Features

  Kiziba / AFP Inside a red-brick building with a tin roof in western Rwanda, a group of young people are hard at work studying for a US-accredited university degree. But these are no ordinary students: they are Congolese refugees for whom such a qualification could spell an escape from stateless limbo. Over the past year, a Rwandan charity called ...

  Emirates Business Nissan has collaborated with UK-based design workshop Studio Hardie to transform its zero emission e-NV200 van into the world’s first all-electric mobile office — the e-NV200 WORKSPACe. This professional office environment on wheels features an integrated fold-out desk, touchscreen computer, wireless internet, smartphone-controlled LED lights, wireless phone charging, Bluetooth® audio system, mini fridge and barista-quality coffee machine. ...

  Emirates Business Nikon Middle East FZE has announced the Nikon D5600, a camera designed for photography hobbyists and content creators to explore different creative and artistic expressions. With convenient connectivity features, this latest entry-level DX-format DSLR, is designed for sharing and storytelling. “Instinctively, we enjoy sharing how we see the world in our creative means and experiences. The Nikon ...

  Wetzlar / DPA David Bowie had one, so does Scarlett Johannson, while Lenny Kravitz produced a book with one: a Leica camera. There’s no arguing that the Leica is the German camera everyone covets. Back in the days when German cameras led the world, a Leica was the ultimate. But then the firm in Wetzlar, eastern Germany began slipping, ...

  Riyadh / AFP In Saudi Arabia where many people spend a big chunk of their lives online, like elsewhere in today’s world, John Gunti seems like a relic from a bygone era. The Indian national knocks on doors in the business district of the Saudi capital Riyadh, hoping to sell a 22-volume World Book Encyclopedia that weighs about 25 ...

  Abidjan / AFP “Some people said I’d wasted my life, that I should be a doctor, do something else,” recalls Aboudia, an Ivorian painter with international fame and a big show this month in Abidjan. Aboudia grew up as Abdoulaye Diarrasouba, a youth who still readily speaks Nouchi, the street dialect of working-class districts in Ivory Coast’s economic capital. ...

  Honiara / DPA Robert Satu has spent his whole life in a community near Honiara in the Solomon Islands, a South Pacific nation where steep hills often leave little space for settlements. “From the main road to the sea was more than 120 metres,” the village elder says in a documentary about the effects of climate change. “It’s now ...

  Soultz-sous-Forêts / DPA France and Germany could hardly be more different in their attitudes to tapping the free heat from deep under the earth. The French have enthusiastically sunk bores and exploited the heat, which is invitingly close to the surface at a hot spot which straddles the two countries’ border, whereas residents on the German side are squabbling ...

  Goiania / AFP Brazil may be the land of samba and bossa nova, but lately its hips are swaying to a different rhythm. In cowboy hats and plaid shirts, with touches of bling, new-wave country singers are conquering the airwaves and the dance floors. A world away from the soft jazz and Latin rhythms that Brazil crafted from the ...

  Paris / AFP Diplomatic wrangling this week will make the headlines in the fight against climate change, but experts say a bigger but largely unseen battle is set to unfold on the world’s farms. Agriculture holds the double distinction of being highly vulnerable to climate change but also offering a solution to the problem, they say. In a report ...