creative education for all Kenyan children is the first and most critical step in this direction.
In unlearning comparison by embracing uniqueness, one of my most impactful teachers has been the late martial artist Bruce Lee. Bruce was a unique figure with no peers because he was a rare combination of fighter, actor and philosopher. Bruce's example urges us to seek out precisely those behaviours that set us apart and to develop them.
In my case, graduating with an LLB degree a year after our devastating post-election violence in 2008 was my nudge in the direction of a more unique career. With uninspiring job prospects all round and glaring evidence that my profession was impotent to prevent catastrophe, I began to explore alternatives that would have in previous times been considered unthinkable. Ergo, my current profession of drawing comics and animations. I found my voice in comics and the expression of all the latent abilities that were deemed economically useless.
It is my hope that the sacrifices of my generation in the early blossoming of digital content in Kenya will lead to thriving creative ecosystems. As Muthoni Drummer Queen so eloquently stated in her TED Talk, creativity builds nations. Nation-building can never be done by rent-seeking governments and certainly not by rent-seeking governments as deficient in legitimacy as Kenya's political dynasties that are desperately trying to remain relevant today. Creative education is a tide that will lift all boats by applying digital technologies to demonetise, dematerialise and democratise knowledge sharing. Creative education challenges our feudal economic structure by placing a value on intellectual property.
In the age of exponential technologies, it has become impossible for even the most highly trained "white collar workers", such as dermatologists, to rest on their laurels. There are no safe jobs. A deep learning algorithm has the power to recognise millions of skin diseases in a second, whereas the human dermatologist will require multiple lifetimes to approach that number.
The risk of obsolescence becomes more acute the more puzzle-oriented a profession gets. The extent to which Kenyan youth will be able to complement the rise of data science is directly dependent on the investment that we are willing to make in innovation and creativity today. If my experiences as an artist living in Kenya are anything to go by, this investment is only being made by individual parents and foreign cultural agencies, such as the Goethe Institute and the Alliance Francaise in Nairobi.
Unlearning belief systems
The most important three words for someone to become creative are "I don't know". Concealing ignorance with inherited assumptions and prejudices that are outside your experience is not an effective strategy for becoming creative. If you are going to do something original, "I don't know" is the optimal stance to begin from. Those who do things that have never been done before were by definition unqualified to do them the moment before they did. Are we confident enough as a continent to question the Middle Eastern religions that dominate Africa?
The most important three words for someone to become creative are "I don't know". Concealing ignorance with inherited assumptions and prejudices that are outside your experience is not an effective strategy for becoming creative.
Original thinkers never believe fully in anyone else's BS (belief systems), least of all their own. Their only confidence is in their own capacity for keen investigation with the help of books such as Art of Unlearning to frame life's mysteries creatively. Any belief system we have right now is provisional before it is revised and updated to incorporate new events and perspectives. Only this way can we imagine Africa differently than its colonisers and missionaries did. This, incidentally. is the natural functioning of the human brain and the way children's minds work before they are distorted by intimidation from the education system.
Unlearning belief systems is as difficult as a right-hander learning to write with his left hand. Human perception was not evolved to see the truth, but rather to see only that which was optimal for survival. But what is optimal for our survival has changed while we were sleeping.
I do not know the shape of the society we are going to forge, but I do know that I am compelled by a passion for freehand movement to face this mystery creatively.
Experimental Neoliberalism and Refugee Survival in Kenya
7 min read. ALI BHAGAT situates refugees as a new population for neoliberal experimentation as refugee camps are transformed into spaces of untapped profit.
Ali Bhagat
Refugee survival in Kenya is inseparable from the dynamics of inequality, finance, and debt embedded in capitalism. This article draws much inspiration from Kevin Sieff's excellent article in The Washington Post that looks at how debt-ridden refugees are being forced to return to a war zone in Somalia.
I am most interested in the ways that capital – in its money form – supercedes, intervenes, and invades the humanitarian sector. At the site of the refugee camps and in cities like Nairobi, capital claims to free the refugee from the passivity of shelter and assistance through entrepreneurialism. This article explores neoliberal experimentation in the context of refugee survival in Kenya. I argue that refugees represent an experimental population. Their various sites of survival are opened up to financial penetration – a last ditch and piecemeal market-led solution to alleviate poverty.
Kenya hosts approximately half a million refugees in its camps and urban areas and has done this for nearly three decades. Dadaab and Kakuma, two of the world's largest refugee camps, have become sites of increased xenophobia and structural violence where the Kenyan government continues to threaten their closure in the face of diminished global aid.
Contrastingly, these camps are also sites of finance, debt, and neoliberal-led forms of experimentation. Neoliberalism – the ideological and material power of private interest through the dismantling of state-led solutions for welfare – is highlighted here as a way to understand a global stance and policy focus on self-reliance. In so doing, I situate refugees as a new population for experimentation.
Experimentation is a market-oriented solution to alleviate refugee poverty. It is hinged on self-reliance and propagates the financial interests of the private sector. The intentions of capital accumulation are hidden under the guise of choice and liberty where refugees can use credit to escape poverty and transform themselves into entrepreneurs. Self-reliance is a façade.
Mastercard and the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a public-private coalition to transform refugee settlements into digital communities in 2018. This strategy seeks to "bring together technology, solutions, and experience from multiple sectors to transform refugee settlements into digitally-connected communities', thereby providing infrastructure-based innovations in terms of mobile phone and internet access vis-à-vis key dimensions of survival such as safety, food, shelter, and water".
Experimentation is a market-oriented solution to alleviate refugee poverty. It is hinged on self-reliance and propagates the financial interests of the private sector.
Mastercard, along with Western Union, announced a new digital infrastructure model hinged on mobile money, digital vouchers, and card-based solutions that promote refugee "self-reliance". Digitising the refugee camp, and thereby transforming it from an arena of passive aid and shelter to a marketplace allows refugees to access formal financial services. This form of neoliberal experimentation also transforms the refugee camp – previously understood in the logic of the development industry as a forgotten barren space – into one of untapped profit.
For example, as the Mastercard and Western Union report states: "…refugees are responsible for payment…For example, children can go to school, but the family must pay for uniforms and books. It becomes vital to access convenient, easy-to-use financial services. Foreign and domestic remittances received via Western Union or hawalas [a remittance channel that takes place outside of the banking system] are a major source of income."
Interestingly, the logic of empowerment described in this report is equated to providing a wider array of financial service access – not actually addressing the fact that refugees have to pay for some essential survival services such as healthcare and basic goods.
Actors like Mastercard and Western Union, by diversifying access to financial services, are able to capitalise on financial transactions by providing cheaper rates for remittances in the name of "smart city" development. The same report goes on to highlight that Equity Bank holds 15,000 refugee accounts in their Kakuma branch and most remittances are either received through Western Union or hawala agents—needless to say, there is profit to be made if so-called passive aid recipients are transformed into entrepreneurs who are self-reliant actors.
The transformation of refugees into self-reliant entrepreneurs relies on the logic that these people are complex economic actors who need more diverse financial choices. Missing from this reasoning is the recognition that refugees receive little global attention and constantly face reductions in essential services, which pushes them to precarious forms of income-generation in order to survive.
Interventions by private sector actors fall into age-old neoliberal adages of efficiency, accountability, and freedom of choice. State and international human rights actors, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Kenyan government, in the face of global austerity, are more than happy to have private actors step in and take over responsibility for refugee survival.
The transformation of refugees into self-reliant entrepreneurs relies on the logic that these people are complex economic actors who need more diverse financial choices.
In contrast, the threats of closure of the camps by the Kenyan government, particularly in Dadaab, have not disappeared, and the camp sizes are slowly shrinking. In 2011, at the height of the famine in Somalia, Dadaab's population rose to 421,000. This number had been reduced to 230,000 in 2018, partly because some refugees went back home voluntarily while others were encouraged to return to Somalia, as per a repatriation agreement between the Government of Kenya and UNHCR.
While Kakuma represents an experimental avenue for profit, Dadaab – home to predominantly Somali refugees – is framed by the Kenyan government as an unaffordable space both in terms of the security threat and the financial burden. The Kenyan government – which has often scapegoated Somali refugees as terrorists and the Dadaab camp as a safe haven for Al Shabaab – justifies the return of refugees by arguing that it will quell social disruption. 36.8 per cent of Kenya's population lives on $1.90 a day, placing Kenya 8th on the list of top 10 African countries experiencing extreme poverty.
There are apparent tensions regarding refugee hosting. Many of the participants interviewed for my research suggest that the Kenyan government supports encampment because it absolves itself from welfare responsibilities. Looking at this more broadly, it was the forces of structural adjustment in the 1990s that coincided with refugee encampment that prevented the Kenyan state from developing long-term welfare capabilities in the first place.
Nevertheless, the new Comprehensive Refugee Programme (CRP) highlights that refugees should have adequate avenues for job creation, entrepreneurship, and integration in camps and urban settlements. This is a key divergence from previous strategies of encampment – refugees are now a new experimental population who must harness the forces of the market.
While self-reliance is the policy du jour, the militaristic arm of the state that seeks to prevent migration is also alive and well. Biometric Identity Management (BIM) through fingerprinting and iris scans are surveillance technologies indicative of state organisations (along with UNHCR) seeking to prevent new or circulatory migrants. For example, Somalis who are "voluntarily" repatriated, as Sieff points out, just to relieve their own state of indebtedness in Dadaab, seek return to Kenya as Somalia remains unstable. BIM prevents this from occurring thus attempting to make repatriation permanent.
