Call for Increased Global Efforts to Ease Africa’s Climate-Induced Water Crisis

When years ago warnings were sounded that future wars would be fought not over oil but water, the predictions were dismissed as alarmist.

Storybook Apps Turn African Learners Into Writers

Suwaiba Hassan published an engrossing story. She used digital apps that are giving literacy a boost.

From Zero Yield to Bumper Harvest

In the past, the people of Sande Village in Chikwawa district, Malawi, would go to bed with empty stomachs even when the rest of the country harvested bumper yields.

Long-haul SADC Action Needed to Counter Mozambican Insurgency and Humanitarian Crisis

Ongoing insecurity and an unfolding humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique need a strategically planned response to deal decisively with the insurgency that has plagued the area since October 2017.

No Perfect Solution: Africa’s Smallholder Farmers Must Use Both Traditional and New Practices

As an agricultural and environmental scientist, I’ve worked for decades exploring the practical challenges that smallholder farmers encounter in East Africa. These include controlling weeds that can choke their crops and looking for new ways to deal with pests or diseases that threaten their harvests.

Is it Time to Bar Coup Leaders from the UN?

A rash of military coups in Africa has resurrected a long dormant question: should leaders who take power through armed insurrections be barred from addressing the United Nations—an institution which swears by, and promotes, multi-party democracy?

‘End Leprosy Discrimination Now, For the Sake of Our Children’

Seidu Ishaiku lives in the hope that his children will succeed. He and his family live with about 300 other residents in the Alheri leprosy colony outside Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory Abuja.

The Dilemma of Zimbabwe’s Food Security Efforts

On January 10, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) arrested three men found with fertilizer worth about 130,000 US dollars.

Road to COP27: Why Africa cannot be Complacent on Energy, Climate Change

A year ago, we welcomed 2021 with a sense of cautious optimism when the newly developed vaccines promised a shift in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus turned towards building back better and doing things differently as many countries started to rethink and rebuild their shattered economies.

Mali must not Be a New Site for Clashes Between Global Powers

Last week, I was delighted to speak to the United Nations Security Council. In the ten years that my country has been experiencing conflict, violence, and instability, dozens of conferences and other international summits have been held without ever really making room for those who are mobilized on a daily basis for more social justice, the defense of human rights and achieving Malian peace.

Key Pillars Mostly in Place to Speed up Africa’s Free Trade in 2022

The official start of free trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in January 2021 moved a major continental aspiration closer to reality.

Adolescents Left Behind Global AIDS Response – Experts

The ominous warning came in 2019 through an anonymous message on her mobile phone to stay away from a man she met on social media.

Somalia on the Path to Recovery, but Real Challenges Remain

I arrived in Somalia in September 2019, two decades after having worked here previously. I knew that I was taking up a challenging assignment, but I was also looking forward to seeing Somalia’s progress.

Kenyan Domestic Workers’ Doomed Voyages to the Gulf

Distress calls from vulnerable Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia experiencing mistreatment and torture at the hands of their employers went from 88 in 2019/2020 to 1,025 just one year later.

Clean Water, Decent Toilets, Hygiene Challenge for Southern African Community

The toilets in the maternity wing of Namatapa Health Centre in the populous Bangwe Township in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city, fell into disrepair a few years ago. So, pregnant women who come to deliver their babies and their guardians use two pit latrines.

How Place of Birth Shapes Chances of Going to University

Many newly independent African countries in the 1960s inherited regional and ethnic inequalities in formal educational attainment. These new states bound together sub-national regions of diverse ethnic and religious communities. The regions differed in their exposure to missionary activity – the main vector in the spread of formal western education in the colonial era.

Underfunded and Deadly Tuberculosis Needs its Own Bill Gates

Global efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) are futile without dedicated investment in research into the debilitating disease that is killing 4000 people a day, Stop TB Partnership warns.

Free at Last: Trafficked Woman’s Story a Warning to Other Vulnerable Job Seekers

When Kamikazi * from Gisagara, a district in Southern Rwanda, was forced to quit her job due to COVID-19 last year, she desperately sought other employment.

Truth as War Causality? The Case of Ethiopia

A brutal drama is unfolding in Ethiopia and it is difficult to find straightforward accounts of what is happening there. However, this does not prevent people from taking a unilateral stand for either of the factions involved in the disaster.

Ecstasy as Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Secure European Pineapple Market

In her wildest dreams, smallholder farmer Sarudzai Sithole never imagined that her pineapples could someday stock the produce section of Europe’s finest supermarkets.

CORRECTED VERSION: Vaccine Famine & its Impact on African Economies

We are about to start a third year of living with COVID-19. The world’s humanity and solidarity are now at a further test – and yet implications of the absence of solidarity keep us all in the boat of mutations, lockdowns, quarantines and delayed SDGs – denied prosperity for all. 2021 has unearthed a new expression of global inequity: “vaccine nationalism” – itself competing with high with socioeconomic downturns, jobless growth, the climate crisis, and rising poverty.