The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
Lethal viruses are taking over the world of food IN agricultural research, new breakthroughs have helped elaborate the workings of two strains of potentially lethal viruses destroying important food crops like wheat and maize. Research into the Maize Streak Virus (msv) destroying Africa
Africa must grasp funds generated by carbon credit trading to pay for cleaner, cheaper energy and help fight climate change that threatens to undo years of economic development, the UN climate chief said on Wednesday. Yvo de Boer, attending the first pan-African carbon-trading forum designed in part to match specialist …
In Malawi, the fifth poorest country in the world, the government introduced a voucher programme for small scale farmers, providing them access to subsidised fertilizer and seed. The country suddenly saw bumper harvests in both 2006 and 2007. Are fertilizer subsidies the way out of poverty for small scale farmers …
PREDAS is a regional programme to promote household and alternative energies in the Sahel. The programme is implemented by the permanent Interstates Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) with support from the European Union and the Federal Republic of Germany. The overall objectives of PREDAS are to contribute …
This article discusses the extent to which the arrival of electricity in Islamic rural Zanzibar has empowered women. Electricity carries a potential for women
To restrain the growth of Kruger's elephant population, 14,562 animals were culled from 1967 to 1995, when South Africa banned the practice. "It was extraordinarily traumatic," says Ian Whyte, the park's longtime elephant specialist, who witnessed many of the culls. "You had to shut your mind to it, otherwise you'd …
There is mounting evidence that climate change is triggering a shrinking and thinning of many glaciers world-wide which may eventually put at risk water supplies for hundreds of millions
This report looks at the importance of effective management of trade in wild species in order to maximize its potential to deliver on the MDGs. It also presents the findings of three case studies: the wild meat trade in East and Southern Africa; the skin and wool trade in Latin …
In 2002 CREPA initiated a regional research and demonstration programme on ecological sanitation in seven West African countries. ECOSAN is focused on simultaneously improving sanitation and food production. This is done by making urine and faeces more hygienic and then using them as safe fertilisers. Demonstrations showed that crops fertilised …
George Monbiot The world's hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations. In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a …
Yvo de Boer said Africa was still lagging in attracting investments in green technology to help slow rising greenhouse gases and in getting help to adapt to the effects of droughts, floods, rising seas and less predictable rains. Speaking during 160-nation Aug. 21-27 climate talks in Accra, de Boer urged …
To combat malaria, the Kenya Ministry of Health and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) for use over beds, with coverage for children under five years of age increasing rapidly. Nevertheless, residents of fishing villages have started to use these bed nets for drying fish and fishing in …
The race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a "neo-colonial' system, the United Nations' top agriculture official has cautioned. The warning by Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, comes as countries from Saudi Arabia to China plan to lease …
It will be a major problem, if the lion vanishes-goes a popular saying in Moli Haoussa-Gorma village in Niger. Beliefs such as this are significant in making the W National Park amongst the rare strongholds of the African lion. At a time when the lion population is declining alarmingly in …
MORE than 14 million people in the East Africa region require urgent food aid owing to drought and spiralling cereal and fuel prices, aid agencies say. In an emergency appeal on July 24, Oxfam warns that millions of people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Djibouti and Kenya are fast being pushed …
Protected areas attract human settlements? globally, creating protected areas (pas) has been a preferred method of biodiversity conservation. Such areas with their mandate of providing refuge to wildlife are usually assumed to have negative impact on local communities since their access to natural resources is restricted. But a study from …
This publication summarizes the state-of-the-art of science on the subject of 'Climate Change as a Security Risk'. It is based on the findings of research into environmental conflicts, the causes of war, and of climate impact research. It appraises past experience but also ventures to cast a glance far into …