Indeed, as one interview participant noted, if UNHCR and the government are claiming that refugees are able to return to Somalia, then – within this flawed logic – they should no longer accept Somali refugees. If they do, then they accept that Somalia is not a safe country for return. So both international and national actors are complicit in the violence that Somalis face in their struggle for survival.
Much attention is given to refugee survival in camps; however, with the constant threat of their closure, many refugees are permanently relocating to Nairobi and its environs – a move that is illegal without a permit. Since welfare programmes for urban refugees are virtually non-existent, these groups must rely on piecemeal forms of assistance from NGOs and their own communities in the form of cash grants, entrepreneurial training, and microfinance within the ambit of experimentation and self-reliance.
Self-reliance as a solution for assistance is hindered by xenophobia too. For example, many Somali refugees relocate to Eastleigh, which has become an area targeted by the police in light of terrorist attacks in Nairobi. Somalis are unfairly rounded up and sent back to camps or deported while other non-Somali refugees are left to survive in Nairobi in the informal sector. A participant from a government department noted in my research that, "If a refugee wants to stay in Nairobi then they can fend for themselves…the camps are equipped to care for them so if they are in Nairobi it is by choice and they ideally should have a transit permit from the government." Self-reliance is thus inherent in the national attitude towards refugees, which simultaneously ignores the circumstances of violence, health issues, and poverty in refugee camps.
Much attention is given to refugee survival in camps; however, with the constant threat of their closure, many refugees are permanently relocating to Nairobi and its environs – a move that is illegal without a permit.
Since no welfare support systems exist, many NGOs offer some sort of business training and loan assistance programmes – another example of "disciplinary entrepreneurialism". In order to access these loans or grants, refugees must go through a training programme where they learn the necessary business skills to set up shop. They must learn how to make a profit so that they can repay the loan, because these loans, in fact, are frequently used for other refugees in the context of shrinking services. NGOs also recognise that refugees are a flight risk for loans because the cash in hand is used for basic consumption needs – a key issue identified in the literature on microfinance.
In short, the use of loans under the spirit of entrepreneurialism dovetails with the security maximisation arm of the state that prevents refugees from entering its territory. These strategies coincide with two central aspects of neoliberalism – austerity and accumulation.
As the story goes, the Kenyan government, along with international actors, prevents refugees from entering the country. These refugees are framed as threats to state security and an unaffordable risk. In turn, refugees that already exist in camps are either sent back to their country of origin or transformed into entrepreneurs where the camp becomes a space of experimentation.
In short, the use of loans under the spirit of entrepreneurialism dovetails with the security maximisation arm of the state that prevents refugees from entering its territory.
Refugees in urban areas are also meant to become entrepreneurs in order to survive without any state-led assistance. Importantly, these strategies have little to no empirical evidence, further pointing to the experimental nature of entrepreneurialism as a key strategy for survival upon relocation (for a greater exploration of these themes see my article here).
The Kenyan case reveals that exclusion and violence continue to facilitate capital accumulation while also preventing long-term refugee survival. The notion of experimentation, briefly sketched here, allows us to frame neoliberalism as an ambivalent process. Capital permeates these spaces of poverty and the logics of entrepreneurialism facilitate some form of accumulation either through debt or through micro-transactions in the form of remittances. Importantly, refugees in the development of so-called smart communities also produce data and this data can be used for the purposes of capital accumulation in other contexts.
Editors Note: This article was first posted in the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE)
Nairobi: The City That Was Never Meant to Be
7 min read. OWAAHH and JOHN KAMAU explore Nairobi's evolution from its humble beginnings as a railway depot to its present status as the nation's capital.
Owaahh and John Kamau
More than a century ago, a brash and mostly racist decision created a small tin shack town in the middle of a swamp. Then the town became unstoppable.
The first men and women who landed in Nairobi probably considered the brackish swamp land perfect. The area was picturesque, with hills in the horizon and rivers crisscrossing the plains. While the swampy land was not suitable for farming, and certainly not for settlement, it was perfect for grazing.
For the Maasai and the Kikuyu, the plain was also a meeting ground, cutting between the highland farming community in Central Kenya and the nomadic community in the Rift. For the Kamba and other traders and adventurers, it was the easier part of the journey. The Maasai called it Enkare Nyorobi, 'the land of cool waters'; other names for the land seems to have evaded history books.
The colony's vanguard also saw it as one of the easy stretches of a long, much more arduous journey to the Western parts of what would become Kenya. The treeless plain was also curiously empty, particularly on the lush parts towards Central Kenya. They wrote of 'Nyrobe' in their letters home, a name which, in a short time, would become the name of the capital of a new country.
It was not empty or deserted though; it was occupied, just not permanently. And even less at that point because smallpox and a few other epidemics had cut down the populations of many Kenyan communities.
In 1896, builders of the Lunatic Line set up a small supply depot and a camp on the plains. The original boundaries of what is now Nairobi were for "the area within a radius of one and a half miles from the offices of the sub-commissioner of the Ukambani Province." There was no plan beyond that, and Nairobi was merely one in a chain of such supply depots. The railhead reached Nairobi, the small supply depot between Mombasa and Kampala, in 1899.
With it, a new future began.
A cultural melting pot
The railway management picked Nairobi to be their railway headquarters. But this seemingly arbitrary decision that would put the builders at loggerheads with the colonial government did not involve any proper assessment of the site. Public health would be the key issue in those early years, with the lack of proper drainage making the new town the perfect breeding grounds for epidemics.
But the railway engineers did not see Nairobi as becoming anything more than an Indian township which, they argued, could "prosper in spite of unsanitary conditions and chronic plague."
As more people settled on what had become the railway headquarters, a pattern emerged. Europeans settled to the West, Asians to the Parklands side, and Africans to the East. But segregation laws would not become codified until 1908, after yet another bout of the plague. Within the first five years, what had been a sparsely occupied swampy plain was now home to 10,000 people. After Mombasa, Nairobi was now the cultural melting pot of the young British colony.
The railway management picked Nairobi to be their railway headquarters. But this seemingly arbitrary decision that would put the builders at loggerheads with the colonial government did not involve any proper assessment of the site.
With government funding and rich entrepreneurs like AM Jeevanjee, who had made a fortune supplying material and labour to build the railway, a town sprouted from the swamp. The richest man in Kenya at the start of the 20th century, Jeevanjee would later go on an investment spree, building the first law courts, the original Nairobi Club, the first building that housed the National Museum, and many other buildings.
Before the railhead reached Nairobi, the central economic activity for the young town had been big game hunting. By 1900, the town was a single street, driven by commerce as Asian railway builders settled in tin shacks on the plain. Beyond that street "lay the swamp where frogs lived every night at dusk they used to bark out their vibrant chorus and spread a cloak of deep, incessant sound over the little township" as Elspeth Huxley writes in White Man's Country. The frogs formed part of the ecosystem, providing a rhythmic croaking during the calm nights of a budding young town. It was free music, if not poetry, but it freaked out public health officials.
A public health hazard
Doctors were particularly concerned about the hazards the soggy grounds carried. At 1,750 metres above sea level, colonialists thought Nairobi's temperate climate would limit the development of malaria-carrying mosquitos (an oft-repeated myth, most notably in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth). It didn't, and not just because the soggy grounds allowed pools of stagnant water to collect. Malaria would thrive in the new town, with 14,000 new malaria cases reported in Nairobi in 1913 alone. But malaria was just one of many health concerns that made doctors want the small town moved to higher ground.
In 1902, the small town faced its first major public health problem. An epidemic of the dreaded bubonic plague erupted along Indian Bazaar. With no sanitation or municipal plans, the main street at the time had played host to rodents, and the animals had in turn brought in the plague, killing several people. The plague was diagnosed by the enigmatic zebra-riding Dr. Rosendo Ribiero. The Medical Officer, Dr. Alfred Spurrier, ordered the entire street burnt. Everyone was evacuated, and Nairobi's first CBD was torched.
This was probably the point in history when the situation could have been salvaged and the young town moved, but that didn't happen. Instead, lethargy and bureaucracy resulted in a status quo.
At 1,750 metres above sea level, colonialists thought Nairobi's temperate climate would limit the development of malaria-carrying mosquitos…It didn't, and not just because the soggy grounds allowed pools of stagnant water to collect.
In May 1903, Dr. Moffat, a principal medical officer of the East Africa and Uganda Protectorate, called Nairobi dangerous and defective. After another plague in 1904, he recommended relocating residents to modern-day Kikuyu Township. But Moffat left in April 1904, and his successors held the costs of relocation too high.
On 18 May 1906, Sir James Sadler, commissioner for the Protectorate, wrote to Winston Churchill, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies, complaining about the emergence of Kenya's capital: "…at the commencement of the 1902 plague…the then-commissioner, Sir Charles Elliot, was strongly of the opinion that the site, which had been selected three years before by the manager of the Uganda Railway without consulting medical or sanitary authorities, was, with its inadequate drainage, unsuitable for a large and growing population. [It is a] depression with a very thin layer of soil or rock. The soil was water-logged during the greater part of the year."
The letter further reminds Churchill of the 1902 recommendation to move the city "to some point on the hills." Sadler told Churchill this was a critical point in Nairobi's history; that his predecessor had said: "…when the rainy season commenced, the whole town is practically transformed into a swamp."
But the Board running the city decided instead to try drain the swampy bazaar area.
Six years before, in 1898, a 25-year-old man called John Ainsworth had disembarked from a ship at the Port of Mombasa. He was an employee of the colonising company called the Imperial British East African Company, and was ambitious to make a career for himself. Before that year ended, he travelled from Mombasa up to Machakos, and into the tin shack town called Nyrobe. He built his house at Museum Hill to found the colonial administration, much to the chagrin of influential railway builders. Eager to make the swampy plains work, he planted Eucalyptus trees on the swamp to drain the water. Ainsworth's legacy remains to date, with most of his efforts being the only reason why more and more parts of the swamp could be occupied.
