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Wednesday, May 16, 2012   20:35 GMT    
Environment

By SANTA, Cameroon
Cameroonian Farmer Won’t Let Low Rainfall Defeat Him - Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.
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By CAPE TOWN, South Africa
South Africa’s Smallholders Lose Battle for Seed Security - In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the "pillar of my family," says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
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By BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe
More Toilets in Zimbabwe, Better Livelihoods - Government and sanitation experts say Zimbabwe needs to increase efforts to promote good hygiene and invest in toilets and clean water provision, as the country grapples with a typhoid outbreak.
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By TAKORADI-SEKONDI, Ghana
Ghanaian Fisherfolk Blasting Their Way to Finding Fish - Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores.
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/CORRECTED REPEAT**/
By LAMBAYAMA, Sierra Leone
Listening to the Hum of Tilling Machinery in the Sierra Leone Countryside - In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.
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By BEYIN, Ghana
Western Ghana’s Fisherfolk Starve Amid Algae Infestation - Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.
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By BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe
Steady Water Supply for Zimbabwean City Still a Pipe Dream - Residents of Zimbabwe's water-scarce city, Bulawayo, are concerned about the government’s slow response to finding a permanent source of water to cover their needs.
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By CAPE TOWN, South Africa
The Business of South Africa’s Garbage - Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products.
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By PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s Mopani Worms Disappearing from Rural Diets - Job Mthombeni loves traditional food. One of his favourite culinary delights is Mopani worms, referred to locally as amacimbi, which means caterpillar in Ndebele. At an early age he understood the nutritional value of the worm, which is found in his rural hometown of Plumtree, in southwestern Zimbabwe.
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By PORT-LOUIS
As the Taps Run Dry in Mauritius - Rani Murthy, a public officer who lives in Plaines Wilhems, central Mauritius, wakes at three every morning to wait for the water tanker from the Central Water Authority so that she can collect water for cooking and household chores.
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By CASABLANCA
‘Green Morocco Plan’ Fails to Confront Climate Change - An unprecedented cold spell that struck Morocco in February and continues to linger well into March has raised serious questions about the country's national agricultural development programme, which will fail to achieve its desired results if climate change continues to be mismanaged.
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By BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe
As the Dust Settles on the Limpopo River - Chapita Ramovha remembers the days when the Limpopo River lapped at the foot of his village in south Zimbabwe. He says that back then residents of Makakavhule village had to build high walls to protect their homes from flooding. "The Limpopo River was a marvel to watch, a beauty of nature, a source of food and income for us who lived along it," the subsistence farmer recalls.
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ZIMBABWE
By PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe
Farmers Tackle Water Problems Fuelled by Climate Change - Beauty Moyo’s desire for access to water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.
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SOUTH AFRICA
By CAPE TOWN, South Africa
Rural School Running on Methane Bio-Gas - Tucked against the rolling hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, a small rural school has been turning its kitchen scraps, and agricultural and human waste into methane gas for cooking, and nutrient-rich fertiliser, and is even recycling its water.
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CENTRAL AFRICA
By KIKWIT, DR Congo
Tentative Steps Towards Adaptation - Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.
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