Collaring the Leopard

A first-of-its-kind satellite tracking project to monitor leopards may help the Indian government formulate a more effective wildlife policy, and prevent conflict between humans and wild animals.

Malawi Missing Its Local Government

An hour and fifteen minutes each day: Melina Kalunga has plenty of time to measure how long it takes to resolve a legal battle over Malawi's Electoral Commission.

KENYA: No Easy Path for Disabled Women with Political Dreams

"People living with disability face all sorts of discrimination. We are discriminated against at job interviews in schools. Everyday is a battle to remain positive in the face of a world that is too bent on dismissing those among us that do not meet the standard of what is normal", explains Mishi Juma, a disabled community leader from the Coast region.

Cassava Combating Rural Hunger in Zambia

In Zambia, a silver lining has emerged for widespread rural hunger and poverty, thanks to homegrown agricultural research. Local scientists have successfully developed four new, early-maturing and high- yielding cassava cultivars in an ambitious research project conducted in the cassava-rich Luapula Province, under the on-going Root and Tuber Improvement Programme (RTIP).

HUMAN RIGHTS: Mauritian Sex Workers Demand Rights

"Sex workers rights are human rights", close to a hundred people shouted during a recent march in Rose-Hill, a major town in Mauritius. Their aim was to sensitise the population, particularly the parliamentarians, to the state of sex workers on the island.

KENYA: Mobile Phones to the Rescue for Pregnant Women

Pumwani Maternity Hospital, in the impoverished Nairobi neighbourhood of Eastlands, is the site of a trial project using mobile phones to help HIV-positive mothers avoid passing the virus on to their children.

WATER: Miracle Man Eases Village’s Water Woes

Hermes Chimombo, a welder in his 50s, is a revered man in the impoverished Naotcha Township. Armed with rudimentary tools and a passion to ease people’s suffering, he has tapped a spring in the mountain above the slum to provide water for its 25,000 residents.

EDUCATION: Meet TESSA, Ugandan Teachers’ Best Friend

Beatrice Namuzibira’s class of 90 pupils is not even considered a large one, compared to classes in other schools. Universal primary education has filled classrooms beyond capacity across Uganda, putting a strain on teachers.

/UPDATE*/: Bypass Under Way At Mozambique Smelter

Aluminium giant BHP Billiton’s Mozal smelter has begun bypassing its fume treatment centres, emitting potentially dangerous fumes into the air without treating them first - despite a pending court case on the matter.

MIDEAST: The People Speak

The focus on people's movements in Palestine continues to gain momentum with growing non-violent demonstrations in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, and with a Palestine-wide call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

SOUTH AFRICA: Neglected Johannesburg Neighbourhood Rises Again

A month after property developer Alex Montwedi bought a 42-unit high-rise apartment building in Johannesburg’s Berea neighbourhood, he found himself chased out of the building by his own tenants.

SOUTH AFRICA: Draft Bill Is ‘A Charter for Rogues’

A coalition of civil society groups marched to South Africa's Parliament on Oct. 27 to protest against the draft version of a new Protection of Information Bill. "This bill is a betrayal of all the democratic principles we fought for," anti-apartheid stalwart Kader Asmal told the crowd.

DR CONGO: ‘An Opportunity to Say Never Again’

Civil society in the DRC's eastern province of South Kivu is determined that meaningful action will follow from the publication of the U.N.'s Mapping Project, a report detailing some of the most serious human rights violations by state and non-state actors in the DRC between 1993 and 2003.

Proposed Pension Bill Outrages Malawi Workers

A draft pension bill has created great concern among workers in Malawi, with some hurriedly seeking early retirement before it will be passed. The bone of contention is a section pegging the retirement age for women at 55 and men at 60.

KENYA: Room to Improve on Governance

Kimani Wanyama*, a homosexual man living in Nairobi, knows what human rights violations are all about. His attempts over three years to receive treatment for reoccurring rectal gonorrhoea had resulted in verbal abuse and intense stigmatisation from the very people who were meant to help him.

MALAWI: Village Chief Leads Fight For Maternal Health

In Ntcheu, a rural district in central Malawi, villagers have taken the fight against the country's high maternal mortality rate into their own hands. They have almost eradicated maternal deaths in the area by urging pregnant women to give birth in hospitals, under medical supervision.

MOZAMBIQUE: BHP Billiton Plans Six Month Bypass of Smelter Smokestack Scrubbers

Civil society groups are challenging a six-month authorisation granted aluminium giant BHP Billiton to emit potentially dangerous fumes from its Mozal smelter into the air without treating them first.

MALAWI: Women Candidates Hard Hit by Election Postponement

News that Malawi’s November local government elections are to be postponed yet again has hit female candidates hard – and mostly in their pockets. And it could mean that the country will have less female candidates to vote for when they finally go to the polls.

ZAMBIA: Election Violence Could Mean Fewer Women Participants

There are growing fears that increasing numbers of women candidates and voters may not participate in the 2011 general elections because of an upsurge in election-related violence.

MALAWI: Innovative Campaigning by Women Candidates

You will find Beauty Kasonda on her campaign trail at funerals, weddings, church functions or just about any local gathering in her community. Kasonda does not have the sort of funding her male counterparts have for campaigning in the country’s November 2010 elections but she is not letting that stop her.

MADAGASCAR: Women Form Own Political Parties for Fair Representation

Brigitte Rasamoelina and Yvette Sylla are women with two different approaches to politics in Madagascar. One formed a political party, while the other decided to legalise her organisation as an association. But both women are considering running in Madagascar's November elections.