Blog post by Amy Lumbal Gaol, communications officer Hivos South East Asia As the only female staff working at RESCO, a renewable energy service company established under the Sumba Iconic Island platform, Jetty Arlinda Maro, 26, has to work twice as hard as her male colleagues to prove her capacity. Unlike those men, she is […]
It’s 6:00 am and it’s still a bit dark. In the distance, the peak of Mount Kenya can be seen just above the morning mist. You can hear the sounds of a family in a small wooden house. The Gichuki family is starting their daily morning ritual.
Globally, it’s estimated around 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity; Africa’s population alone accounts for almost half of that figure. Sadly, the use of traditional biomass as fuel for cooking and a reliance on expensive diesel-powered, polluting generators have been the norm in Africa. While it’s been argued that access to energy propels socio-economic […]
On September 22, websites of international NGOs and regional and local organizations all over the world turned their home pages blank. So did Hivos. We were protesting against the oppression of active citizens and organizations who want their voices to be heard, who want to gather or demonstrate peacefully. We went silent in solidarity with those […]
Hivos East Africa condemns the recent police raids on Action Aid Uganda, Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies (GLISS) and Solidarity Uganda. Ahead of the age limit debate in parliament, a series of raids, arrests, threats and intimidation of citizens and civil society organisations have continued to escalate the shrinking civic space in Uganda. The […]
Civic Engagement for Open Contracting – first lessons learned September 21, 2017 A reflection on the programmatic approach and the role of infomediaries to improve efficiency, transparency and accountability in public contracting and other public money flows. By Daniel Dietrich The Open Contracting programme of Hivos and ARTICLE 19 is a five-year programme (2016-2020) within […]
Hivos Southern Africa partnered with ClimateTracker.org to train journalists in Malawi and Zimbabwe to effectively report on climate change and renewable energy. Climate Tracker is a global organisation focussed on supporting young journalists around the world to write game-changing articles on Climate Change and Energy. In the last two years, Climate Tracker has facilitated trainings […]
For most of the people who trooped over to the Hivos Southern Africa exhibition stand at the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show 2017, the opportunity to charge their cell phones at the mobile solar stations proved to be quite novel. Solar Mobile Charging Systems Excites Citizens The ZAS is Zimbabwe’s premier agricultural trade exhibition that attracts approximately […]
‘Gold from children’s hands.’ Sounds nice, even poetic, but what kind of reaction does this statement elicit when you connect it with child labour? It is estimated that up to two million Ugandan children have been forced into child labour, mostly through conflicts often leading to internal displacement. On the 2017 World Day against Child […]
Today, women in Lebanon are fighting for equal access to opportunities and rights without prejudice against their gender, their expectations and their careers. This fight requires attention for and analysis of the deep-rooted patriarchal structures that by their very nature exclude women. When Lebanese women decide to become politically active, they are faced with many […]
On August 24 2017, the Hivos Women@Work Campaign in Southern Africa convened its stakeholders from the horticulture sector in Malawi for the first time to discuss the issue of living wages. Low wages are a persistent problem in many global supply chains, so this is a key issue for the Women@Work Campaign, which aims to improve working conditions for women.
How open contracting can empower women to transform their economies August 31, 2017 More than 2,000 people gathered in New York recently to tackle the ambitious challenges set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for everyone. Among other things, achieving the goals depends on closing the […]