Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey "Only the best is good enough for Africa."
Kwame Nkrumah "The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa."
Niamey — Niger is seeking to end its chronic food shortages through an ambitious agricultural transformation plan – but the plan will have to meet the demands of a fast-growing population living in a mostly desert country that also faces threats to its security. When he came to power in 2011, President Issoufou Mahamadou said: […]
A new review of strategies to prepare for the impacts of climate change shows that expanding forests worldwide by planting more trees is unambiguously a good idea. But if not planned carefully, policymakers could waste resources and have unintended consequences, says a new study by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The problem boils […]
By Helvy Shaanika Ongwediva — Drought in the northern regions has caused many rice farmers to abandon their efforts under the relentless onslaught of drought. Apart from mahangu and other indigenous crops in the north-central regions, rice farming which was developing as a niche in communal farming in those regions has also been affected with […]
RESEARCHERS and scientists have identified the strange disease which has destroyed thousands of acres of maize crops in South Rift as maize lethal necrotic. Scientists from Kenya Agriculture Research Institute have said the disease is a viral infection made up of two viruses and is new in the country but has been reported in other […]
By Wambi Michael Kampala — Unless African smallholder farmers, who comprise the majority of food growers on the continent, are given the tools and knowledge to cope with the increased occurrences of plant virus diseases, the livelihoods of millions will be at stake, according to Nteranya Sanginga, the director general of the International Institute of […]
United Nations — Amidst growing new threats of potential conflicts over fast-dwindling water resources in the world’s arid regions, the United Nations will commemorate 2013 as the International Year of Water Cooperation (IYWC). But Maude Barlow, chairperson, Council of Canadians and a former senior advisor on water to the president of the U.N. General Assembly […]
By Neil Palmer We often hear about livestock being a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Picture them: Formidable herds of flatulent quadrupeds munching their way – figuratively speaking – through millions of hectares of rainforest. But it seems we need to look below the surface, literally, to find another climate change culprit: earthworms. That’s […]
The United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says despite significant and encouraging declines in open defecation since 1990, 1.1 billion people (15 per cent of the world’s population) still practice it. The majority of people practicing open defecation estimated at 949 million live in rural areas, according to a […]
Ethiopia has begun construction of a 6,000 megawatt (MW) hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile river, a move that has been greeted enthusiastically by many Ethiopians but that is causing concern in the downstream nations of Sudan and Egypt. The project, which is scheduled to take six and a half years to complete, is being […]
Ouagadougou — Recent fighting between herders and farmers in Burkina Faso’s central-eastern Sangou area which left seven people dead is a warning that recurrent violence between the two groups could get out of hand unless urgent action is taken. “We are used to having frequent clashes between herders and farmers in this part of the […]