News stories by Koffigan E. Adigbli, page 2

Frequent power cuts have led people in rural areas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal to turn to solar energy for electricity.

There are dusty barrels carefully positioned outside many of the family compounds in the Léona neighbourhood of Kaolack, a city of 20,000 in western Senegal: signs of success for a project to introduce the use of biogas as a source of fuel. Amadou Faye, whose family herds cows, goats and sheep as well as growing groundnuts on the side, is among the early adopters.

West African health experts are calling for governments to take the prevalence of hepatitis B and C more seriously, and to act to reduce the cost of treatment as part of more effective control of the disease.

July signals the start of three months of intense activity for residents of the seven villages around the small dam at Sébi Ponty. The dam was stocked with tilapia in 2006, and aquaculture is proving to be a vital economic activity for youth in the area.

The period between May and August is when farmers in the West African Sahel fear the arrival of swarms of locusts. This year, efforts to limit the devastation will be strengthened by coordination across the region thanks to the Africa Project to Combat Locust Invasions.

The harm done by female genital mutilation is still enormous in Podor, a city in the north of Senegal, say officials at the local hospital. While the practice is declining slightly, some religious leaders in the region still support it.

Over the past four years, the Local Small-scale Irritation Project has spent more than $10.5 million U.S. dollars supporting rural communities in Senegal.

Despite the financial sector boom in Senegal, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), which represent over 90 percent of the industrial fabric of the country, struggle to access funding for their development, their representatives claim.

Farmers are complaining about a lack of technical assistance and the poor quality of seeds they've planted this year in the Kaolack region, Senegal's groundnut-producing area, 200 kilometres south of the capital Dakar.

While Africa is still far from having adequate capacity for scientific innovation, women are more and more present in the field of research for the continent's sustainable development.