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.

LATIN AMERICA: How to Prevent ‘Femicide’

Vanina Alderete, an 18-year-old from Argentina, is a survivor of a particularly heinous case of domestic violence: when she was 11, her father killed her mother and her two little brothers and left her seriously injured.

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.

Q&A: Busan Beckons With New Promise

For a start, stop calling it "aid", Brian Atwood, chair of the Development Assistance Committee at the OECD, tells IPS.

Bangladesh Demands Climate Justice

Mosammet Monwara walks more than three km every alternate day to fetch water for her family of five in a heavy earthen pitcher.

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.

Activists Tie Occupy Movement to Global Gender Rights

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov. 25, a group of feminist organisations will unite to launch a campaign calling for an end of the "immoral and unethical economy of Wall Street" against women and people of colour.

SOUTH AMERICA: Coming Together to Preserve the La Plata Basin

Five South American countries have launched a joint sustainable management programme for the Río de la Plata basin, to preserve one of the largest fresh water reserves in the world.

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.

U.S.: Bottled Water Companies Target Minorities, But So Do Soda Firms

Water is the lifeblood of this planet, whose inhabitants are watching its accelerated spiral into crisis mode even as they struggle to address the issues and lifestyles that are stretching the earth's resources thin.

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.

Microfinance Works – For the Rich

Jesús Guerra, a volunteer at this week’s Fifth Global Microcredit Summit in this Spanish town, was nonplussed by the expensive gold watch sported by a banker from a developing country.

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.

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.

SOMALIA: Aid Dwindles, Disease Spreads

Doctors in Mogadishu are warning that famine victims in internally displaced camps have become vulnerable to contagious diseases like cholera and measles, as conditions here are ripe for an outbreak. This comes as internally displaced persons complain that relief aid to some camps has dwindled or stopped.