Nairobi continued to develop quickly and Sadler finally threw in the towel: "It is, I admit, too late to consider the question of moving the town from the plains to the higher position along the line some miles to the north. We had a chance in 1902, and I think it was a pity that we did not do so then as advocated by Sir Charles Elliot."
But even Sadler did not anticipate the growth – eightfold since 1969, from 500,000 people to 4.4 million today. He said Nairobi would never become "a city like Johannesburg or a large commercial centre, for if there is a rapid development of industries or minerals in any of the new districts, the centres would spring up around them."
Churchill accepted this idea and made the final decision: "It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the countenance of a new country."
The colonists had given up, and the town they had once thought would only be occupied by Indians became the centre of the new colony. It would take another six years for the Nairobi Sanitary Commission to be appointed, by which time the city was home to thousands of people. The swampy grounds would pose challenges for builders, medical officers, and town planners.
From tin shack town to city
Settlers like Ewart Grogan believed that the Europeans should have occupied the area from Chiromo up towards and past Westlands. They could then leave the lower plains and its tin shacks to Asians and Kenyan natives. The plan never came to be as the influence of the railway builders carried the day, and by the time it became clear the city would grow, it was too late to move it.
In 1919, Nairobi Township became Nairobi Municipal Council and the boundaries were extended. It would be extended nine years later to cover 30 square miles. Seven years after that, Jim Jameson presented a town planning report with great plans to plant Jacaranda trees. The tin shack town was well on its way to becoming a city, and the future generations of city fathers would have to find a way to deal with the thin layer of soil.
It hired a consultant in the mid-1920s, by which time the town's economic importance made it a fait accompli. One colonial officer wrote that the new plan was ambitious, but until it bore fruit, "Nairobi must remain what she was then, a slatternly creature, unfit to queen it over so lovely a country."
More than three decades later, when it became the official capital of a new country, Nairobi still did not have a blueprint.
The initial stubborness of the railway engineers trumped those of the colonial government and its health officials. For that, the latter would pay dearly, facing many epidemics and having to dedicate finances to further drain the swamp. Most of the swamp has now been replaced with skyscrapers and road networks, with insufficient footpaths, drainage and leadership.
The colonists had given up, and the town they had once thought would only be occupied by Indians became the centre of the new colony.
More than a century after its unlikely birth, Nairobi is home to more than 4 million people. The city still reminds that it was once a swamp where rivers criss-crossed at will. One pending idea, which has been revived in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Taskforce report, is to grant the city special status as a capital city. It would mean Nairobi will not have a governor, but the report hopes that it would not "impede the rights of the Kenyan people to representation at the ward and parliamentary levels."
In this scenario, only a special status would allow the central government "the means to provide the services and facilitation necessary to maintaining as a capital city and as a diplomatic hub." Whether that's likely is a toss-up, but whoever runs it will always face the same problems as its first city fathers. Indeed, the city that was never meant to be, and probably should never have been, is now the epicentre of the Kenyan economy and society.
Perhaps the time is ripe to ask ourselves whether Nairobi should be the epicentre of Kenya, because today, amidst the floods raging in the city, poor drainage and the chaotic streets, Nairobi leaves much to be desired as a capital city and is still an unfit slatternly creature to queen over the country, despite what the BBI report claims.
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text:
Carol Creighton Burnett
Who Is Carol Burnett?
'The Carol Burnett Show'
Film and Stage Career
"They tried to talk me out of it. They said, you know, Carol, it's a man's game. It's Dean Martin. It's Gleason. It's Milburn. And all of these guys! There had never been a woman doing a comedy variety..."[On working with CBS to create "The Carol Burnett Show."]""Adolescence is just one big walking pimple."
Carol Burnett Biography
Carol Burnett is a beloved comedian and actress who had a long-running sketch and variety show, 'The Carol Burnett Show,' in the 1960s and '70s.
Born on April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas, Carol Burnett became popular through television guest appearances and specials before receiving her own comedy-variety program, The Carol Burnett Show, in 1967. The show ran for 11 seasons. Burnett has also appeared in a number of feature films, and on Broadway. She published her autobiography, One More Time, in 1986. In 2013, she became the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, one of the most respected awards given to the creative minds who influence American culture with their art.
One of the most popular comedians on television during the 1960s and '70s, Carol Creighton Burnett was born on April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas, to Joseph and Ina Louise Burnett. After her parents divorced in the late 1930s, Burnett moved with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora White, to a small apartment in Hollywood, California. She attended Hollywood High School, graduating in 1951.
After studying theater arts and English at the University of California, Los Angeles, as an aspiring playwright, Burnett left school early and made her way to New York City with her boyfriend, Don Saroyan, in hopes of breaking into acting.
Carol Burnett made her first television appearance in the early 1950s with a short stint on The Winchell-Mahoney Show, a children's TV program. Soon after, she began co-starring with Buddy Hackett on the sitcom Stanley (1956-57). In 1959, Burnett became a regular on the Garry Moore Show. Over the years, she was also featured on occasional CBS specials. Already a popular performer, she got her own comedy-variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, in 1967.
'The Carol Burnett Show'
The Carol Burnett Show usually opened with a question-and-answer session with the audience, and the silliness ensued—broad comedy skits and sketches, with Burnett using her expressive face to great humorous ends. The show ran for 11 seasons, leaving the air in 1978. Burnett later returned to TV with the comedy series Carol & Company in 1990 and The Carol Burnett Show in 1991. However, neither effort lasted long.
More recently, Burnett made a guest appearance on the hit TV series Desperate Housewives in 2006, and appeared in roles on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Glee in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
In addition to her hit television show, Carol Burnett has appeared in a number of feature films, including Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), The Front Page (1974), Annie (1982), Noises Off (1992) and Post Grad (2009), and performed the voices of animated characters in films like The Trumpet of the Swan (2001) and Horton Hears a Who! (2008).
Burnett has also done a lot of stage work. She made her Broadway debut in the musical Once Upon a Mattress in 1959 and went on to appear in a few other Broadway shows, including Moon Over Buffalo (1995-1996) and Putting It Together (1999-2000). Her 1986 autobiography, One More Time: A Memoir, provided the source material for the play Hollywood Arms, which was performed on Broadway from October 2002 to January 2003. Burnett co-wrote the piece with her oldest daughter, Carrie Hamilton.
Over her decades-long career, Burnett has won numerous honors, including American Comedy Awards, Emmy and Golden Globe awards, the 1980 Women in Film Crystal Award, the 2006 Presidential Medal of Freedom and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Photo: Fotos International/Getty Images
Burnett received a unique honor in 2009. One of her costumes from The Carol Burnett Show was added to the collection of the Smithsonian's American History Museum. The dress selected was from her famed spoof of Gone With the Wind. The following year, she looked back on her career with the autobiography This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection.
In recent years, Burnett has been appearing at theaters across the country. Each performance is an unscripted event with Burnett forming a dialogue with the audience. The inspiration for this style of show comes from the question and answer session she used to do at the beginning of each episode of The Carol Burnett Show.
In 2013, Burnett won one of greatest honors bestowed on comedians. She received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center Honors held that October. Tina Fey was among those who helped celebrate Burnett's work at the event. According to the Huffington Post, Fey told Burnett that "I fell in love with sketch comedy watching your show, and you proved sketch comedy is a good place for women." Just months later in 2013, Burnett became a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors.
Burnett has been married three times. She first wed Don Saroyan in 1955. They split up in 1962. The following year, Burnett married Joe Hamilton. The couple had three daughters—Carrie, Jody and Erin—before divorcing in 1984. Burnett has been married to Brian Miller since 2001.
In 2002, Burnett suffered a devastating loss when her oldest daughter Carrie died of cancer. She later established the Carrie Hamilton Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse in her honor. More than a decade after Carrie's passing, Burnett explored her relationship with her late daughter in the 2013 memoir Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story. The book details Carrie's struggles with addiction and her valiant fight against her cancer.
Mary Tyler Moore - From Gams to Glitz(TV-14; 1:13)
Julie Andrews - The Sound of Music(TV-14; 1:14)
Betty White - Hollywood's Golden Girl(TV-14; 2:13)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Making it After All(TV-14; 3:00)
Betty White - Mini Biography(TV-14; 3:29)
Lucille Ball - Mini Biography(TV-14; 3:44)
https://www.biography.com/performer/carol-burnett
Carol Channing starred as Lorelei Lee in 1949's 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' and has since starred in an array of Broadway productions, winning a Tony for her landmark role in 'Hello, Dolly!'
The prolific Joyce Carol Oates is an acclaimed writer known for novels like A Garden of Earthly Delights, The Falls and them, which won the National Book Award.
Rosie O'Donnell is an actor, comedian and LGBT activist who has served as host of 'The Rosie O'Donnell Show' and 'The View.'
Following mounting sexual abuse accusations against Kevin Spacey, Netflix announced it was cancelling "House of Cards." Fans responded by suggesting the show replace Spacey with another Kevin, comedian Kevin James, in a Change.org petition.
Television star Mark Harmon has been on long-running shows such as St. Elsewhere, Chicago Hope and NCIS.
Oscar-winning actress Patricia Arquette has had a long career in film and television, continually showing her great range as a performer across genres.
Betty White is a comedic actress who has been in show business, from TV to film, since the 1950s, most notably on The Golden Girls.
Comedian Jay Leno was the longtime host of NBC's The Tonight Show.
Actress and comedian Melissa McCarthy starred as Sookie in the show 'Gilmore Girls,' later receiving a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for the film 'Bridesmaids.'

