Biofortification May Hold Keys to “Hidden Hunger”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which works to end malnutrition among more than two billion people worldwide, is expressing strong support  for enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Time Still Not Right for Congolese Refugees to Return

Tuyisenge*, a former teacher from the Democratic Republic of Congo province of North Kivu, sat on a tree stump watching his fellow refugees go about their lives along the terraces of the hillside Kigeme Refugee Camp in southern Rwanda.

Climate Change Promises Tough Times for Asia and Africa – Report

Extreme heat, flooding and water and food shortages will rock South Asia and Africa by 2030 and render large sections of cities inhabitable, if the world continues to burn huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, the World Bank is warning.

Somalia’s ‘Cultural Shift’ Means Less-Severe Form of FGM

Seven-year-old Istar Mumin lies on a bed, motionless, in one of the rooms of her family home in Mogadishu’s Hamarweyne district. She has just gone through the horrifying ritual of “the cut,” which was carried out by a local Somali nurse.

Rebuilding Zimbabwe’s Health System

A newborn baby lets out a feeble cry as midwife Anna Mungara tends to a small wound on its head, at the provincial hospital in Masvingo, a town in southeast Zimbabwe.

Diamond Mining Could Push Angola’s Antelope to Extinction

Environmental campaigners are urging the Angolan government to halt plans to mine diamonds inside a national reserve that is home to the world’s last wild population of a rare antelope, the Giant Sable.

Freeing Trade Between South Africa and Nigeria

If a Free Trade Area were to be negotiated between Africa’s two largest economies, South Africa and Nigeria, it would have a powerful effect on trade across the sub-continent and would challenge other countries to respond.

Stealing Gas from the Poor to Power the Rich

In Kilwa District in southern Tanzania local community leader and fisherman Salim Riziki stands next to a set of turbines, newly imported from Dubai, talking about the gas finds on Songo Songo, an island 15 km off the mainland.

In Swaziland, Seeds Beat Drought

The overcast sky is a sign that it might rain, and Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, is not exactly happy.

Q&A: Of Riots and Rice in Africa

Thanks to food riots in several African cities fuelled by high rice prices between 2007 and 2008, sub-Saharan Africa is growing and eating more rice after governments were forced into ambitious production programmes.

Zimbabwean Farmers Adrift Amid Power Struggles

For the past five years, farmer Melusi Mhlanga has spent nearly 200 dollars each season for inputs, but the maize yields have not matched his investment. 

Kenyans Mobilise Against Taxing the Poor

On a side street in Nairobi’s bustling neighbourhood of Shauri Moyo, Faisal Ngila shouts to street vendors, motorbike taxi drivers and pedestrians. “Do you know taxes are increasing in Kenya?” he asks, handing out flyers urging Kenyans to say “no to Unga (maize flour) tax” by dialling a phone number that will register their signature on a petition.

OP-ED: In South Sudan, Ending Child Marriage Will Require a Comprehensive Approach

Akech B. loved to study and dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when she was 14, her uncle who was raising her forced her to leave school to marry a man Akech described as old and gray-haired. The man paid 75 cows as dowry for Akech. He was already married to another woman with whom he had several children. 

Putting Uganda’s Working Kids Back in School

Children around the world may complain about attending school and doing their homework, but not 14-year-old Raya*. For two years she was forced by her illiterate parents to spend every day, rain or shine, selling sugar cane from the family garden to customers on the streets of Entebbe, about 35 km outside the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

Zanzibar’s Encroaching Ocean Means Less Water

Khadija Komboani’s nearest well is filled with salt water thanks to the rising sea around Tanzania’s Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.

The Girl Who Couldn’t Herd Goats Now Saves Lives

When she was nine years old, Jane Meriwas, a Samburu from the Kipsing Plains in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, was considered of no use by her father. After all, nine of his goats had been eaten by hyenas under her watch.

Senegal’s ‘Religious Schools’ Places of Exploitation

In Dakar, urban commuters are familiar with kids as young as five years old begging on street corners at all hours of the day or the night, with torn, dirty clothes, collecting donations in an empty tin can.

Libya’s Deserts a Source of Worry for its Neighbours

All eyes have turned to Libya since Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou’s statement claiming that recent attacks in north Niger were perpetrated by Malian terrorists based in south Libya.

Kenya’s Flower Farms No Bed of Roses

Catherine Mumbi knows the difficulties of working in Kenya’s flower sector. She was fired as a casual worker at a flower farm after taking time off to recover from complications of the liver. But that was just the start of her problems.

Making a Business Out of Water Rationing

For 61-year-old Sarah Chikwanha from water-starved Chitungwiza, a town about 25 kilometres outside Harare, Zimbabwe, there is no choice. She must buy her water from illegal water traders, whose businesses have sprung up across the country.

Sierra Leone’s Child Trafficking to Blame for Street Kids

On a street corner in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, 12-year-old Kaita sits with a friend on a peeling steel railing watching the headlights of motorbikes cruising through the otherwise silent streets. It is after midnight, and motionless human forms lie curled up in doorways or stretched out on pavements nearby. For Kaita, these streets are home, and have been for almost six years.