Ask any woman miner in the Katoro goldfield in Tanzania’s northern Geita region, and she will tell you that she touches toxic mercury with her bare hands when extracting gold from crushed ore.
In the hard-to-reach rural community of West Pokot, Kenya, 156 young women crossed a threshold that once seemed out of reach. Their
graduation from HER Lab, a workforce skills programme for marginalized rural young women, was more than a ceremony. It demonstrated the power of targeted investment, trusted local partnerships and women’s economic empowerment.
Within the framework of the Expert Council on Africa at Russia's State Duma, the lower chamber of parliamentarians, during its annual round-table conference, held in late May 2026, focused concretely on food security in Africa.
Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Niue, Senegal, Solomon Islands, Sudan, and Togo will receive over USD 67 million in new funding to help strengthen resilience.
Since May 16, there has been a significant increase in the number of laboratory-confirmed and suspected Ebola cases reported across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), primarily in Ituri Province, with additional unrelated cases identified in Kampala, Uganda. Although the outbreak has remained largely confined to that region, it has been heavily linked to areas affected by insecurity, civilian displacement, and mining-related migration, raising concerns among global health experts that the outbreak could spread without effective monitoring and response efforts.
It is often said that the quality of seed determines the quality of the produce and, consequently, the sustainability of the entire agricultural value chain, influencing everything from crop yields to nutritional value.
As 52-year-old Alice Onyango walks through her farm in Siaya county, Kenya, you can tell she is proud of her trees, as some tower over her, providing her with shade, while others seem ready to provide her with fruit for the market.
The theme of Africa Day 2026, “63 years of unity, integration and development," offers a stark reminder of the gap that often exists between rhetoric and reality. While commendable regional legal frameworks have advanced legal protections for millions of women and girls, injustice remains written into the fabric of national family laws in many African countries, entrenching gender inequality in the home.
The ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to put immense stress and risk on the global economy.
For generations, communities in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) have viewed girls through the lens of marriage, with some being married at 11 in exchange for livestock or soon after secondary school, denying them opportunity for further education and skills training.
It is very appropriate that this Africa Forward Summit is being held in Kenya. Two weeks ago, a Kenyan marathon runner, Sabastian Sawe, did what had been considered impossible: by running a marathon in under two hours! What we have set ourselves here is also a marathon—and we must show the same resilience and perseverance that Mr. Sawe did.
Agriculture sustains millions of people in Zimbabwe, serving as a vital source of both food and income. But climate-related pressures affecting land, crops, rainfall patterns, and increasing pest outbreaks are threatening smallholder farmers’ harvests, leaving them food insecure.
The word heard most often at a two-day parliamentary forum in Cairo last week was not "commitment"; it was “follow-up.” And the difference mattered.
In 2021, Gadeja Shehu and about a hundred farmers in Garbadu village, Zamfara State in northwestern Nigeria, were invited by officials of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall to plant trees across a large stretch of land in their community.
When war erupted in the Middle East in late February, the most visible consequences were playing out in the Persian Gulf, with smoke rising from Dubai's Jebel Ali port and shipping traffic across one of the world's most critical maritime routes grinding to a near halt.
As the global target to eliminate hunger by 2030 is fast slipping out of reach, investing in how the world feeds itself is the only way to ensure progress.
For decades, pesticides have been a quiet pillar of Malawi’s agriculture, guarding crops against pests, improving yields, and sustaining millions of livelihoods. But beneath this success story lay a troubling reality: weak regulation, unsafe handling practices, and growing threats to human health and the environment.
If you woke up with severe fever, would you stay home from work? What if the choice meant losing a week’s wages, or deciding if you could afford the trip to a doctor at all?
Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, warming faster than the global average and facing disproportionate climate impacts, despite contributing the least to global greenhouse gas emissions.
African countries are exploring ways to tax high-earning individuals as the continent seeks to expand its revenue collection amid what experts say is a growing gulf between rich and poor.