JOHANNESBURG
Commentators and business leaders in South Africa believe that the recent announcement of an end to the United Kingdom’s aid programme to South Africa may be the start of a new trend to cut back on aid to this country, and possibly to the rest of Africa.
At first glance, the poster appears to be a typical advertisement for an African safari: a large rhinoceros set against a rugged, open terrain. Then you take a closer look and realise something is amiss.
At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.
“If I don’t have my pills, I don’t know what will happen. I will probably get sick again, very sick. Maybe I will die this time,” says Xoliswa Mbana* as she readies her four young children for school in the impoverished informal settlement of Masiphumelele, in Cape Town, South Africa.
A young mother – who only wants to be identified as Karren – beamed as she nursed her newborn baby at the University of Witwatersrand’s Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, in Hillbrow, South Africa.
There is growing optimism that the countries of Southern Africa are within months of concluding negotiations with the European Union on a major new trade deal, after years of hesitant progress and frustration.
In the face of rampant rhino poaching in South Africa, some conservationists and private rhino farmers are lobbying for removal of the international ban on rhino horn trading and the creation of a legal market, to quell poaching.
If job creation is South Africa’s major social and economic priority, the country should be investing in people rather than in robots that populate the country’s highly-automated automotive manufacturing sector, according to local economists.
A trademark system which is used to protect Europe’s finest wines, cheeses and hams could soon brew up benefits for a humble tea from a remote region of South Africa.
Although leaders of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa group agreed to launch a new development funding institution, giving the club a major infrastructure boost, some here are sceptical about the potential impact of the new bank.
When the environment changes, smart creatures adapt. And, in the face of a changing climate and changing economics, smart people are backing green energy. In 2011 almost a third of new electricity came from renewable sources. But, just as the first mammals had to contend with a world of dinosaurs, the pioneers of green energy have to contend with a world based on an obsolete carbon-based energy system that refuses to upgrade.
Emerging market leaders want their Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa club to be taken seriously, and next month they are expected to make a decisive move towards setting up a development bank to give it real substance and credibility.
Lesedi Mogoatlhe has dedicated her life to empowering African youth by helping them to find their voices through radio journalism.
In his new book, “The Great African Society – A Plan for a Nation Gone Astray”, Hlumelo Biko, the son of late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, says that if nothing changes in South Africa, the country will become engulfed by corruption, crime, social decay, hopelessness and anger.
On Tuesday, Feb. 19, famous South African paralympian Oscar Pistorius was charged with premeditated murder, with prosecutors arguing the athlete had "put on his prosthetic legs, walked seven metres and fired four shots through a locked bathroom door,” killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day.
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