HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: Male Circumcision a Route to Gender Equality

Although at first glance male circumcision may not be the most obvious entrée to get people talking about gender equality, activists in the Western Cape in South Africa are attempting to do just that.

Water: A Victim of Climate Change

The Southern Africa Development Community wants water to be tabled as a standalone item on climate change negotiations – describing it as too important to leave on the periphery.

Observing Deforestation from Space

Global climate change can now be observed from space. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a new technology that can survey the world’s forests via satellites and provide a more accurate, global picture of common threats to the environment, such as deforestation, degradation or illegal logging.

CLIMATE CHANGE-AFRICA: Farming By Phone

Francis Mburu used to keep indigenous cattle in Entasopia village in the semi- arid Kajiado region, 160 kilometres southwest of Nairobi. However, increasing temperatures and frequent droughts in Kenya have made this difficult in recent years.

Sweden Runs Into South Sudanese Oilgate

Civil society leaders in South Sudan are closely watching a legal battle unfolding in Sweden, as prosecutors investigate an oil company accused of involvement in massive human rights abuses here.

DR Congo Polls Disrupted by Violence

Five people have been killed in two separate clashes on election day in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the country's interior minister has said.

MALAWI: Changing Climate Compounds Environmental Degradation

As Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu talk on the side of a dirt path in Makunje village, Malawi, a steady stream of bicycles loaded with charcoal passes by. The men stand at the halfway mark between Mwanza, a small city in the country’s southwest, and Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub.

KENYA: Like a Fish Belongs to Water, the Ogiek Belong to the Mau Forest

The resettlement of evictees from Kenya’s Mau Forest remains a humanitarian and environmental concern for the country as more than 25,000 people continue to live in camps around the forest.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Making a Hot Cup of Rooibos Tea Unaffordable

South Africa’s Rooibos tea has become a popular drink all around the globe. But prices of the herbal brew could shoot up within the next decade, as the Rooibos plant can only grow in one small region in the world – which is severely affected by climate change.

Aid Not Effectively Reaching Africa’s Poor

Kenyan tea and coffee farmers remain disgruntled about the minimal profits they make selling their cash crops, the country’s leading foreign currency earners, as the government receives millions in funding for training and subsidies that most of these farmers are yet to see materialise.

GHANA: Tropical Ulcer Persists Despite Affordable Solutions

For the past 10 years, Buruli ulcer has been eating Benjamin Essel’s leg. The skin above his ankle is totally gone, and a swollen, pulpy and reddish wound rises almost up to his knee and wraps around his calf. Even still, this is an improvement over recent years.

Drastic Child Poverty Might Destroy Lesotho’s Future

Flagging economic fortunes and a persistent AIDS pandemic have devastated Lesotho, leaving little hope it will ever be able to pull itself out of its bleak poverty trap. Three out of five of the tiny southern African kingdom’s children are living in dismal poverty. Every fourth child is orphaned.

NIGERIA: A Deadly Case of Mistaken Identity

The worst day of Olaniyi Emiola’s life was Mar. 17, 1998. At least it was for Olaniyi Emiola, 22, the spare motor parts trader. For Olaniyi Emiola, the armed robber, it was a lucky escape as another man with the same name had been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he committed.

SOUTH AFRICA: Acid Mine Drainage Water Can Be Put to Use

Toxic water from derelict gold and uranium mines has reportedly destroyed Elize Strydom's dream to be a farmer in her retirement.

UGANDA: Single Mothers Left Behind in Flooded Swampland

Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.

AFRICA: Wanted: Greener Cities

In Africa, where urbanisation will be one of the major developments over the next few decades, it will be key for cities to figure out how to handle rapid urban expansion and much-needed economic growth, while creating more environmentally-friendly cities and reducing their carbon footprint at the same time.

AFRICA: Change the Donors Climate

When donor-funded horticultural projects failed in Kalacha village at the edge of the Chalbi Desert in North Eastern Province, Kenya, the local pastoralist community proposed their own idea, which turned out to be the solution to their problems.

The Rush for Oil in West Africa – The New Wild West?

There is a new oil rush off the coast of West Africa. But there are fears that the sector is not sufficiently regulated, and watchdog groups are raising concerns about transparency and governance in the region.

Global South Needs New Path of Development

The convergence of leading countries from the global South - China, India, Brazil and South Africa, among others - to assist the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere constitutes a new "dynamic" in the emerging global economic partnerships, says the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Q&A: NATO Intervention in Libya Was “Recolonisation”

Brazilian journalist and writer Mário Augusto Jakobskind was thwarted in his attempt to visit Libya during the civil war there, but in spite of this he produced a lucid analysis of the situation in the North African country and of the forces that have taken power after the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi regime.

SOUTH AFRICA: No Political Will to Support Generic Medication

South African health experts are calling on governments to use legally available mechanisms to promote the production or import of generic drugs in their countries.