Mackayi Memorial College
Hosted a cafe on
Global warming and its consequences
31st March 2009
Speaker: Polycarp Mwima, PhD student, Makerere University, Environmental Conservation Trust
Polycarp's grandfather used to tell him: ‘the day we start spraying millet, the world will have come to an end'. Millet normally grows well without pesticides. But his grandfather's prophesy has come true: in his village in Bunyole, farmers are spraying millet with pesticides to kill pests and prevent diseases suspected to be due to global warming.
Uganda faces a bleak future: the ice-caps on the Rwenzori Mountains, along Uganda's western border, are receding at such an alarming pace that the Rwenzori glaciers could be lost completely by 2025; drought is increasing and rain in recent years has been heavy and erratic.
Ugandans may not have observed Global Warming Day on March 28th by switching off lights for one hour but we can all take individual actions, such as planting trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, one of the ‘greenhouse gases' blamed for global warming.
The brain behind the computer
Speaker: Michael Walimbwa, IT expert and lecturer at Makerere University curriculum and media department at the school of education.
Students at Mackayi Memorial College heard that computers are intelligent machines but their intelligence is lent to them by a human being. Starting with mobile phones, as the simplest example of ICT and its applications, Michael explained how computers send and receive information and led on to the virtual world of cyberspace, the Internet and the World Wide Web (www).
The students wanted to know how mobile phones, the Internet and computer work; whether air travel affects cyberspace and whether cyberspace can get filled up since there is so much information being stored and exchanged. Happily, Michael said, cyberspace is virtual and as plenteous as the oxygen we breathe! The students rated their speaker very highly and felt the time for the café should be increased to more than one hour!
