News stories by Busani Bafana, page 12

ACCRA, Ghana/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 25 (IPS) - There is evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities, experts say.

But current food systems in Africa are not addressing nutrition because of the combination of poor investment in the agriculture value chain, inadequate policies and lack of accountability in addressing malnutrition.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 07 (IPS) - As a result of climate change, resource extraction industries in Africa will be impacted by asset stranding, researchers say.

BULAWAYO, Oct 04 (IPS) - Desertification is not cheap. It has social, cultural, environmental and of course economic costs to reverse what it destroys.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 16 (IPS) - Arama Sire Camara, a fruit and vegetable seller in the province of Kindia, some 135 km from the Guinean capital of Conakry, feels safer trading well into the night thanks to the Rural Electrification Project, financed by 21-million-dollar investment by the African Development Bank.

"With lighting on the road at night and illuminating our goods, it means we are safer, especially with all the cars on the road. You can work for longer after nightfall, and so we can make more of our products," she says.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Sep 11 (IPS) - Disinvestments in fossil fuels amounting to 11 trillion dollars – eight times the global GDP – have been recorded in the last six months of this year, according to a new report.

BULAWAY, Zimbabwe, Sep 07 (IPS) - Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, who died this week, aged 95, leaves a mixed and divisive legacy.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 17 (IPS) - Ella Mazani is a mobile phone farmer.

"My mobile phone is part of my farming. It supports my farming and my family's welfare through the services I get via the phone," the smallholder maize farmer from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe quips. 

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 (IPS) - A Jamaican start-up has an innovative solution to help smallholder farmers—many of whom do not have the collateral demanded by financial institutions to access loans—build a track record of their production that is proving better than collateral.

DUBAI, Mar 25 (IPS) - A maths and physical science teacher from an impoverished  school in Kenya's Rift Valley, Peter Tabichi, has won the one million dollar Global Teacher Prize, becoming the first teacher from Africa to clinch the prize established to honour the profession.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Mar 20 (IPS) - Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Nakuru County, situated in a remote, semi-arid part of Kenya's Rift Valley, could pass for an ordinary secondary school in any part of Africa. But ordinary it is not.