This publication looks at how sharing technological infrastructure can support gender equality and serve the broad betterment of mining communities. It illustrates how mining companies in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are sharing technological infrastructure with local communities and how partners are collaborating in Peru …
IN 2002 British American Tobacco (BAT), a big cigarette manufacturer, shuttled a temporary cinema around six Nigerian cities in what it called the “Rothmans Experience It Cinema Tour”. The company screened “Ocean’s Eleven”, “The Matrix” and other blockbusters for crowds of Nigerians, excited by the foreign concepts of high quality …
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania — The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Water Facility (AWF) will be participating in the 6th Africa Water Week (AWW-6), holding from 18-22 July 2016 at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. On 20 July 2016, the AfDB will unveil …
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been losing more and more forest every year to subsistence activities, mining, and farming. Continuing conflict is exacerbating the situation. The creation of the new 2.2 million-acre Lomami National Park grants protection to a remote, relatively unscathed area home to an abundance of wildlife. …
The number of refugees displaced by civil conflict or natural disasters is on the rise. Economic impacts of refugees on host countries are controversial and little understood, because data have not been available and the question of refugee impacts does not lend itself to conventional impact evaluation methods. We use …
Last Thursday, on June 23, the provincial governor of South Kivu formally approved the boundaries of the Itombwe Reserve in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the last strongholds of the Grauer’s gorilla. Conservationists have cheered this move. The Itombwe massif is home to more than 750 species of …
At least 185 environmental activists were killed last year, the highest annual death toll on record and close to a 60% increase on the previous year, according to a UK-based watchdog. Global Witness documented lethal attacks across 16 countries. Brazil was worst hit with 50 deaths, many of them killings …
Diseases, while disastrous, often come and go in the public eye. We hear about ebola, but then another one quickly grabs national monitors and TV screens for its fifteen minutes. However, one condition that seems to not fit into his norm is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The spread of …
Environment degradation is affecting Katanga’s ecosystem, a Southern Province of Democratic Republic of Congo, experts say. Water conditions are deplorable from the intense pollution caused by several metal mining companies. Katapula river, located 30 km from Lubumbashi, flows in the Katanga region. Most of its fish are dead. Their death …
The natural endowment of the Democrat Republic of Congo, in the form of land, minerals, and forests, is unparalleled. The right mix of policies has the potential to unleash incentives that could transform the economy. However, transport infrastructure in the DRC is amongst the sparsest and most dilapidated in the …
An outbreak of yellow fever has killed 21 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, linking some cases to an outbreak in neighbouring Angola. In a statement, the WHO said the deaths had occurred in January to March, with 151 suspected cases recorded. There …
The population of the world's largest primate, Grauer's gorilla, found only in the conflict-plagued Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), declined calamitously in 20 years according to a report co-authored by a Smithsonian scientist and published by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Flora and Fauna International and the Congolese Institute for …
Activist groups in Democratic Republic of Congo urged the government on Thursday to revive plans for a new mining code, saying the higher revenues it would generate were vital to supporting a young democracy. The government of Africa's leading copper producer started a review of the 2002 mining code in …
Conservationists have called for urgent action to stop armed militia and illegal mining in protected central African forests from driving the elusive okapi to extinction. A 10-year plan to save the “forest giraffe” drawn up by a coalition of conservation groups and NGOs calls for government and international commitments to …
TORONTO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Africa's small farmers, more than half of whom buy their seeds from local informal markets, need access to improved seeds that can yield more food and cope with climate change, according to research published on Wednesday. Innovations in food science, including seeds that produce vitamin-rich …
This report documents the hazardous conditions in which artisanal miners, including thousands of children, mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It goes on to trace how this cobalt is used to power mobile phones, laptop computers, and other portable electronic devices. Using basic hand tools, miners dig …
In Kinshasa, malaria remains a major public health problem but its spatial epidemiology has not been assessed for decades now. The city’s growth and transformation, as well as recent control measures, call for an update. To identify highly exposed communities and areas where control measures are less critically needed, detailed …
African countries have agreed to cooperate in setting limits for use of lead in paints with a view to phasing it out by 2020. This is because of its dangers to human beings, especially to children, and the environment. In a workshop jointly organised by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) …
At least 31 people have died in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa in the last three weeks in the worst flooding in years, the provincial interior minister said on Tuesday, warning conditions could get even worse. The deaths since Nov. 17, concentrated in neighborhoods along the Congo River and …
PARIS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Protecting increasingly threatened forests in central Africa’s Congo Basin will require not just cash but African governments enforcing their own forest regulations while pulling their people out of poverty, donors said on Tuesday. "At the end of the day, governments need to take responsibility” for …
As France brokers talks on a global deal to cut carbon emissions at the Paris climate summit, Global Witness reveals how the French Development Agency (FDA) has invested over 120 million euros in logging companies that are dismantling the world's second largest rainforest. "At COP21 the French Development Agency is …