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Summer 2018 CBB winner has been announced!
The winner of the 2018 Celebrity Big Brother series was Ryan Thomas.
Ryan Thomas is known for his starring roles as Jason in the UK's popular soap opera TV series, Coronation Street.
More recently, he has been known for starring in the Australian soap opera, Neighbours.
Ryan has held the bookies favourite to win the series throughout the show, especially after the incident with Roxanne.
The series has had a lot of controversies with Ryan stuck in the middle of arguably the most serious.
Earlier in the series, Roxanne had accused Ryan of being a "woman beater" and implied in the Diary Room that she wanted him to be kicked out.
Ofcourse, the Big Brother house is full of surveillance and it was later confirmed that he was clearly playing around with Roxanne and didn't meant no harm.
Roxanne heard the crowd chanting "get Roxy out" during the following eviction and dropped out of the TV Series later that night.
The controversy saw petitions and around 11,000 complaints to Ofcom about Roxanne, some asking for her to be removed from the series.
Ryan said there was no "malice, hurt or anger" in anything he did.
He also thanked his fans and told his fans via an Instagram post, that their support has been "amazing throughout".
The runner-up was US star, Kirstie Alley. In third place was TV personality, Dan Osbourne.
A new series of civilian Big Brother launches this Friday (September 14th) at 9PM.
It's been confirmed that the new series will be "back to basic's" and will feature several elements of classic Big Brother.
Wish Kirstie won but well done Ryan. Still well deserved.


