Up until 2019, nurses in three health facilities located in the semi-arid south-eastern Kenya region of Makueni County struggled to bring critical health services closer to a hard-to-reach population scattered across three remote, far-flung villages.
Low literacy levels, a high prevalence of outlawed Female Genital Mutilation, early marriages, forced marriages, low contraceptive usage, multiple births, as well as high maternal, infant and child deaths, define the life of a woman in Kenya’s vast North Eastern region.
From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya and Somalia, the most severe drought in the last 40 years is unfolding. It is simply too hot to go to school on an empty stomach, and close to 3 million children are out of school, with an additional 4 million at risk of dropping out entirely across the Horn of Africa.
As an unparalleled, unprecedented global education crisis unfolds, an estimated 222 million crisis-impacted children are desperate to learn. As barriers to accessing education increase, darkness beckons, and education is their last hope.
As the effects of climate change escalate and natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts become more frequent and severe, threatening lives and livelihoods, humanity is losing the climate battle.
It is a race against time to form a new global partnership to secure a better future for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations by 2030 in line with the UN’s SDGs. All 46 countries classified as Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are pressed for time in a bid to deliver critical development goals.
The world is in the throng of a monumental, damaging, and unprecedented global education crisis. Wars, protracted conflict, extreme climate changes, hunger, COVID-19, and economic uncertainties are pushing children out of the education system.
The new year brought bad news for press freedom on the African continent with the brutal murder of one journalist and the suspicious death of another.
In the four years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of leprosy or Hansen’s disease, seemed to be losing steam. Between 2016 and early 2020, new case numbers remained more or less constant.
Concerns are rife that while Africa is growing more crops, these are not for food and that on the current trajectory, present food import costs into Africa, now estimated at 55 billion US dollars a year, could double by 2030.
A silent catastrophe is unfolding in Ethiopia on the backdrop of years of inter-communal conflict and the most prolonged and severe drought in recent years. High inflation and food insecurity in the drought-ravaged country is among the worst in the world.
Damaris Anyango* was recently discharged from Kenyatta National Hospital, battling the twin challenge of cervical cancer and HIV. She is 50 years old and was diagnosed with HIV nearly ten years ago.
The Atlantic bluefin tuna is among the largest, fastest, and most beautifully colored of all the world’s fish species. They can measure more than 10 feet in length, weigh over 700 kilograms, and can live longer than 30 years. With their metallic blue coloring on top and shimmering silver-white on the bottom, the giant bony fish is a sight to behold.
Up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction – many within decades – this includes nearly one-third of reef-forming corals, shark relatives, and marine mammals. Half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests, and 85% of wetlands that were present at the beginning of the 18
th century had been lost by the year 2000, with the loss of wetlands considered to be happening three times faster, in percentage terms, than forest loss.
The Dongria Kondhs say they are the descendants of Niramraja, a mythical god-king who is believed to have created the Niyamgiri range of hills in Odisha, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal.
Upheaval on the global stage, the war in Ukraine, conflict in the Horn of Africa, severe climatic shocks, high international inflation, increasing global commodity prices, high prices of agricultural inputs and low intra-continental trade are fuelling food insecurity across Africa.
Deep-rooted discrimination against persons affected by leprosy or Hansen’s disease has marginalized individuals and communities. As social pariahs, opportunities to pursue their dreams are limited because, at best, they live at the periphery of society and, more often than not, are ostracized.
Home to a variety of iconic and rare animal and plant species, freshwater lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the expansive Indian Ocean coastline, Kenya’s place as a biodiversity hotspot has never been in doubt.
IPBES’ assessment report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, released in July 2022, painted a troubling picture of the ongoing global biodiversity crisis that could paralyse economies and endanger food security and livelihoods.
The sight of children begging for water from motorists along the Garissa highway in the northeastern part of Kenya signals that all is not well. Unable to go to school on an empty stomach, drought-affected children wait for good Samaritans along the road, begging for water and food.