Shell in Nigeria.

Discovered via Platform London

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The relativity of poverty

If you monitor aid-related articles, just like I do on Humanitarian News, it is so easy to pull out the crap.

And I tell you, there is a lot of crap and make-believe in the aid world.

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Worrying events...

There is always something going on, somewhere in the world, that keeps us, aidworkers, busy. Here is what is on our mind these days:

• 8,000 Somalis are displaced in one day of fighting around Mogadishu (Full)
• A rebellion seems to be on the raise in Nigeria (Full) and Niger (Full)
• Relief agencies still don't have full access to the displaced civilians after the Tamil was defeated in Sri Lanka. (Full)
• Southern Sudan seems to fall back into violence (Full)
• ...while in Darfur, the war is flaring up again (Full)
• Pakistan's offensive in the Swat valley displaced 2.3 million people, with aid agencies scrambling to cope. (Full)
  

Items discovered via International Aid Workers Today and AidNews.

Picture courtesy Reuters

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Googling via SMS

From the Google Africa Blog:

In Africa, we've learned that mobile phones are easier to get to than internet connections and PCs, and that working towards our mission means working through mobile phones.

At the beginning of 2008, there were over a quarter of a billion mobile subscribers on the continent. Mobile penetration has risen from just one in 50 people at the beginning of this century to almost one third of the population today.

To that end, we are excited to launch a test of Google SMS Search in Ghana and Nigeria. (Full)

What this means is: in Ghana and Nigeria, you SMS keywords -just as you would enter them in the Google search bar in your browser- and you get an SMS back with the search results.

Here is a practical example of how it looks like.

A real tool, or a lure into higher SMS traffic?

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