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Alter Botanischer Garten – Colonia
Alter Botanischer Garten – Kiel
Alter Botanischer Garten – Marburgo
Alter Botanischer Garten – Monaco di Baviera
Alter Botanischer Garten – Zurigo

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Agra is famous city of India as here is one of the 7 wonders of the world. The "Taj Mahal".That's why it is very popular destination for the tourist who visit in Delhi. It is the one corner of Golden Triangle Tour.
The famous sweetdish of Agra is 'Pethas'. There are also so many other historical place to visit like Fatehpur sikri, Akbar Tomb, Agra fort etc.
Agra is a perfect getaway to reminiscent the footsteps of the Mughal era, witness marvelous architecture and getting lost in many such interesting stories.
Distance from Delhi to Agra: Agra is located at 231 kms from Delhi.
Jaipur is the capital city of Rajasthan. And it is popular as the pink city in India. Actually, the whole city was painted pink by Maharaja Ram Singh in the honor of Prince of Wales. It is another one corner of the Golden Triangle, as other two are Delhi and Agra. it is the Places to visit near Delhi within 300 km .
Massorie is one of the famous hill station in India. and Places to visit near Delhi within 300 km Its also called Queen of the hills. Its just 35 km form the Dehradun. The local of the city believe that weather of mussorie changes every hour.
Here is one of the other famous place if Mall Road its always packed with tourists and shopper.
Rishikesh is famous as the name of 'Yoga Capital of the World' actually here are so many of Yoga ashram and meditation centers. Its is most popular for the foreign tourists. It is located in the state of Uttrakhand and near the Haridwar another one famous place of India.
Nainital is famous as the Lake District of Uttarakhand and most famous natural lake call Naini Lake. It is very beautiful lake and very popular among the tourist who visit Nainital.
Its also one of the top Honeymooon place. Mostly honeymoon couples come down to Nainital and spend few days in the lap of nature.
Nainital is also known for its temples and the whole place is named after the Goddess Naina Devi.
Kasauli is one of the major attraction and adventure place. It is on the way to Shimla form Chandigarh. Kasauli is a prefer place to spend ideal vacation days. Caffeine lovers would love to try the invigorating Ginger Green Tea commonly found in the area.
So there are some top most place Here are some of the top Places to visit near Delhi within 300 km. You can hire a car rental service from Delhi by R S Tour & Travel for Individual or corporate.


