Tearsheets; 2009-2012.

In the run up to Kenya's Match 4 elections, many worry that the recent tribal clashes in Tana Delta area of Kenya's coast, which have left over two hundred people dead in the past 6 months, could be a warning of violence to come. (Photographed for The New York Times)

In the early hours before dawn on Monday morning, Kenya seemed to be wide-awake in anticipation. Millions of voters across the country eagerly lined up at polling stations, some as early as one or two in the morning, to take part in the nation's fourth democratic multi-party election, and what many analysts say is the nation's most critical in recent history. The March 4 election is Kenya's first general election since 2007, when post-election violence sparked by alleged rigging, ballot stuffing, and voter intimidation tore the country apart over tribal lines, leaving more than 1,000 dead and more than half a million displaced. A cloud of fear has hung over the country in recent weeks that ethnic violence could once again flare up, as it has in the past. But analysts and journalists alike have been claiming that there is a growing sense of hope that Kenya has learned from the past, reformed its institutions, and is ready to move forward. In an effort to help reform the country's voting system and implement a widely popular new constitution approved in a peaceful 2010 referendum, this election has also been the most complex in Kenya's history. New biometric voter registration technology has been introduced to reduce fraudulent voting, and for the first time voters cast a total of six ballots to fill new county positions, part of Kenya's process of devolving central government control into 47 counties. Election day itself was marked by unprecedented voter turnout- pover 86% followed by incredibly long polling station lines. Voters waited patiently, in some cases upwards of nine or ten hours under a sweltering sun, to cast their vote. Despite the long lines, glitches in electronic voter registration systems, power outages, and some confusion over polling stations queues, voters remained by and large peaceful throughout the country.

Tucked away in the northeast corner of Ethiopia, edging along the tense Eritrean border, the Danakil Depression is a scorching and brutal showcase of the earth’s most raw elements. Unsettlingly perched at the junction of three tectonic plates, Danakil’s epic wasteland displays blinding salt beds, jagged rock formations, searing desert landscapes, and explosive volcanoes; the “average” year round temperature is 34 degrees Celsius. Here, in the harshest depths of the rift valley 100 meters below sea level, vast expanses of “white gold”—salt—has been the economic lifeblood for centuries.

From Kigali to Kampala, Dar es Salaam to Dakar, Cameroon to Kenya and across the African continent, new collaborative workspaces and ICT hubs are emerging as beacons for the ICT hopes and dreams of the continent. As fiber optic cables continue to lay foundations for a new Africa, the continent is undergoing a “tech-hub boom”, as Erik Hersman – Co-founder of Ushahidi and Nairobi’s iHub, one of the most well known hubs in Africa – pointed out in a recent BBC article. There are now more than 90 hubs, labs, incubators and accelerators in Africa, covering more than 20 countries. There are nearly twenty in Nairobi alone- and most have emerged in the past two years. According to recent research, a new African hub is springing up nearly every two weeks. The World Bank has a €12.9 million program to encourage innovation and competitiveness via innovation spaces, and The Gates Foundation's Beyond Access Initiative is showing how libraries and open spaces power development. USAID is sponsoring a $7.5 million Social Innovation Lab in Cambodia, and South Africa’s RLabs has even invested in an innovation hub in Somaliland. In many African countries, the trouble for young entrepreneurs has often been physical space. With the exception of a handful of expensive or high-end local coffee chains like Kenya’s Java House, there are few places on the continent for young developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs to interact. Few places offer free-wifi in a comfortable enough setting for people to work, individually or collaboratively. Africa’s hubs are a brand new kind of physical space, which lie somewhere between a university lab, coffee shop and internet café. They are essential melting pots where creative young tech graduates can nurture innovation and find opportunity. Students, programmers, developers, entrepreneurs, designers, investors and techies come to work, network and create. Built upon values of openness, access, collaboration, education and sharing, they are building communities of trust. These spaces have also become critical international touch-points for those seeking to engage in technology and business in Africa. By virtue of being nerve centers for the tech community, they have become points of exchange for long-term expatriates and short-term visitors looking to identify trends, find local talent, and catch the African wave of innovation. Africa’s hubs ooze with creative and collaborative-centered design, reminiscent of an early 2000 Google headquarters. Moveable whiteboards act as window shades. Bean bags serve as chairs. Electricity outlets have built-in adaptors for frequent travelers. Color schemes are a pastel collage. And of course, foosball tables are almost always required. As many of the ‘well-established’ hubs are now two years old, and new ones are sprouting up every week, a new angle of storytelling is needed to map their impact.

