In Case You Missed It: 9/19/16 — 9/25/16

This week’s most impor­tant head­lines out of and about Africa.

Leslie Lumeh uses his art­work to chron­i­cle the ongo­ing effects of Ebo­la in Liberia.

In this week’s news, France invests in Africa, art saves lives, and float­ing pow­er plants make waves off Africa’s coast.

Man Used Art to Save Peo­ple Dur­ing Ebo­la Crisis

Dur­ing last year’s major Ebo­la out­break, UNICEF called on artists to cre­ate infor­ma­tive posters on how to stay safe.

One artist, a Liber­ian named Leslie Lumeh, spoke about his work with CNN this week. While Liberia has been declared Ebo­la free by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, Lumeh has con­tin­ued to doc­u­ment the dis­eases’ effects on the coun­try through his art.

France Pro­motes African Invest­ment at Les Ren­con­tres Africa

France host­ed a two day con­fer­ence, the Les Ren­con­tres Africa, in Paris this week. The con­fer­ence focused on Africa’s eco­nom­ic and civic poten­tial, and encour­aged busi­ness lead­ers to invest in the con­ti­nent, as well as sup­port inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Polit­i­cal lead­ers from 30 coun­tries and busi­ness lead­ers from more than 500 French com­pa­nies and 300 African com­pa­nies came togeth­er. They dis­cussed the impor­tance of women in busi­ness, new dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, Africa’s enter­tain­ment indus­try, and eco­nom­ic part­ner­ships between French and African companies.

The dis­cus­sions held at Les Ren­con­tres and the ideas that came from them will be fur­ther expand­ed at the upcom­ing Africa-France Sum­mit next year.

Float­ing Pow­er Plants to Light Up Africa

Mas­sive float­ing pow­er plants are mak­ing their way to Ghana. The “Pow­er­ships” are owned by a Turk­ish com­pa­ny called the Karad­eniz Ener­gy Group. Its affil­i­ate, Kar­pow­er­ship, launched the Pow­er­ship Project in 2007. Their first ship was sent to Iraq, and since then they have branched out to Africa and Asia. They are cur­rent­ly plan­ning to send a new ship to Ghana in 2017.

Pow­er­ships oper­ate exact­ly like reg­u­lar pow­er plants, but have the ben­e­fit of being mobile. They require only 16 feet of water to oper­ate, and thus can dock in ports and oth­er areas near land to quick­ly gen­er­ate electricity.