POLITICS-NAMIBIA: ‘Parties Totally Don’t Care About Women’s Rights’

Gender activists foresee a drop in female parliamentarians after Namibia’s general and presidential elections on November 27 and 28. It’s a trend that jeopardises the region’s goal of 50 percent female representation in politics by 2015.

POLITICS-NAMIBIA: The Struggle Does So Not Continue

They are called the "born frees", the children of Namibia’s Independence, and they will vote for the first time this month. Struggle credentials mean zip to them, and they have a serious beef with politicians.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Jockeying for Position in Copenhagen

The global climate change caravan has arrived in Barcelona for a last round of talks before the Copenhagen summit. What's at stake for Africa?

TRADE-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Effort Afoot to Save Rickety Customs Union

Southern African countries have buried the hatchet in an effort to preserve the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), one of the few building blocks of regional integration. Its chiefs vehemently denied reports that Pretoria wants to pull out of the customs union.

AFRICA: Plant Trees To Boost Agricultural Output

The outlook for food security in East Africa is looking bleak this year following poor rains, underscoring the urgency of raising farm productivity while adapting to a changing climate in Africa. Agroforestry experts have put forward planting trees as a possible solution.

ENVIRONMENT: For Trees, Against Monoculture

Growing demand for products like timber and biofuels is putting pressure on shrinking rainforests.

DEVELOPMENT: Getting REDDy for Copenhagen

"African farmers will play a major part in the solution of climate change mitigation," predicts Dennis Garrity, head of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

WATER-NAMIBIA: For What Does It Profit a Man…

"Our profit so far is 5,000 Namibian dollars, divided by twenty people," reports Anna Nauses. Silence descends on the office of the Prosopis Project in Okombahe as all do the math. Sixteen months of hard labour felling water-thirsty trees along the Omaruru River has yielded just 30 U.S. dollars per person.

NAMIBIA: Garden Project Grants Modest Independence

Life in Omaruru? Put it this way: even the river that gives the town its name doesn’t always make it down. In this semi-desert part of Namibia, existence is a daily battle against poverty. A women’s gardening project is trying to change this.

Q&A: Regional Trade Integration Is About Give and Take

It’s "do or die" for the world’s oldest customs union. Disagreement over the development consequences of the EU’s proposed economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with African states has threatened to split the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) a year before its centenary in 2010.

WATER-NAMIBIA: Running A Dry River

The Omaruru River basin is one of the first in Namibia to establish a basin management committee. Its members have a difficult balancing act to perform with a water resource that’s already being utilised to its maximum.

RIGHTS-NAMIBIA: Updating Child Protection

A mammoth draft bill on child care and protection is nearing completion in Namibia. A gaggle of experts has made recommendations; a muster of officials will decide what goes in and what stays out. And all worry what the politicians will say.

TRADE: Namibia Caught in Stand-Off Between South Africa and EU

Access to the European markets is not a goal Namibia wants to accomplish at all costs. Neither is the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) holy. What counts in the country’s realpolitik approach is a close relationship with its neighbours, especially regional economic powerhouse South Africa but also oil-rich Angola.

HEALTH: Namibia Makes Strides in Paediatric HIV

While paediatric HIV remains a growing concern throughout Southern Africa, Namibian doctors have managed to put high numbers of babies on the life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment with the help of an early infant diagnosis (EID) programme based on dry blood sampling.

RIGHTS-NAMIBIA: New Dangers, New Efforts to Protect Children

New channels like sms messages and social-networking application Facebook are just some of the tools government and civil rights groups will be using to encourage input on the Child Care and Protection Bill will soon be tabled in Namibia's parliament.

RIGHTS-NAMIBIA: 'Cut, Cut Again and Now Tie Tightly'

Anna Shikongo* wanted many more children, but five-month old Johannes, perched on her lap, will forever be her lastborn. She was sterilised by doctors at a government hospital. Now she is ready to take the government to court.

ZIMBABWE: 'Let Us Farm, It's Our Job'

A regional tribunal in Namibia has referred a controversial Zimbabwean land case to the next Southern African Development Community Summit of Heads of State, rejecting a last-minute application for postponement by Zimbabwe on Jun. 5.

TRADE: EPA Signing Threatens Southern African Customs Union

Fears that accession to an economic partnership agreement (EPA) in Southern Africa will destroy regional integration seem to be coming true after Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (BLS) ignored a key provision of the Southern African Customs Union when they initialled their trade deal with the European Union last week.

TRADE: ‘‘You Can’t Smoke Cigars in Brussels and Bulldoze Us’’

Namibia will sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) when the outstanding contentious issues have been resolved through new wording in the texts of the interim EPA, says the country’s trade and industry minister Hage Geingob.

TRADE: Southern Africa Still Kicking Against Controversial EPA

High-level talks at a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) meeting in Gaborone last week failed to produce an agreement on the signing of the interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union.

ECONOMY: China in Africa – South-South Exploitation?

It is a Sunday around five o’ clock in the afternoon when carpenter Thomas Haimbodi knocks off work. He is waiting for the lorry that will take him and his colleagues from the building site – the office building for the new ministry of lands and resettlement in Windhoek – to Katutura, the township on the outskirts of the Namibian capital.