Necessity is the mother of all invention, and with Africa’s many needs, it’s no surprise that the continent is home to some of the most inventive people on the planet. Just a scan of the ten nominees for the fourth annual Innovation Prize for Africa Awards shows a lot of great ideas, including environmentally-friendly taxis, remote heart rate monitoring, and a cool way to clean up oil spills. Four South Africans have qualified for this year’s prize, as well as inventors from the width and...

Back in 2009, Google released a fun video showing a team walking around New York, asking pedestrians what a Web browser is. The vast majority of those interviewed seemed to confuse it with their search engine. A good deal of people thought it was an operating system. Only 8% knew the right answer. That number may have changed a little since, but probably not by much. The browser is the digital equivalent of electricity...

Documentaries come in all shapes and sizes. Some are deeply critical thought experiments, like Adam Curtis’ movies, film makers like Werner Herzog try to cut to the nerve of their subject, while others such as Michael Moore tend to carry their sentiments boldly on their sleeves. But the hardest type of documentary is arguably the one where the subject tells its own story: no narration and conveniently swapping between interviewees. Instead it’s a moment where the audience is simply let into...

Paperwork. Bureaucracy. Red tape. Descriptions abound for an organisation’s documents - and few of them are flattering. Business owners rarely credit paperwork as why they do what they do. But as the biggest annoyance to running a business it comfortably leads the pack. Even those famous comic book Gauls, Asterix and Obelix, could fight off legions of Romans, but almost saw their end at the hand of bureaucracy. In the movie Asterix and the Twelve Tasks, the pair are driven near-insane trying to...