Countdown to 2015

“A Catastrophic Year” as Hunger Crisis Looms over Sahel

Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south – have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.

GHANA: Need to Recognise Mental Illness as a Health Concern

The incessant buzzing of mosquitoes was the first sign that there was something wrong. While Bernard Akumiah could clearly hear the small insects, there were none within his vicinity.

EU Pledges Strong Support for Earth Summit

European leaders have mapped out a bold agenda ahead of the Rio summit, vowing to transform development aid, help provide renewable electricity to the world’s neediest people, and bulk up the United Nations environment body.

A Somali youngster walks past a ruined building in Hodon district in Mogadishu.  Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS.

SOMALIA: Rebuilding Among the Rubble

With vehicles and donkey carts packed with their belongings, Somalis are returning, four years after they fled, to their partially standing, bullet-scarred and mortar-shelled neighbourhoods in former Al-Shabaab controlled areas of Mogadishu.

SOMALIA: Taking Schools Back From Militants

Schools are beginning to re-open slowly in areas of capital Mogadishu that were until recently controlled by the militant Islamic group al-Shabaab. But an estimated 80 percent of students have not yet returned.

SIERRA LEONE: The Isolation of Epilepsy Sufferers

Elizabeth Zainab Kargbo was a successful young woman, eight months pregnant and working in Sierra Leone’s civil service, when she had her first seizure.



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