Afropreneurs: This Startup Is Helping Millennials Find Hassle-Free Apartment Rentals (OkayAfrica)
OkayAfrica's theme for April is "Hustle." My latest piece for their Afropreneurs series is a profile of Ofo Ezeugwu, co-founder and CEO of Whose Your Landlord. You can find it via the OkayAfrica website and preview a short excerpt below:
For most students and young professionals, first apartments are a painful rite of passage. The lessons often start after the first week: a sputtering air conditioner or the sinking realization that mice are noisy roommates. While not all landlords are exploitative, the fierce competition for housing in America’s largest cities puts young tenants at a disadvantage.
Read more here.
Afropreneurs: How These Coworking Spaces Navigate Ghana’s Startup Ecosystem (OkayAfrica)
OkayAfrica's theme for April is "Hustle." My latest piece for their Afropreneurs series takes a look at the people who hustle to help grow Ghana's start-up ecosystem. You can find it via the Okayafrica website, and preview a short excerpt below.
Co-working, a trend pioneered by companies like WeWork, is a trend common in major American cities in New York or San Francisco. Across Africa it remains a new concept. However, as investment across the continent picks up steam, more startups are taking advantages of collaborative workplaces. According to data firm Social Workplaces, in 2013, there were only 24 coworking spaces across the continent. By 2015, the number grew up to 250. In Accra, there are over five today. They range from collaborative workspaces like Workshed to more full-fledged hubs and incubators with an even more expansive range of services.
Muslim Schoolchildren Bullied By Fellow Students And Teachers (NPR)
I wrote this piece for National Public Radio (NPR) on recent increases in bullying of Muslim schoolchildren.
"Muslim children are more likely to be bullied in school than children of other faiths. A new survey by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) reveals that 42 percent of Muslims with children in K–12 schools report bullying of their children because of their faith, compared with 23 percent of Jewish and 20 percent of Protestant parents."
Jessica O. Matthews is the Tech Maven Bringing Renewable Energy to Nigeria and Beyond (OkayAfrica)
I'm proud to have contributed to OkayAfrica's inaugural list—“OkayAfrica’s 100 Women”— which takes a look at the women making an impact on the African continent and in the diaspora. I profiled Jessica O. Matthews of Uncharted Play, the company bringing solar powered devices to Nigeria and beyond. Take a look at the full profile here.
The Illusion of Inclusion: Xenophobia in South Africa (Harvard Africa Policy Journal)
Months and years of research go into dissertations and theses only for most of them to lie on a shelf collecting dust... so I decided to make use of my undergraduate thesis on South Africa's migration policy, and turn it into a Harvard Africa Policy Journal blog post.
I once heard a very depressing statistic that 40 percent of World Bank reports have been downloaded fewer than 100 times, so hoping for better results with this article. If you're interested in reading the larger work, give me a shout here.
Abstract of the full-length thesis:
During the Apartheid era, the mobility of black Africans, both those native to South Africa and those from other countries, was strictly regulated. Citizenship was defined as white citizenship against black “others.” Since independence from white-majority rule, South Africa, a country, which has built its modern democracy on inclusivity, has witnessed a rise in xenophobia and violence against migrants. In examining the dynamics of xenophobia towards Zimbabweans, the country’s largest migrant group, this paper argues that the persecution of migrants is tied to the persistent legacy of apartheid, rampant economic inequality, and the international relations of the African National Congress.