How Big is Amsterdam? ~ Interactographic Map

Nice interactive map comparing metropolitan Amsterdam to other geographies. Here's vs Boston... And here vs Silicon Valley centered on Stanford... Vs Cape Town... Vs Doha... Vs Aqaba+Eilat... Vs Mumbai... Thanks to MapPorn for spotting.

Iyesa Express ~ Sizwe Nzima's Rx Cycle Delivery

The BBC spotlights Sizwe Nzima, South African entrepreneur building up Iyesa Express pharmaceuticals delivery venture in Cape Town...

"Collecting medicine from a hospital or clinic-based dispensary in some of South Africa's townships is no mean feat. There is the cost of transport to the facility, often hours spent queuing, the cost to have someone look after children left at home, or the loss of pay because of missing work. But for the elderly and infirm, it can be a nightmare because they physically find it impossible to travel. Now Sizwe Nzima, a young man from the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, has started a business which has seen him win a Forbes Magazine award as one of Africa's best young entrepreneurs."

Delivering Africa's Promise ~ WEF Cape Town '13

IBM Smarter Planet spots WEF on Africa...

More Cape Town ~ Multi-Faceted SA Supercity...

Here's some additional perspectives on Cape Town, South Africa... See also post on Mapping Cape Town and AlJaz Witness story on Township Cinderellas, which I'll re-post here since it's so provocative...

Mapping Cape Town ~ Spotlight on SA Supercity

Cape Town, South Africa in maps...

Township Cinderellas ~ AlJaz on SAfrica's Youth

Al Jazeera's Witness spotlights South Africa's challenges in Township Cinderellas, a documentary film by Paul and Sam Sapin...

"...about teenagers from the Cape Flats area of Cape Town in South Africa preparing for their high school graduation ball on the biggest night of their lives. Most of these students were born in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela became president, apartheid ended and South Africa became a democracy. This means that the high school graduating classes of 2011/2012 are the first generation of apartheid-free South Africans. These are 'Mandela’s Children', and they were promised a bright future. But 17 years on from the birth of democracy in South Africa, the outlook for many is far from bright. In the town of Manenberg where we made this film, only a quarter of the children who began school together at Manenberg High School made it to their last year of school and only about 50 per cent of those passed the exams required to graduate."

Shebeens ~ South Africa's Informal Drinking Dens

Interesting BBC slideshow on Shebeens, South Africa's informal drinking dens in residential areas. Turns out the authorities are cracking down on these for various trumped up reasons. View here the discussion with the proprietor of Makati's Paradise shebeen in Gugulethu township near the lovely city of Cape Town... The crackdown strikes me as yet another officious intrusion of a too-powerful State into the peaceful lives and liberties of everyday citizens. Surely the police have better things to do than bully a bunch of beer drinkers?