DEVELOPMENT: Farmers on Fringe of Intl Agriculture Policy?

How's this for short-sighted: A billion people go hungry every day, food prices have climbed 30 to 40 percent, climate change is reducing agricultural production - and for the past two decades, the world has slashed investments in publicly-funded agriculture until it is a pittance in most countries.

AFRICA: Monitoring a Changing Climate

The gathering environmental crisis presented by global warming makes effective weather information and prediction a matter of urgency. As Africa's farmers come to grips with adapting to climate change, it may be that the best way to equip them is to involve them directly in collecting the data.

HEALTH: Empowering Women to Slash Mother and Child Deaths

In developed countries, child and maternal mortality is a health problem that has largely been solved.

SENEGAL: Small-Scale Irrigation: Key to Rural Development

Over the past four years, the Local Small-scale Irritation Project has spent more than $10.5 million U.S. dollars supporting rural communities in Senegal.

Q&A: Equality for Women – “The Core of the Problem is Care”

"Women help to reduce poverty and raise family incomes, but they pay too high a price for it, because in every country their working days are longer than men's," said Sonia Montaño, head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's (ECLAC) Division for Gender Affairs.

ZAMBIA: Health Fears Follow Floods

As the heavy rains subside, signifying the end of the rainy season, a cholera outbreak is sweeping through the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

DEVELOPMENT: Fragile Nations Speak Up To Donors

An international dialogue meeting in East Timor Saturday saw fragile states make giant steps in showing developed nations how aid can be more effectively channelled to achieve their key development goals.

MALI: Shea Production Vital to Women’s Incomes

Across the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, the shea tree prized by women, who produce a butter from its nuts that is a key ingredient in food and cosmetics. However, drought and diseases threaten this source of income.

ECONOMY: Brighter Business Prospects for Swazi Women

Business in Swaziland is perceived as a man’s playground, and Swazi women have long found themselves on the periphery. Not only are big industries dominated by men, they are also the ones who award tenders in government and other institutions.

Q&A: IBSA Summit Aims to Strengthen South-South Cooperation

When the political leaders of three of the world's major democracies in the global South - India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) - gather at a high-powered summit meeting in Brasilia next week, one of the key items on the agenda would be how best to strength economic cooperation among developing nations.

URUGUAY: Fighting Climate Change from the Countryside

"We would get up and go to bed every day looking up at the sky, hoping for something to fall, but nothing happened, not even a drop fell," says María Inés Queiros, who makes artisanal cheese in the southern Uruguayan province of San José.

WATER : Swazi Village Gets a Self-Sustaining Water Supply

No one loves the bill collector, and Sifiso Shongwe gets a chilly welcome as he goes from household to household collecting money for Maphilingo's community water scheme.

UGANDA: Information Technology Helps Farmers

Mayuge district has 31,000 farming families served by just nine agricultural extension workers. In Wainha village, an internet centre run by the Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative is more than filling the gap in assisting farmers.

MOZAMBIQUE: Earthquakes: Not a Matter of If, But When

Time is everything in responding to a natural disaster. Mozambique's disaster management specialists are worried that they are missing key data on the small tremors that take place almost daily in the quake-prone country.

ENVIRONMENT-ZIMBABWE: Future Generations Will ‘Inherit Only the Wind’

The plumes of smoke rising above the dense working class suburbs of Bulawayo are a sign of the environmental impact of Zimbabwe's electricity crisis.

EGYPT: Battle For Women Judges Half Won

There are "no obstacles according to Islamic sharia, the constitution or the law" to women serving as judges, announced one of Egypt’s main courts, the State Council, last week. But "there are currently practical obstacles," it affirmed.

ZIMBABWE: ‘Farming God’s Way’

Mbuya Erica Chirimanyemba is a marvel among women, and men! Watching her digging holes in dry ground earlier this year, her neighbours thought the old lady had gone berserk. But 60-year-old Chirimanyemba was putting an alternative farming technique into practice.

TRADE: Something’s Rotten in European Supermarkets

The majority of European supermarkets failed to take adequate responsibility for labour conditions and fair-trade relationships in their food supply chains, a new report revealed.

HEALTH-KENYA: Funding Threatens AIDS Prevention

Pregnant mothers who are HIV-positive could soon find it challenging to access life-saving HIV drugs because Kenya was denied 270 million dollars in funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

AGRICULTURE-NAMIBIA: Turning to Wild Bean for Protein

Obed Kamburona has tried to grow many different crops on his large farm, but the dry sandy soil in Otjovanatje has thwarted him every time.

SIERRA LEONE: Plan For Sanitation Rests with Community

Lying forgotten in the bush somewhere is a sign declaring "Ogoo Farm is an open defecation-free community."