Millennium Cities Initiative6
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Bamboo Bikes Nearing Production
Imagine creating an affordable product and a sustainable industry tailored to both meet urgent demand and use native materials. This is what the Bamboo Bike Project (BBP) is doing in Kumasi, Ghana. We’ve honed our bamboo bike design to be suitable for road conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, and created a system by which these bikes…
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Are Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Attainable?
Just how pervasive is gender inequality across sub-Saharan Africa? This topic is particularly timely today, March 8, designated International Women’s Day by the United Nations. Despite the valiant efforts of many government officials, international and local non-governmental organizations and women’s advocates, in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, women do not yet enjoy equal status with…
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Global Linkages, Global Literacy: MCI Celebrates World Read Aloud Day through School-to-School Partnerships
What happens when students around the world are connected via modern technologies to share their experiences and perspectives? The Millennium Cities Initiative is determined to find out through its exciting School-to-School partnership program, which brings together schools from the United States with schools in the Millennium Cities – underserved urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa. While…
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Mayor of Accra, Ghana, Speaks to City’s Challenges During Visit to the Earth Institute
The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and the Earth Institute (EI) were honored to host Accra Mayor Alfred Vanderpuije this week, for a series of lectures and meetings focused on Ghana’s capital. Mayor Vanderpuije met twice with the leadership of the MCI Accra team – Professor Patricia Culligan, Vice-Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied…
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Bill Gates Visits the Earth Institute
We were thrilled to welcome Bill Gates recently to the Earth Institute for a wide-ranging informational meeting led by director Jeff Sachs. The half-day visit was a lively, frank and open exchange of ideas between Mr. Gates and Earth Institute faculty members debating the challenges and immense opportunities for human development in the areas of…
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The First Millennium City Song: Ghanaian Pop Artist Celebrates Accra’s Designation as a Millennium City
Members of the MCI/Earth Institute Accra team were treated to upbeat premiere performances of the first “Millennium City” song, composed in honor of Accra’s recent designation as a Millennium City. The catchy tune was premiered by famed Ghanaian singer/songwriter Akosua Agyapong and her band during a festive evening jamboree in the historic Jamestown neighborhood of…
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Kumasi’s New Neonatal Clinics On Track to Reduce Maternal and Infant Mortality, Despite Lingering Challenges
I recently had the opportunity to visit the two new neonatal clinics in Kumasi, Ghana, built as part of the Millennium Cities Initiative’s efforts to create models capable of reducing maternal and infant mortality in the Millennium Cities. MCI partnered with Israeli neonatologists from Ben Gurion University who, with support from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign…
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Sky’s the Limit: Kumasi Schools Hope to Benefit from School-to-School Partnerships
The assembly hall was full of crisply uniformed high school boys, hundreds of them, standing room only. Despite the midday heat, everyone seemed captivated by the speeches by the Mayor of Kumasi, a spokeswoman for the Education Minister, the CEO of Zain Africa and other top Ericsson and Zain executives for Ghana. They were all…
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Making Connections: Schools Come Together Thanks to Exciting New Partnership
I am in Kumasi, Ghana, for the launch of a great partnership between Ericsson, the mobile phone giant; Zain, the 3-G broadband giant; the City of Kumasi; 18 Kumasi public schools; and the Millennium Cities Initiative. Ericsson and Zain are connecting these 18 schools to the Internet, the Mayor of Kumasi is donating computer labs…