From Cocoa to Chocolate, Made With Love in Africa

A premium chocolate maker in São Tomé and Príncipe is on a drive to promote the taste for "made in Africa" chocolate, and tap into a $100 billion global indulgence associated with Valentine’s Day.

Q&A: Africa Must Innovate its Food Systems in Order to Beat Hunger and Poverty

Africa needs to invest in agriculture by putting more resources into innovative research and development that can boost food and nutritional security, according to leading scientist, Nteranya Sanginga.

Genuine Reform Culture Lacking in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe needs urgent economic and political reforms to transform its economy amidst a growing national crisis, researchers say in a new study that urges swift policy changes and a sound financial framework to attract investment.

Does Africa’s Food Future Really Lie with Young Farmers?

Africa will starve or survive on expensive food imports because it is not growing new farmers, research shows. And the challenge remains among researchers, policy makers, public and private sector actors to get African youth interested in agriculture on a continent where a growing number of people go to bed hungry every night.

Indigenous Knowledge, a Lesson for a Sustainable Food Future

Local knowledge systems rooted in traditional practices and culture passed down generations provide sustainable solutions to food and nutritional insecurity on the back of climate change, a conference heard this week.

Zimbabwe Food Crisis: Time to Act Is Now, Says UN Special Rapporteur

Global food systems are ripe for transformation if people are to be nourished and the planet sustainable, says Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur of the Right to Food of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Biofortified Food, a Business Boost for Smallholder Farmers

A start-up in Zimbabwe is producing high nutrition foods using biofortified crops in a bid to fight micronutrient deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) leads to night blindness, illness and death from childhood infections. In Zimbabwe, 36 percent of children under five years of age suffer from Vitamin A deficiency, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Care for Economic Development, Then Care for Food Nutrition, Food Researcher Tells Africa’s Politicians

More than 2 billion people in the world are suffering from malnutrition. This is the result of diets lacking essential micronutrients such as vitamins, iron and zinc, which are vital for the body to function, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Nutrition – the Best Investment for a Developing Africa

There is evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities, experts say. But current food systems in Africa are not addressing nutrition because of the combination of poor investment in the agriculture value chain, inadequate policies and lack of accountability in addressing malnutrition.

Africa’s Mineral Wealth May Just have to Stay in the Ground to Protect a Changing Climate

As a result of climate change, resource extraction industries in Africa will be impacted by asset stranding, researchers say.

Q&A: Holistic Land Management – Only a Movement can Prevent Desertification

Desertification is not cheap. It has social, cultural, environmental and of course economic costs to reverse what it destroys.

African Development Bank Plans for a Self-sufficient, Integrated and Industrialised Continent

Arama Sire Camara, a fruit and vegetable seller in the province of Kindia, some 135 km from the Guinean capital of Conakry, feels safer trading well into the night thanks to the Rural Electrification Project, financed by 21-million-dollar investment by the African Development Bank. “With lighting on the road at night and illuminating our goods, it means we are safer, especially with all the cars on the road. You can work for longer after nightfall, and so we can make more of our products,” she says.

Dumping Fossil Fuels to Drive Green Development

Disinvestments in fossil fuels amounting to 11 trillion dollars – eight times the global GDP – have been recorded in the last six months of this year, according to a new report.

Zimbabwe’s ex-President Robert Mugabe Leaves a Mixed Legacy

Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, who died this week, aged 95, leaves a mixed and divisive legacy.

Growing African Agriculture One Byte at a Time

Ella Mazani is a mobile phone farmer. “My mobile phone is part of my farming. It supports my farming and my family’s welfare through the services I get via the phone,” the smallholder maize farmer from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe quips. 

Blockchain Releases Farmers From the Collateral Trap

A Jamaican start-up has an innovative solution to help smallholder farmers—many of whom do not have the collateral demanded by financial institutions to access loans—build a track record of their production that is proving better than collateral.

World’s Best Teacher Prize and One Million Dollars Awarded to Kenyan Teacher from Impoverished Community

A maths and physical science teacher from an impoverished  school in Kenya’s Rift Valley, Peter Tabichi, has won the one million dollar Global Teacher Prize, becoming the first teacher from Africa to clinch the prize established to honour the profession.

How One Kenyan Teacher is Lifting His Students Out of Poverty With Science

Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Nakuru County, situated in a remote, semi-arid part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, could pass for an ordinary secondary school in any part of Africa. But ordinary it is not.

Developing Agriprenuers to Save Nigeria’s Youth from Crime

When Lawrence Afere told his parents he was going into farming rather than getting a job in Nigeria’s lucrative oil and gas sector, they swore he was bewitched.

Wake Up and Smell the Organic Coffee

In 1992, the idea of replanting her father’s ruined coffee farm seemed foolhardy at the time. But in retrospect it was the best business decision that Dorienne Rowan-Campbell, an international development consultant and broadcast journalist, could have made.