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Александр Георгиевич Козловских (22 мая 1950, Киров) — советский футболист, нападающий. Мастер спорта СССР. Советский и российский тренер.

Биография
Воспитанник групп подготовки «Юный динамовец» (1961—1967, тренер Виталий Михайлович Шулятьев). Дебютировал в 1968 году в команде класса «Б» «Динамо» Киров, за два сезона в 73 играх забил 37 голов. В 1970 году перешёл в пермскую «Звезду», в составе которой на следующий год стал чемпионом РСФСР и вышел в первую лигу. В 1973 году имел договорённость о переходе в ленинградский «Зенит», но так как в составе «Звезды» проходил армейскую службу, был вынужден перейти в ЦСКА. В 1975—1977 годах играл за московский «Локомотив». В 1978 году по приглашению Николая Самарина, под руководством которого играл в «Звезде», перешёл в СКА Ростов-на-Дону из первой лиги, но в начале мая получил тяжелую травму и вернулся в Москву. В 1979—1980 годах играл во второй лиге за «Строитель»/«Факел» Тюмень. В 1981 году вернулся в кировское «Динамо», с которым вышел в первую лигу, забив в 32 матчах 38 голов (еще 7 — в четырех переходных играх). В 1983 году завершил карьеру игрока.

Чемпион мира среди железнодорожников (1975).

Окончил Пермский государственный педагогический институт (физическое воспитание, 1972), Высшую школу тренеров (1985).

Тренер (1983) и старший тренер (1986, до июля) «Динамо» Киров. Работал в ШВСМ, школе олимпийского резерва (Химки). Тренер команд ЦСКА-2 (1989—1990), «Трестар» Останкино (1992), «МЧС-Селятино» (1997).

Работал в РФС с юниорскими сборными России. Старший тренер ДЮСШ «Салют» от Тушинского машиностроительного завода. Работал в российской школе спортивного мастерства. С 2012 года — тренер в ДЮСШ «Спортивно-адаптивная школа» Москва.

Инспектор матчей второго дивизиона и Кубка России (2004—2005).

Награжден медалью «80 лет Госкомспорта России» (2003), знаком «Отличник физической культуры и спорта России» (2007).

Примечания

Ссылки
 ЭХО ИЗ ПРОШЛОГО ПЕРМСКОГО ФУТБОЛА. «ПЕРВЫЕ СКРИПКИ». ЧАСТЬ III

Спортсмены Кировской области
Футболисты СССР
Игроки ФК «Динамо» Киров
Игроки ФК «Звезда» Пермь
Игроки ФК ЦСКА Москва
Игроки ФК «Локомотив» Москва
Игроки ФК СКА Ростов-на-Дону
Игроки ФК «Тюмень»
Футбольные тренеры СССР
Футбольные тренеры России
Тренеры ФК «Динамо» Киров
Футбольные функционеры России
Мастера спорта СССР
Выпускники ПермГПУ


