ECONOMY-ZIMBABWE: “Indigenising Without Kicking Investors Away”

Eager to restore Zimbabwe's moribund economy, the country's government has been soliciting investment globally. But the troubled southern African country finds itself in an unenviable balancing act between protecting its economic interests while attracting foreign investors.

EDUCATION-ZAMBIA: Bicycles Help Girls Go Further

Nine kilometres each way, rain or shine: That's how far Suzanne Chisulo has to travel to school each day.

LABOUR: Africans Shun the Ocean Wave

At this bustling port, where massive cranes above cargo ships load and unload goods in perpetual motion, a strange division of labour is apparent.

WATER-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Managing An Unpredictable Environment

The water available in the Limpopo River basin, which stretches across Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe and Mozambique, is both in great demand and highly variable. Managing it effectively and to the satisfaction of all users is a challenge.

WATER-SOUTHERN AFRICA: Research Not Trickling Down To Farmers

Farmers could be losing tonnes of crops every harvest just because no one has bothered to tell them that scientists have found more effective methods of using water to farm.

ECONOMY: CAADP: The African Solution for Net Export

Rodger Phiri is a wealthy man. And the most amazing thing is that he made his money through farming.

SOUTH AFRICA: Price Fixing Can Land Company Directors in Jail

A series of high-profile cases in which big South African companies have been found guilty of fixing the prices of even basic foodstuffs have led to the adoption of a new law that will allow directors and managers to be sent to jail for 10 years or receive a fine of 45,000 euros.

TRADE: 2010 Soccer World Cup May See More Snorting than Kicking

It is the middle of the day but 25-year-old Lyle Arendse of Athlone on the Cape Flats, Cape Town’s sprawling hinterland, is at home. He left school nearly 10 years ago and has since been unemployed. "It is because of drugs -- tik (methamphetamine or "crystal meth") and heroin -- that I left school," he acknowledges.

MOZAMBIQUE: Technology Could Increase Food Harvest and Reduce Poverty

In rural Mozambique, increasing numbers of families are growing their own food and lifting themselves out of poverty.

SOUTH AFRICA: Law Failing Lesbians on “Corrective Rape”

"Women are getting killed in the Western Cape," says Ndumie Funda, who runs LulekiSizwe in her "cabin" in the township of Gugulethu near Cape Town.

AGRICULTURE: Piecing a Living Together In Rural South Africa

It's early spring in the fertile Breede River farming region, with the fruit orchards a blur of pink blossoms and the first green shoots starting to sprout in the vineyards, but for household gardener Ishmael Shiki it's been a bad start to the growing season.

MOZAMBIQUE: Markets Too Far For Farmers’ Profit

August is peak tomato season in the Niassa province of northwest Mozambique, and farmers are bringing bucket-loads of tomatoes to sell to Nkwichi Lodge, one of the few buyers of local produce in the region.

SWAZILAND: Bringing Men on Board to Reduce Maternal and Child Mortality

Swazi men have very little involvement in caring for newborns and mothers, yet they are critical partners in ensuring their well being.

WATER-NAMIBIA: For What Does It Profit a Man…

"Our profit so far is 5,000 Namibian dollars, divided by twenty people," reports Anna Nauses. Silence descends on the office of the Prosopis Project in Okombahe as all do the math. Sixteen months of hard labour felling water-thirsty trees along the Omaruru River has yielded just 30 U.S. dollars per person.

ZIMBABWE: Women’s Rights Activists Lobby to ‘Engender’ Constitution

Zimbabwe’s latest constitutional reform process has generated strong interest among activists in strengthening protection for women's rights. The early signs are that the drafting of a new constitution will not prioritise correcting legal, social and economic discrimination against women.

ZIMBABWE: Use of Foreign Money Becoming Political Football Again

Dorothy Tembo wears a look that tells a story of years of hard work. She dotes on her grandchildren and enjoys talking about the past. A keen observer of the history happening around her, she easily narrates Zimbabwe's trials and tribulations from the pre-independence years to the present, of which she says she has never seen so much death and suffering.

Q&A: “South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment Has Failed”

Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of former South African president Thabo Mbeki, believes that the government’s centrepiece policy of black economic empowerment was in fact the creation of the country’s white economic oligarchs to co-opt black leaders.

NAMIBIA: Garden Project Grants Modest Independence

Life in Omaruru? Put it this way: even the river that gives the town its name doesn’t always make it down. In this semi-desert part of Namibia, existence is a daily battle against poverty. A women’s gardening project is trying to change this.

Q&A: Regional Trade Integration Is About Give and Take

It’s "do or die" for the world’s oldest customs union. Disagreement over the development consequences of the EU’s proposed economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with African states has threatened to split the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) a year before its centenary in 2010.

HEALTH-ZIMBABWE: No Treatment for Sick as State Doctors Strike

Before, Zimbabwean families would take their ill relatives to rural clinics where medication was readily available and payment plans lenient. But now they are taking them there to die.

WATER-NAMIBIA: Running A Dry River

The Omaruru River basin is one of the first in Namibia to establish a basin management committee. Its members have a difficult balancing act to perform with a water resource that’s already being utilised to its maximum.