In the Kigogo neighbourhood of Dar es Salaam, some 57,600 people live in an area of less than two square kilometres, according to 2012 census data. (The number is likely much higher now due to rapid population growth.) Almost half of that area — which houses 4,400 buildings, including four schools and one hospital — is prone to heavy seasonal flooding.
It wasn’t always that way. First established on a rise between two river valleys, Kigogo’s more recent settlements have expanded into lower-lying, flood-prone valleys. As riverbeds fill with makeshift houses or get used as de facto trash dumping grounds, the risk of flooding increases at an alarming rate.
A lack of properly constructed drainage channels has also worsened Kigogo’s flood risk. Thanks to the community mapping project Dar Ramani Huria, local activists, leaders and city planners can address those problem areas much more effectively because they now know more precisely what needs to be done and where.
“The residents can use the maps to familiarize themselves with problems affecting rivers, bridges and other infrastructure,” says one Red Cross volunteer from the district. “It has really helped us get to know Kigogo better.”
To get a sense of what they’ve learned from the mapping process, we asked volunteers from the Tanzania Red Cross National Society to take us on a tour of Kigogo, using the open-source map as a guide. At each stop, they explain what they see and why they decided to put it on the map.
Select map markers for more information.
It’s the stuff of science fiction: machines that make decisions about who and when to kill. Referred to as “autonomous weapons”, they’re already in use to some degree. But as more sophisticated systems are being developed we wanted to an expert in the field about whether such systems comply with international humanitarian law and what it means for humanity to give machines the power over human life and death.
In this episode, we talk with humanitarian communicator Kathy Mueller who produced our first magazine podcast series, The Wildfire Diaries, about massive wildfires in Northern Canada in 2017. We talk about that series, her many international missions, and the big changes in humanitarian communications since she began with the Canadian Red Cross almost 20 years ago.
In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling to inform and inspire. “Storytelling is a fundamental aspect of human communication,” says our guest Prodip, a volunteer and multi-media storyteller for the Bangladesh Red Crescent. “It inspires us to be a hero of our own community.” We also speak with one such community hero, Dalal al-Taji, a longtime volunteer and advocate for inclusion of people with disabilities in emergencies response. “In disasters. persons with disabilities sometimes get forgotten.”
Even in the digital age, people going through crisis can still fall through the cracks
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