It is time to see what TaylorMade golf balls can do in my un-scientific test to find the best golf ball on Earth. I have never really played TaylorMade balls over the years. From time to time I would put them in play if I found one but nothing about them begged me to play them.
All of my golf ball reviews are done at Rackham Golf Course in Huntington Woods, MI. I play there once a week during the summer and its right down the street from my house.
When I test any TaylorMade golf ball I will update it here. All of my reviews will be done in chronological order.
I picked up a sleeve of TaylorMade TP5x golf balls the last time I went to Carl's Golfland. I asked the kid behind the desk to pick some balls he'd play with price being no issue (I had a gift card). One of those was the TaylorMade TP5x.
Before I headed out to the course I did some reading about them. Turns out the TP5x is a five piece golf ball (hence the 5) made out of a Tri-Fast Core and Dual Spin Cover which delivers "Progressive Compression for Maximum Energy Transfer".
There's also some mumbo jumbo about "the contrast of an ultra-soft cast urethane cover and a semi-rigid inner-cover creates maximum interaction between the cover and club grooves, resulting in exceptional spin performance with full wedge shots and pinpoint control from around the green." Blah blah blah blah.
I prefer TaylorMades slogan for the TP5x: The Most Complete Tour Ball. Ok. I can work with that. Saddle up buttercup.
Off The Tee – I really liked hitting the TP5x with driver. Had an odd day off the tee. Hit above average distance drives on #'s 1, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and by far the longest I've ever hit a drive on #17. None of those shots had a draw as they all went straight and high with little roll (how I normally hit driver).
Drive on #17. A 300 yard Par 4. 25 Yards to the green.
I sprayed all of my other tee shots right with two bad slices. Not saying it was the balls fault but I also popped one up. It seemed like the harder I swung the more control the TP5x wanted to give back.
The sound coming off the driver face with the TP5x is sweet too. You can tell it is a premium golf ball.
Only hit 4 fairways which is way below average. Some of those were close to the fairway but in the fairway is all that matters in this test.
Fairway Woods & Hybrids – I think this is where the TP5x really shines as the ball was flying off my 3 and 5 wood along with my 4 hybrid. After hitting a big drive on the Par 5 7th that just went off the fairway I was left with 265 yards to the green and I had to hit it under a tree branch. This was the best look I've ever had on a second shot to this green.
I hit a piss missile with my 3 wood. It went dead straight and almost rolled up onto the green. Came up 5 yards short. This was at least 5 yards closer than the Nike PD Long I hit last week.
The TaylorMade TP5x had the best compression and feeling I can remember hitting any fairway wood or hybrid. The ball felt like it smushed.
The only time the TP5x stopped.
Irons – And this is where things get a little shaky with the TP5x. I know it is a premium golf ball but the TP5x did not compress with the irons like a Pro V1 does. That nice soft feeling was not there. Outside of one well struck 7 iron on the Par 3 8th where I put it on the green I could not get anything going with irons.
Distance was there. Accuracy was not. Was all over the place. And when I did hit the green the TP5x rolled out. I can't remember fixing that many ball marks today. Out of my 7 greens in regulation today only 2 were from full iron swings. I guess this makes sense since TaylorMade says the TP5x has a low iron spin.
Wedges – I used these a lot today from the distance I was getting with driver and fairway woods. Not once did the TP5x check up or show any spin at all on the greens. Everything rolled out. Like, everything.
Getting golf balls to backspin or check up isn't something I try to do but it does happen when I hit the Pro V1 and even the Vice Pro Plus. I do not agree with TaylorMades claim that the TP5x has the highest wedge spin.
Putting – I had 4 one putts, 3 three putts, and a four putt. This was probably the least exciting day of putting I've ever had. Outside of a 10 footer I made to save par on #2 there was nothing going on. Nothing was getting close.
The four putt was just embarrassing as I put my tee shot on the #13 green with a 5 wood which is hard to do at 204 yards. Might have been the third time I've ever been on. And then to 4 putt. DAMMITTT!!!
Maybe 5 layers is too many layers. It has a soft feel leaving the putter face but just feels like its missing something. Or maybe there is too much of something covering up the good parts.
Had 37 putts. No BUENO!!!
Durability – I would like to tell you I played all 18 holes with the TP5x but that would be a lie. I lost one and am 99% sure somebody playing the 18th hole picked up my approach shot on the 15th hole. I was left of the fairway and behind bushes from 170 yards out and could not see the green.
I smoked my 4 hybrid and all I could see is it heading towards the green. The guy I was playing with said he saw it hit the back of the green and bounce over. There is no reason why I should not have been able to find it besides somebody picking it up. I did not give myself a penalty shot.
The TaylorMade TP5x is a premium golf ball. No doubt about that. Distance was very long with driver and fairway woods. But I did not feel confident with irons and wedges. And putting was less than spectacular. Maybe its just me but the TP5x felt softer flying off the woods taking a full swing than it did with half shot wedges and 10 foot putts.