The Atlantic Jonathan Kalan Mogadishu, Somalia In a tiny, damp, oil-soaked cellar tucked behind one of Mogadishu's bullet-pocked central streets, fragile remnants of a city's survival clutter the rickety shelves. Their location, hidden just beneath Mogadishu's shelled façade, is perhaps their only reason for survival. For 45 years, Daha Printing Press has accumulated an inked archive of Mogadishu's intricate, vibrant and violent political and social history. As governments, dictators, warlords, and militias battled for control of the streets above, Daha operated like a well-oiled machine, printing for all who walked in their door. Everybody, it seems, has something to print. "Even warlords needed to collect taxes," Liban Egal, the son of Daha's original owner, asserts. Customs declaration forms for Mogadishu's bustling port, still written in Italian from early post-colonial days, sit freshly pressed on the table; they are being repurposed for Somalia's new government. Tax collection slips and Central Bank account ledgers from the military rule of Mohamed Siad Barre -- whose ousting in 1991 launched two decades of civil war -- litter the stock room. Business cards, like that of notorious warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who was the target of a failed American assassination attempt (which in turn resulted the infamous 'Black Hawk Down' incident), fill old wooden drawers. Even United Nations Development Program reports from the 1980's hide under crumbling shelves. Read on http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/we-cant-forget-this-machine-the-letterpress-of-mogadishu/264023/

BBC Business Jonathan Kalan Mogadishu, Somalia At The Village Restaurant, a popular open-air hangout for Mogadishu's returning diaspora community, a charcoal-powered Italian espresso machine brews Somalia's best cappuccino. Wi-fi internet beams throughout the cafe, as patrons check email, download music videos, and keep tabs on Somalia's latest news. As Mogadishu shifts from two decades of civil war to a quivering democracy, opportunities for business - from hotels to off-grid espresso makers to cafes like the Village - are flourishing. And so too are the opportunities for bringing them online. Perched between the tattered ruins of a flattened landscape, the glow of wireless receiver antennas has gradually replaced the orange glow of stray bullets, bringing a new era of global connectivity and freedom of information to the city's estimated one million residents. In 2000, Somalia was one of the last African nations to get online. Since then, the internet industry here has seen as much turbulence and turnover as the country itself. According to Abdulkadir Hassan Ahmed, general manager of Global Internet Company, Somalia's largest internet provider, at least 17 internet companies in Somalia have gone under in the past decade. It's a tough job. All the time, companies are coming in and going out” Global Internet Company, founded in 2003 by a consortium of Somalia's leading telecom companies including Hormuud and NationLink, provides dial-up, DSL and some point-to-point wireless. Yet even Mr Ahmed admits his own company's connections can be slow and expensive. After nearly 10 years in business, Global Internet is almost profitable, he says, but is more of a loss leader for telecoms. Unlike Somalia's thriving telecoms sector, where two decades of lawlessness, lack of regulation, and cut-throat competition for an increasingly mobile market have driven services up and prices to rock bottom (less than one cent per minute), internet in Mogadishu has been archaic. Dial-up is the cheapest option, at around $30 (£18) a month per computer, but is painfully slow - less than 56kbs - and highly oversubscribed, according to many. Read on at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19961266

Photographed in November & December 2012, MADE in the Middle East; Beer, Olives & Dates is a tiny glimpse inside harvesting, processing and production of the common (and not so common) exports of Jordan and Palestine.

The road to ‘Origin’ is seldom easy... Yet for a select few, the pilgrimage to this tiny, landlocked country of a thousand hills is becoming an essential journey, an annual right of passage. It commences with a flight from Chicago, New York, Oslo or Amsterdam, with a handful of stopovers; Zurich, London, Dubai, Addis Ababa, Nairobi. Finally, Kigali, Rwanda. Once on solid ground, the path takes a more onerous turn. Hours twisting through forgotten roads where four wheel drives -and the pit of guts- are put to the ultimate test. Through scattered villages perched atop sheer mountain ridges, past children scampering alongside vehicles, to places where cows become fussy roadblocks and women shaded under colorful umbrellas listlessly balance the fruits of a days labor on their heads as they gossip their way back home. Along the drive, one easily slips into the rhythm of ‘Origin,' as the industry calls it, bumping and swaying to the pulse of a potholed road, falling into the cadence of long delayed conversations and a simpler understanding of time, which follows the face of the sun, not a clock. Ascending deeper into the mountains, ears begin to play tricks, popping with each metered kilometer upwards. At last, the vehicle grinds to a halt. A trail of dust, dancing behind the Land Cruiser like a golden brown shadow for kilometers whips by. Doors open. Brown leather cowboy boots, Converse, Nikes, and flip-flops hit the soft earth. You’ve arrived at 'Origin'. Nestled deep in a hillside, Nyabumera Coffee Washing station is where a hundreds of coffee farmers come each day to drop off sacks of lush red hand-picked coffee cherries. The hills of Western Rwanda, scenically lining the crystalline blue waters of Lake Kivu, are increasingly becoming known for their coffee, and Rwanda as an “Origin” destination for specialty coffee is booming. Today, nearly 27% of Rwandan coffee exported is marked as specialty – up from zero in 2000. Foreign exchange earnings on specialty coffee in Rwanda have risen from $0 in 2001 to $27M in 2012. Total earnings from Rwanda’s coffee industry have tripled from $20Mto $75M in 10 years. “Coffee is one of the most complex beverages out there”, Sarah Kluth, a buyer from US-based specialty roaster Intelligentsia once told me. “There are about 900 different compounds in a cup of coffee that affect how we perceive it.” Like grapes and wine, meticulous attention needs to be paid during the entire process – from cherry to roasting – to produce specialty quality. Although specialty coffee makes up 3% of the global market, it commands an additional 15-25% premium on top of market prices. For a tiny, landlocked and resource-poor country like Rwanda and its 400,000 coffee farmers, these premiums have made a big difference. Where Rwanda has been unable to produce quantity, it’s turned its focus towards quality, and a growth in coffee cooperatives is helping put money in the hands of farmers who need it.

