 Weekend Reads T.K. Naliaka, via Wikimedia Commons🇸🇳 Saint Louis, an island city that was Senegal’s capital until 1902, is facing threats to its stability due to climate change. Dubbed the “Venice” of Africa because it seems to float on the river, Saint Louis is struggling against rising oceans, The Economist reports. It is leading to the increased closure and evacuation of residents, schools, and businesses. “Inch by inch, home by home, Saint Louis is being washed into the sea.” 🇷🇼 Rwanda is becoming for France what several West African nations have recently taken from it — a welcome haven for cultural partnerships. Two decades after French was demoted from classrooms and Rwandan culture, students and young people in the East African country are flocking to new French schools and restaurants with President Paul Kagame as the champion of the restoration, Abdi Latif Dahir reports in The New York Times. 🇬🇭 The ubiquity of yams in Ghanaian storytelling is grounded in the root tuber’s esteem in the Ashanti tradition. In the Mythological Africans podcast, host Helen Nde draws from folklore and historical accounts of yam’s discovery by the Ashanti, and explains documented links between West African yam cultivation with indigenous Australian and Melanesian civilizations. 🇳🇬 A Nigerian city created as a ‘Happy City’ utopia by a Christian group is disappearing from sight due to pressures of underwater oil drilling, deforestation and erosion caused by the ocean. In addition, fresh water in Ayetoro, in southwest Nigeria, is turning salty, the church has moved locations twice to beat the sea waves, and residents’ losses are increasing, the Associated Press reports. 🌍 Africa’s prosperity and historically low contribution to the global economy will not be dramatically improved by technology startups, Peter Schadt, a secretary at a German trade union, writes in Jacobin magazine. The continent’s dependence on the export of fossil fuels has not led to productive economic growth over decades. Without value-added production, the admirable rise of widely used apps like M-Pesa will merely serve as “technical solutions for the circulation of money and capital, but they are no guarantee of economic progress,” he argues. Week Ahead July 1 — A Nigerian court will hold a trial for Binance head of financial crimes compliance Tigran Gambaryan, a US citizen, as well as another official who left the country in March is also being tried in absentia. July 3-4 — The BlueInvest Africa event, organized by the European Commission, will bring together African entrepreneurs and international investors in Diani, Kenya, to discuss opportunities in the blue economy. July 4 — Bank of Tanzania will announce its latest lending rate decision. In April, the bank increased its benchmark interest rate to 6% from 5.5%. For Your Consideration Sept. 12 — The Cambridge-Africa Alborada Research Fund 2024 is calling for grant applications up to $25,000 for post-doctoral researchers from African institutions, across all disciplines. Apply here. | 
