Appfrica’s weekly review looks back at popular stories from our own blog and others from the week gone-by. This week: Kampala rocked by rioting, the flow of news during crisis situations, GLO-1 finally arrives in West Africa, and the search for African science fiction.

Subscribe to Week In Review

You can subscribe to this weekly digest via RSS by clicking here or Email by clicking here.

This week, Kampala was crippled by riots and looting which marred the image of one of East Africa’s model cities. The cause of the uprising is complicated but The Independent described the situation well for the international audience.

One thing the recent riots in Kampala have revealed is the flow of news and how people behave during crisis situations. We still don’t quite know what we’re dealing with in Kampala. It’s either the beginning or the end of a wider scale confrontation. For those of us on the ground, we’re starved for information. The mobile phone and it’s users ere essentially the only reports we can rely on for timely info. Despite the fact that people are more connected than ever through mobile devices and web services like Twitter, there are still some gaping holes in how information is aggregated and disseminated in times of crisis. Over the past three days I contemplated how it might be possible to improve the flow of data during crisis situations.

AMD’s Nigel Dessau defends the companies choice at naming their new processor ‘Congo’ and the first laptop using the new processor debuts: Acer’s Ferrari One.

The Freakonomics Blog of the New York Times profiles several African startups, including this one! Here’s my response to some of the comments by readers.

In a series called “In Search of…” I hunt down some of the better known novels, films, comics and other media that uses Africa as a the backdrop for a sci-fi setting. I started with a discussion on IMDB which revealed that there were indeed a few examples of popular sci-fi novels, set in Africa, with African protagonists, none of which are actually written by Africans. I then looked to the film industry for other examples.

Meanwhile, DC Comics uses the complexities of Uganda’s history with the LRA as the basis for UNKNOWN SOLDIER, a new comic book.

GLO-1, the 9,800 km long cable between the UK and Nigeria, and the first to be built by a private company, landed in Lagos.

Fed up with the way PayPal addresses piracy by flagging the IP addresses of various countries? Try these alternatives and perhaps one other.

Visit Our Sponsor

CitiAlly is your networking tool to keep in touch with individuals with whom you share a common professional interest or business interest.