Less than a decade ago, Ituri was dubbed the "Bloodiest Corner of the Congo." Yet in the years since, Ituri, a region tucked in the northeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has emerged from the ashes of civil war and brutral ethnic conflict, and its immense natural beauty and rich history lies waiting to be rediscovered. Home to the world's second largest rainforest, DRC's largest population of forest elephants, Mbuti and Efe pygmy tribes (two of Congo's oldest indigenous populations), the endemic, elusive and endangered Okapi "forest giraffe", as well as the UN's largest peacekeeping force in the DRC, the region is rapidily changing. As a fragile peace and stability has returned to much of Ituri, it brings with it looming threats for the reserve and the Mbuti pygmies- an increase in population, agricultural expansion, mining exploration, poaching, and other direct threats to the ecosystem that continue to challenge the natural wonders of the region, and the people who depend on them.

"The New Capitalists", an ongoing series from The (BoP) Project, seeks to document the narrative of "potential" behind the veil of poverty in emerging economies, through the lens of social innovations, enterprises, entrepreneurs, and market-based approaches to poverty. Please visit http://www.puravidaphotos.com/the-bop-project for the most recent updates on the project.

On the far side of Dar es Salaam’s railroad tracks, withering away in a locked room of a nondescript office building, rests some of the most important artifacts chronicling 50 years of Tanzania’s independence. Over 100,000 hours of unreleased reel-to-reel tapes holding decades of ethnographic recordings, afro-jazz dance music, and political speeches used to fuel support for Africa’s independence movements, line the dusty shelves. The recordings have languished in some cases for over 50 years, exposed to the heat, humidity, and natural elements. Yet with the help of a small group of committed individuals called The Tanzania Heritage Project, a cross-cultural and crowd-funded preservation effort, this could all change. The group has recently raised over $17,000 from 235 musicians, music lovers, preservationists and cultural enthusiasts in a campaign to digitize, restore, and preserve the entire Radio Tanzania archive collection with MP3 downloads, a ‘best of’ compilation CD, and

With Democratic Republic of the Congo's elections less than a week away, Mt. Nyamuragira's largest eruption of the century continues to attract hundreds of tourists to Virunga National Park in eastern Congo, paying at least $300 USD to spend a night next to the erupting volcano. Goma, DRC, 23/11/2011

April 22nd, 2010 was the last time Sahal H. Abdi, Kenya Red Cross Regional Manager for North Eastern Kenya, can recall a single drop of rain touching down on the scorched earth in Garissa, Kenya. That was over 16 months ago. Since then, the riverbeds have emptied, leaving nothing but dusty scars on the landscape. Carcasses of goats, cows, and camels unable to bear the harsh conditions, litter the side of the 370 km dirt highway between Garissa and Wajir, two of the largest towns in the region. For years, the Kenya Red Cross has been working to develop long-term solutions to help settle the pastoralist populations in the region, through farming programs, irrigation solutions, and training. Yet they are continually forced to face the short-term and immediate challenges brought by the severe weather conditions. Global climate change and increasingly unpredictable rains share only part of the responsibility for the current situation. This crisis is manmade. A failure of infrastructure, government planning, and disaster preparedness, coupled with nomadic pastoralist populations living increasingly unsustainable lifestyles, has left an entire region almost at the mercy of local and international aid agencies. They are being kept alive, year after year, by food aid, water trucking, and the work of countless charities in the region. It's unsustainable. But at the moment, there are few alternatives...

A bustling trade hub for centuries, Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa is richly seeped in the cultural, economic and political history of East Africa...

The Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara, California, 2009, began on May 5th, 2009, and destroyed close to 9,000 acres in the hills of Montecito and Santa Barbara. In 5 days, 80 homes were destroyed and 15 were damaged from the wildfire.

Shot over a weekend in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania, during the Sauti Za Busara Music Festival in February, 2011

Scenes from Cairo, June 30th-July 4th 2013. Millions of protesters took to the streets of Cairo calling for the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi after just one year in office. Four days later, on July 3rd, military took over in a coup and removed Morsi from power.