Kirinyaga University may have just breathed new life into Kenya’s ailing cotton industry as varsity dons develop a portable cotton ginnery.
For an industry that has been struggling to survive, this news came as a relief to cotton farmers, whose lives the invention is expected to change, and to a government pushing for job creation and self-reliance through manufacturing.
The conflict in Sudan is one of the worst in the world today, and millions of children and adolescents bear the brunt within and across the border from Sudan.
Alice went for eight weeks without Portuguese language classes after starting her first year of high school on Feb. 5 in this Brazilian city. Her chemistry teacher taught only two classes and disappeared. But the worst part is the classroom without air conditioning in the heat of more than 35 degrees Celsius some days during the southern hemisphere summer.
There is a fork in the road before us. We have to choose who we are as human beings and as a human family. Do we break humanity or do we make it?
Wael Al-Hassan was returning from work in the Syrian city of Harim when he heard the sound of a baby crying.
He was returning from work on December 10, 2023. He stopped momentarily, turned on his mobile phone flashlight to investigate, and spotted a baby girl, around one month old, wrapped in a white blanket, lying by the roadside.
Sri Lankan lawmaker Hector Appuhamy, in conversation with IPS ahead of a two-day conference aimed at educating and involving university students in mental health issues, said parliamentarians were concerned about gaps in the programmes and financing for youth mental health. They were looking beyond the country's health budget for support in ensuring that youth were able to access mental health facilities in a supportive environment.
Professor Mohammed Belhocine is an Algerian national. Former Head of the Department of Internal Medicine, he held various positions in Algeria, at the Faculty of Medicine and the Ministry of Health, before joining the international civil service in 1997. Former Director of the Division of Non-Communicable Diseases at the WHO Regional Office for Africa (in Harare, then in Brazzaville), he was also WHO Representative in Nigeria and Tanzania. He ended his career as UN System Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Tunisia from 2009 to 2013. From June 2015 to February 2016, at the request of the WHO Regional Director, he returned to duty as WHO Representative in Guinea, playing an active role in providing technical support and expertise to the country's response to the Ebola epidemic. In October 2021, supported by his country, he was elected to the position of Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation within the African Union. Professor Belhocine is the father of three children and has six grandchildren.
Picture yourself as an early-career ocean researcher. You have the opportunity to be at sea in addition to learning on campus. Through cutting-edge technology and immersive facilities, you experience the most realistic ocean exploration scenarios, including braving extreme cold and harsh environments. That’s the experience at the Launch, a 'living lab' at the Marine Institute of Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, located on the east coast of Canada. It’s an experience meant to prepare you for the real-world complexities of the type of ocean research needed to tackle urgent global issues like climate change.
Honeybees quickly react with a sharp and loud buzz sound as beekeeper Tanyaradzwa Kanangira opens one of the wooden horizontal Kenyan top bar hives near a stream in a thick forest in Chimanimani, 412 kilometres from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
The 26-year-old puffs some smoke, a safety measure, as he holds and inspects a honeycomb built from hexagons by the honey bees.
Education Cannot Wait and the government of Ukraine
launch new multi-year program to support education for children impacted by the conflict in Ukraine.
Nigeria is home to 15 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. More than 7.6 million girls are not in school, and only nine percent of the poorest girls in the country are in secondary school. The Boko Haram insurgency and other armed groups fuel the out-of-school crisis in northeast Nigeria, disrupting the education of nearly two million school-age children.
Dr Ismahane Elouafi has her work cut out. As the new executive managing director of CGIAR, a global network of agricultural research centers, her mandate, simply put, is to tackle the world’s most severe hunger crisis in modern history.
And it is in Africa that the former Chief Scientist of FAO with a PhD in durum wheat genetics faces her greatest challenges, both in terms of developing science-based innovations and technologies and lobbying governments to adopt responsible policies.
As we lead into the
Africa Year of Education, and under the leadership of Africa, world leaders have an opportunity to solidify commitments to ‘Educate an Africa Fit for the 21st Century’. That means to empower Africa to deliver on the goals outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Paris Agreement and Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to invest in an end to inequity through the power of quality education and lifelong learning.
The Year of the Dragon is upon us.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for this Lunar New Year, “The dragon symbolizes energy, wisdom, protection and good luck. We need these qualities to rise to today’s global challenges.”
Significant advances have been made in Africa towards ending female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Asia, where FGM/C occurs in
at least ten countries, but governments across the region are failing to take effective action. Women’s rights organizations are calling for states to introduce much-needed laws to criminalize FGM, provide national data on the extent and nature of the practice, and adequately fund efforts to tackle this regionally neglected problem.
Counsel Hope
Yasmine Sherif is the Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW). A lawyer specialized in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law (LL.M), she has over 30 years of experience with the United Nations and international NGOs.
Decades of civil wars and a lack of long-term public education policies, among other problems, have made higher education in Central America precarious and costly in general.
In this region, made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, home to some 50 million inhabitants, the quality of education offered by public and private universities is poor, while costs are high even for those who can afford them.
Education is the bedrock of peace, the foundation of strong societies, and the building block for a better world. This year, as we celebrate the
Sixth International Day of Education under the theme of ‘learning for a lasting peace’, we call on world leaders to end wars and armed conflicts and focus on our common humanity to embrace the vast potential learning offers in uniting our world.
A woman medical graduate from the Hindu community is making waves, as she is the first minority woman to contest the Pakistan Parliamentary election for a general seat, and she does so in the face of deep-rooted religious traditions and wealthy political opponents.
Dr Saveera Parkash, a nominee of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) for the February 8 polls, is sure of her victory despite her religion.
When students from poor families in developing countries are offered places at prestigious universities, they are often faced with a tough choice. One option is to accept the offer and create more debt, likely through borrowing from a loan shark, to pay for tuition fees. Another option is to forgo this opportunity, which could be the first in family generations, and start working as low-wage workers.
In the past, Salma Begum, 40, lost her crops every year due to natural disasters. She lives with her five-member family in Ashabaria village under Rangabali upazila, a remote coastal island in Patuakhali district.
“We did not have enough livelihood options in the coastal area where we live. Cyclones, coastal floods, and tidal surges have been having adverse impacts on agriculture, making it difficult for my wage-laborer husband to find work regularly,” she said.