Abstract: Grid congestion problem is an event where the existing transmission and/or distribution lines are not capable to accommodate all required load. Congestion can be appeared in many ways, among this ways the surplus of the photovoltaic systems (PV) system. In this paper, the congestion problem resulting from the PV systems surpluses can be solved by disconnecting one or more PV unit with its client from the grid. This paper will present the problem solving by manipulating it as Knapsack Problem with proposed Greedy Algorithm (GA). The paper proved that, the greedy algorithm cannot find the optimum solution comparing by using another optimization technique, "Particle Swarm Optimization Technique (PSO)". The results find that the PSO is better than the GA. In the meantime alleviating the congestion by disconnection the client from the grid produces islanding mode with its relative problem. Several researches handled the islanding mode problem. Avoiding this mode can be done straight forward by proposed cancelling the disconnection process for the selected PV units controlling the output power to be stored locally. In which this avoiding will be investigated as a future work.
Abstract: Electrical network congestion is a technical problem, which occurs in transmission lines and cabling due to insufficient transfer capabilities and line outages in the systems. Congestion problem is resulting from many of reasons. One of these reasons is the surpluses resulting from PV units. This paper discusses this reason, how to solve this problem and give an evaluation of this solution. Disconnecting the consumer with its PV from the network is our proposed solution for this trouble. One of the tool techniques which used for optimum selection of units to be disconnected is the Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (PSO). This solution enters the consumer in islanding mode in which will be evaluated. The paper provides some of recommendation for correction action.
Authors: Shahrooz M., Abbaszadeh M., Hosseini S., Shamloo A.
Abstract: The importance of Savonius vertical wind turbines is due to their high performance at low wind speeds and their independence from incoming wind direction. However, low output power has undermined the status of theese turbines. Present study suggests a novel idea; that is the application of tip fins which have the ability to control shear flow in Savonius wind turbines, to enhance the overall performance of savonius turbines. The investigation was carried out through utilization of numerical means. The use of the K-ε: Standard model was validated by modeling experimental tests from one of references and comparing outcomes with experimental data. Results of this study demonstrate that performance of Savonius rotors can be enhanced by over 40 percent with using tip fins. To provide a comprehensive insight toward effects of application of tip devices on savonious turbines, performance of a standard turbine with semicircular blade profile was investigated through different angular positions along with a modified profile. The deep investigation revealed new interesting features such as degradation of turbine performance due to existence of overlap in presence of tip devices.
Abstract: Power Quality has been a problem ever since electrical power was invented and in recent years, it has become the main interest of researchers who are still concerned about finding ways to reduce its negative influence on electrical devices. Harmonics are an important factor in power quality and also to maintain stable power supply performance, so inverters with harmonic reduction is required. In this paper, several multicarrier techniques are evaluated for cascaded H bridge multilevel inverter and being implemented with several level-shifted Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) techniques such as phase disposition (PD), phase opposition disposition (POD) and alternative phase opposition disposition (APOD) .The line voltage and total harmonics distortion (THD) are acquired and are compared with the conventional technique. We also propose a modification on trapezoidal multicarrier aiming to reduce the harmonics. This modification introduces a sinusoidal wave compared with modified trapezoidal multi-carrier to generate the pulses. To know which technique is the best, these PWM techniques are simulated via MATLAB/SIMULINK. R2014a in order to obtain the line voltages and the total harmonic distortions (THD).
Abstract: Currently, there is a strong need for improving the efficiency of electromagnetic machines as they have become an increasing part of our daily lives. The field of electric machines has seen steady growth in the last decade. However, no recent significant breakthrough has been made in the design of electric machines. To bring about a noteworthy change in this field, it is likely that new materials must be used. The recent advances made in the synthesis of carbon nanotube (CNT) materials have opened new doors of opportunity for the macroscopic application of CNT fibers. It has been found that CNT based wires have advantages over copper wires in terms of stability at extreme conditions, such as working at high temperatures, and the ability to withstand harsh chemical treatments. It has been shown that CNTs, owing to their "one dimensional" and symmetrical structure, can move charge carriers along the tube without scattering. If this behavior could be scaled-up to macroscale wires, carbon nanotube wire would replace the currently used copper wires. Due to the absence of scattering, the resistivity of individual CNTs have been found to be in the order of 〖10〗^(-8) Ωm. However, in macroscale carbon nanotube wire, the resistivity is about 100 times greater than the resistivity of individual nanotubes. The positive aspect is the density of carbon wire is about 1/5 the density of metal wire. In this paper, an extensive study is described on the state-of-the-art advances made in the synthesis of CNT based continuous fibers and the possibility of using CNT wires as an alternative to the traditionally used copper (Cu) and aluminum (Al) conductors in electromagnetic devices. As shown from the results of the CNT based electromagnetic machines investigated, a significant amount of research is still required to improve the performance of CNT macrostructures such as yarns and sheets in hope of replacing metal conductors.
Abstract: The first part of the paper discusses the necessity of developing an energy saving programme, and presents the main energy consumers of industry and the significant weight held by energy related costs in the turnover of production systems in processing industry. Further the paper describes and analyses the steps to be followed in developing an efficient energy management programme. Some of these steps are: appointment by the administration board of a manager for energy related issues, an energy audit, including a complete inventory of the energy consuming equipment, the diagram of the process flow, a general view on the operation practice, answers to a list of specific questions, identification of opportunities and their economic assessment, prioritising and grouping them into the fields of: lighting, drives, cooling, ventilation, heating, approval of the energy management programme by the administration board, implementation of the approved programme, starting with the engineering design part required by each established measure. The second part of the paper shows a way to produce energy using a wind turbine with vertical axis helical rotor shape with good energetic performances even at low wind speed. In a renewable energy system, the energy is generated according to the weather rather than on demand. In the absence of storage, a great deal of this energy will be dumped. On of the problem with renewable energy is the high capital cost. The energy is diffuse and demands large structures to collect and convert it. The equipment is expensive and comes with a large amount of infrastructure. There is an energy cost associated with manufacturing renewable energy output. Other problem with renewable energy is its intermittency. Unlike fossil fuel, the source cannot be controlled to match demand. The energy is not available all the time, and may not even be easy to predict. To match supply to demand, it may be necessary to store energy, or to reschedule our use of energy, or to use a mixture of different energy sources. Also, is presented a Monte-Carlo simulation of wind turbine parameters for cumulative frequency distribution for wind speed and for relative frequency histogram for annual energy output.
Abstract: In this project, PQ analyzer is developed. This paper depicts the detection and classification of sag, swell, interruption, undervoltage and overvoltage by uninterruptedly monitoring of single phase power system. All the perceptions and classifications are accomplished by using Advanced Digital Signal Processor (ADSP-21369). In this project, the prototype is configured with the LabVIEW to receive and store all the data which is sent by the processor via UART interface (RS-232 protocol).
Abstract: World Energy Consumption relies heavily on coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels are non-renewable, that is, they rely on finite resources that will eventually dwindle, becoming too expensive or too environmentally damaging to retrieve. In contrast, renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar energy, are constantly replenished and will never run out. Due to the rising need for professionals and academics with a background and understanding in the Smart Grid and Renewable Energy fields, Holon Institute of Technology ("HIT") developed a new program at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The Renewable Energy program gives the students technical and practical aspects of energy use (technology and methodology of the study) and energy efficiency. The program also deals with minimizing the environmental impacts of energy use, as well as with energy economy and environmental policy. HIT offers its students a well-equipped laboratory, containing state of the art equipment in various fields such as: photovoltaic energy systems, a smart grid telecommunications and information security platform, wind and water energy work stations, and power electronics equipment. This article presents the latest teaching and conclusions obtained in experiments conducted on the system platform.