[spectre] Crossing Borders: Sub-Saharan communities of care & resistance · June 19, 5PM CEST

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

Crossing Borders: Sub-Saharan communities of care & resistance · June
19, 5PM CEST

Disruptive Fridays #9 - Streaming on: https://www.disruptionlab.org/fridays

Global. That is the definition and the reality of a pandemic. Yet, most
attention and resources are confined by human made borders. Hosted in
collaboration with Bridge Figures, Disruptive Fridays #9 connects with
creative and activist communities in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa to
learn and share about responses relevant to local and global communities.

With: Sharlotte Kigezo (Psychologist, KY/UG), Peter Nkanga (Journalist &
campaigner, NG), Jedi Ramalapa (Broadcast journalist, ZA), Moderated by
Magnus Ag (Bridge Figures, DK) and Lieke Ploeger (Disruption Network
Lab, NL/DE).

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, an overwhelming amount of news and data
has been flooding us. The media coverage seems to focus on the national
and hyperlocal situation – while we are dealing with a global pandemic.
In this conversation we focus on the response of Sub-Saharan Africa to
the coronavirus outbreak, and hear from some of the people that work on
creating a conversation around COVID-19 – one that can contribute to a
more global understanding of what we are all facing.

---------------------------------------------

# Speakers:

Jedi Ramalapa is a South African broadcast journalist. She is the
current Editor-In-Chief of a non-profit podcasting organisation, Sound
Africa; which aims to produce original narrative (audio) journalism
which upends the stereotypes and cliches about Africa and Africans. She
also hosts Sound Africa's newest weekly podcast series  Covid-In-Africa,
looking at the African response to COVID-19 and how it’s affecting
people on the ground. She will address the impact of the pandemic on
human rights.

Peter Nkanga is an independent multilingual investigative journalist
based in Abuja, Nigeria . He is the former West Africa Representative of
the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and specializes in human
rights and advocacy reporting. A fierce advocate for press freedom,
Peter Nkanga has been at the forefront of the campaign for the rights of
journalists in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019, he was
awarded the “Jamal Khashoggi Award for Courageous Journalism” for his
work. He will share more on how the virus outbreak has affected public
procurement, the process of governments and state-owned corporations
deciding which goods, services and works to spend public funds on.

Sharlotte Ainebyoona Kigezo is a psychologist, mental health advocate
and spoken word artist  based between Kenya and Uganda.  She is
passionate about mental health and community-based programs that build
for a strong mental and physical foundation for the society. Sharlotte
has been instrumental in facilitating trauma healing programs for
refugee communities and art therapy programs for the creative and arts
community. This being on the basis of mental health and factors that act
as triggers to mental health like experiencing traumatic events (civil
or cross-border wars, sexual assault, cyber bullying). She will discuss
how we can best address mental health issues in these times, following
her recent work with both refugee and artist communities on mental
health awareness and forms of online therapy.

Magnus Ag is a human rights advocate, journalist, and researcher. He is
the founder & director of Bridge Figures – a human rights organization
that scales the potential of artists, activists, journalists & other
agents of social change to build bridges and break walls in a
data-driven world. Based between Hong Kong and Berlin, he previously
worked with Copenhagen-based Freemuse — which defends the right to
artistic freedom worldwide — and in New York as the Assistant Advocacy
Director for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Magnus serves on
Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought’s advisory committee
for the project The Politics of Visual Art in a Changing World, is an
advisor to Avant-Garde Lawyers, and a proud member of PEN Hong Kong.

Lieke Ploeger is the community director and administration officer of
the Disruption Network Lab. She is the co-founder of the independent
project space SPEKTRUM art science community, where she worked as
community builder from 2014 to 2018. Her core interest lies in building
and developing both online and offline communities of interest, with a
focus on sharing knowledge and expertise in an open way. She previously
worked for the Open Knowledge Foundation and for the National Library of
the Netherlands. She has a double master of arts from the University of
Utrecht, the Netherlands and has been involved in various European
research projects in the areas of open cultural data, open access and
open science.
-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // Artistic Director
Disruption Network Lab
http://disruptionlab.org
Twitter: @disruptberlin // @t_bazz
PGP: disruptionlab.org/pgp