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 …
The number of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) cases is exploding in South Africa, according to Action TB, a research group funded by the British pharmaceuticals company Glaxo Wellcome. The Kwazulu-Natal region alone has witnessed a 300 per cent rise in the number of multidrug-resistant TB cases in just one year. "The …
South African President, Nelson Mandela, recently called upon the global community to act together to wipe out aids, which is wreaking havoc on nations all over the world. "As the freedom of each nation is interdependent with that of others, so too is health and the well-being of peoples... the …
Elephants of the Kruger National Park are once again in the centre of a controversy. Recently, the park officials introduced contraception as an alternative to culling to control the exploding numbers of the pachyderms. Last month, South African and American scientists injected 21 female elephants with pig zona pellucida (p …
IRATE South Africans are protesting the European Union (EU) ban on their ostrich meat and live birds following an outbreak of Congo fever. The EU ban came into effect after an abattoir worker died recently and 16 others were infected with the fever in Oudtshoorn, a town close to South …
Scientists from the University of Pretoria in South Africa have developed a new, non-toxic, cryopreservant liquid that would make possible the preservation of organs at very low temperatures. Efforts at doing so had been frustrated till now because extreme cold damages cell membranes beyond repair. The researchers have just resuscitated …
hiv -positive mothers double the risks of passing hiv to their babies through breast milk, suggests a controversial South African study. Breastfeeding is believed to be the best prevention against diarrhoeal or respiratory diseases which claim the lives of thousands of infants in developing countries. The danger of hiv infection …
Quelling fears about transmission of feline aids from lions to humans, a leading South African veterinarian, Dewald Keet has said that the disease which has infected 83 per cent of the lions in the Kruger national park poses no threat to either humans or other animals. The presence of aids …
Once considered to be the backbone of the country's economy, gold mines have become a health hazard for mineworkers. Thousands of mineworkers in the country could be suffering from serious chest diseases as a result of working underground in the gold mines. The workers are left to fend for themselves …
Tuberculosis (tb) is affecting thousands of people in South Africa. Last year, nearly 140,000 people contracted the disease, according to World Health Organization ( who) and South African officials. South Africa has the world's highest incidence of tb and multidrug resistant tb, which kills 80 per cent of those who …
A new land reform law in the country aims to strike a balance between conservation and community development. The reforms seek to restore property taken from some 3.5 million South Africans during the apartheid era. Large areas of national park; as well as some farms and primate game reserves, will …
A wetland in the St Lucia estuary on the cast coast in KwaZUILI-Natal province was saved from devastation when the country's cabinet banned the development of a mineral sands project by Richards Bay Minerals (RBM). The ban brought to an end a six-year struggle by environmental groups to prevent exploitation …
The conflict-ridden continent can still hope for peace. In a concerted effort to ban nuclear weapons in the continent, government leaders and ministers from all 53 African countries are set to sign a treaty to this effect in this month. The treaty, drafted with the support of United Nations, aims …
Nearly 100 caged baboons had the fright of their lives when the inundated Olifants river climbed under their cages at a remote reserve in northern South Africa recently. Rescue workers worked night and day to carry the baboons and some other animals like jackals, civets, warthogs and monkeys to the, …
HOUSING lower- and middle-class blacks, certain South African townships are seriously threatened by contamination caused by human wastes. With no sewage disposal system, the residents of these poor localities use buckets to excrete and once these are full to the brim, the waste is either dumped into streams or on …
An us7owned vanadi'u'm mine in Vametco in tfie North West province seems to be doing a repeat of the Bhopal gas tragedy. Inhabitants of the villages of Mothutlung which has a population of around 12,000, and Rankhotea which has a population of about 2,000, have called for an open debate …
While conservationists across the world are raising an alarm over depleting numbers of elephants, wildlife managers in South Africa's Kruger National Park are trying to check its jumbo population by culling. But under fire from animal rights activists, they have decided to reduce culling by half. "In order to maintain …
The country is facing one of the fallouts of the racist laws of the apartheid regime in the form of severe water shortage. The government is planning to reform obsolete water laws which gave exclusive rights to private landowners and industrialists with the result that today, the greater portion of …
Thousands of people fled their homes in panic as a fire at a chemical plant spewed out poisonous gas which spread over the Makassar community area near Cape Town. At least 100 people were hospitalised after inhaling corrosive sulphur dioxide, causing irritation in the eyes, nose and lungs. On the …
An incro number of privately-man aged wildlife reserves are emerging in South Africa Among the bigger names are Shamwari in the eastern Cape region and the four wildlife reserves run by the Johannesburg-based conservation Corporation. Adrian Gardiner, the mastermind behind Shamwari, set about his mission investing his own money and …
