Malawi Missing Its Local Government

An hour and fifteen minutes each day: Melina Kalunga has plenty of time to measure how long it takes to resolve a legal battle over Malawi's Electoral Commission.

MALI: Cotton and Food Security Closely Linked

Many Malian farmers are boycotting cotton this year, instead planting cereals. Cotton isn't edible, but observers say that the shift could weaken food security.

MAURITIUS: Renewable Energy Gets a Boost

A new initiative to support production of renewable energy in Mauritius may provide a model for other countries to follow suit.

Health System Failing Nigeria’s Youngest Citizens

Despite some progress, Nigeria is lagging behind its peers in reducing deaths among children under five. The mortality rate remains worryingly high for newborn infants - 700 children less than 28 days old die in the country every day.

U.N. to Host Slew of Talkfests Through 2011

Living up to its reputation - or notoriety - as one of the world's quintessential talking shops, the United Nations has scheduled a slew of high-level meetings and international conferences through December this year.

SOUTH SUDAN: Looking to the Future

The peaceful achievement of an independent South Sudan could have economic and security benefits for its East African neighbours in particular. Analysts say it may also shift the balance of power in controlling vital water resources in the region.

RIGHTS-DR CONGO: Soldiers Accused of Rape Arrested

The reported arrests of ten Congolese soldiers accused of looting stores and raping at least a dozen women in the Fizi District earlier in January is not enough to reassure local civil society.

BRAZIL: Creation of Native Reserves Slowed Down Under Lula

In Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's eight years as president of Brazil, he signed decrees creating just 88 indigenous reserves, far fewer than his immediate predecessors.

In Corrupt Global Food System, Farmland Is the New Gold

Famine-hollowed farmers watch trucks loaded with grain grown on their ancestral lands heading for the nearest port, destined to fill richer bellies in foreign lands. This scene has become all too common since the 2008 food crisis.

SOUTH SUDAN: Women Dream of Independence

John Garang, the revered late leader of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, once said that women are the "the poorest of the poor and the marginalised of the marginalised". As the reality of an independent South Sudan approaches, the region's women have vowed they will not remain second class citizens.

ZIMBABWE: Protecting the Zambezi’s Kapenta Fish

"The fish are disappearing." The words and the world-weary gaze could belong to a fisherman from almost anywhere, as stocks come under pressure due to over-exploitation all over the world.

Q&A: In Search of Buen Vivir

The clock is ticking to live up to the promises governments made a decade ago to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. But are those promises themselves inherently flawed?

DR CONGO: Promise of Potable Water for Kikwit

When the ground is broken for the Kakobola dam, engineers just might be able to hear the jubilation in the city of Kikwit, 200 kilometres away. The city's million residents are desperate to improve their water supply.

Latest Food Crisis Brewing for Months

The United Nations, which is trying to reach out to nearly a billion undernourished people, some living in perpetual hunger, is anticipating another food crisis later this year.

INDIA: 100-Dollar Laptops Bring In Distant Kids

Responding to the lack of computer training in Mukteshwar’s schools, Veena Sethi, a retired Delhi University professor, set up two used personal computers in the basement of her home with the aim of bringing the basics of computing to school children.

KENYA: No Easy Path for Disabled Women with Political Dreams

"People living with disability face all sorts of discrimination. We are discriminated against at job interviews in schools. Everyday is a battle to remain positive in the face of a world that is too bent on dismissing those among us that do not meet the standard of what is normal", explains Mishi Juma, a disabled community leader from the Coast region.

Bahrain’s Farms Disappearing Under Concrete Towers

Environmentalists are engaged in a nation-wide campaign to protect what is left of the agricultural belt in Bahrain. Seventy percent of farms have been eliminated due to urbanisation, according to environmentalists who are warning of a serious environmental crisis.

PHILIPPINES: Catholics Risk Excommunication Over Reproductive Rights

Support for reproductive health legislation, popularly known as the RH Bill here, has snowballed on social websites and among peer networks, yet passage and funding of the bill remain uncertain. Catholic bishops have long used the threat of excommunication in the raging debates over use of modern contraceptive methods - such as pills, IUDs and condoms - in the Southeast-Asian nation of over 92 million, 85 percent of whom are Catholic.

U.N. Chief Leaves Women out of Year-End Summing Up

When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote a year-end op-ed piece for an Australian newspaper last week, he talked about the future of a world body facing a new generation of threats: climate change, poverty, nuclear disarmament and human rights.

HEALTH: The Silent Killer that Continues to Claim Children’s Lives

Medical experts have warned that malaria and HIV have monopolised interventions geared towards curbing child mortality in Kenya, thus ignoring the equally deadly killer, diarrhoea. This disease has silently claimed the lives of hundreds of children every year.

Cassava Combating Rural Hunger in Zambia

In Zambia, a silver lining has emerged for widespread rural hunger and poverty, thanks to homegrown agricultural research. Local scientists have successfully developed four new, early-maturing and high- yielding cassava cultivars in an ambitious research project conducted in the cassava-rich Luapula Province, under the on-going Root and Tuber Improvement Programme (RTIP).