HumAngle's Solutions Desk focuses on emerging responses to societal problems and what individuals, communities, and institutions are doing to help those in need.
Artificial intelligence is steadily changing how the world responds to crises. Governments use it to analyse satellite imagery after natural disasters, humanitarian agencies are testing AI to anticipate displacement before it overwhelms fragile communities, and researchers are applying machine learning to uncover patterns buried inside millions of records that no human could process alone. These […]
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September 2024 came with water. It moved through Maiduguri, in Nigeria’s North East, in fast, stubborn currents, destroying homes and property, and displacing thousands. In many affected areas, like London Ciki, where Khadija Usman lives, it washed away firewood and charcoal, a critical source of cooking fuel for many homes. She was home alone one […]
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A group of children gather on a Saturday morning in front of a three-block classroom at the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN) displacement camp in Wurro-Jabbe, a community in Yola, Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria. They run across the dusty fields, playing and chatting, but when a chessboard is laid in front of the closed classroom, […]
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Morning light glints off the water as children in crisp uniforms, polished sandals, and neatly packed schoolbags paddle across the same waters where fights once broke out among young boys. They are heading to Part of Solution Nursery and Primary School, Makoko, in South West Nigeria, a free, floating school that is turning the tide […]
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The echoes of gunfire still haunt Abdullahi Wakili. What he remembers most, however, is the silence that followed — the silence of neighbours fleeing through the night, of homes left smouldering, of fear settling over Lau like harmattan dust. “We were always expecting a crisis at any moment. We could not sleep with both eyes […]
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Ngomari Costine has a terrible reputation. The area, in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, is filled with delinquent youth popularly referred to as Marlians, named after a controversial Nigerian musician whose songs and style they imitate. Groups of young people in flashy clothes and elaborate hairstyles gather in front of shops and on benches outside houses in […]
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On a Sunday evening in March this year, Akiba Ekpeyong, a community leader in Akpap-Okoyong, received a text message that made him drop everything he was doing in the community, a cluster of farming villages in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State, South-South Nigeria. The message came from another chief nearby, warning of […]
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In November 2024, an empty field suddenly turned into a bustling scene. Women streamed in carrying baskets of tomatoes, while others unwrapped sacks of oranges. At the time, teenage girls hawked in the crowd with trays of boiled groundnuts balanced on their heads. Along the roadside, two trailers lined up a few metres away as […]
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It was a sombre Thursday afternoon in Alesi, a community in Ikom Local Government Area (LGA) of Cross River State, in South South Nigeria. Inside the village head’s palace, men and women gathered in silence, their faces drawn with grief. Some stared blankly ahead; others fought back tears. “We have lost another son. Our hearts […]
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Auwalu Saidu remembers his elder brother, Babayo, with robes and horses. The kind worn and ridden by royalty in northeastern Nigeria. He remembers him through colours, too. Royal festivities in their hometown of Mubi, Adamawa State, are a spectacle of more colours than the rainbow, but Babayo’s signature colours were white and red. He wore […]
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Sarah Ishaya doesn’t seem to remember the day the attackers came in 2021, but what she cannot forget is how they almost took the lives of two of her sons. It was around 6 a.m. that they started hearing screams from neighbouring houses, and before she could flee with her family, the attackers were already […]
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She was just seven years old when they were displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. Elizabeth Bitrus and her family fled to Taraba State, where they lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) Camp. That was the first time Elizabeth had to adjust to a home that was not her […]
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