Reports

News : Reports

Some 218 million people in Africa struggle with hunger daily – about 30 percent of the continent’s total population, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Most of those suffering from hunger are the rural poor, urban poor and victims of natural disasters. (AllAfrica)

As President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of Tanzania was about to leave Dar es Salaam on November 15 to attend the World Food Summit in Rome, he sat down at State House to discuss a range of issues with AllAfrica. One of them was food security. (AllAfrica)

Aminatou Haidar, the Western Sahara human rights activist expelled from her homeland 10 days ago, has entered the second week of a hunger strike in protest against the expulsion. (AllAfrica)

Botswana continues to be seen as Africa’s least corrupt, and Somalia as the continent’s – and the world’s – most corrupt country, according to a new survey published this week. (AllAfrica)

Gayle Smith, a senior foreign policy adviser to President Obama and senior director for relief, stabilization and development at the National Security Council, addressed the closing plenary of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria's annual conference in Washington DC. Excerpts from her speech: Thank you so much for inviting me here. I want to start off by saying congratulations. I remember when this organization started. It was a great idea at the time - and that was not too long ago - but still, a time when making the case that there is a strategic, integral linkage between business and health was in a lot of places an uphill struggle. The content of what you have been and will be discussing is remarkable, so my hat goes off to all of you. (AllAfrica)

The Pretoria government is probing reports that South African mercenaries are training Guinean militia, recruited by the country's military junta on an ethnic basis. (AllAfrica)

Algeria defeated Africa's football champions, Egypt, 1-0 today to take Africa's sixth place in the 2010 World cup. (AllAfrica)

Aminatou Haidar, one of the most prominent human rights activists in the liberation of the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara, was detained, then deported, by the Moroccan authorities on her arrival in the territory last Friday. Some weeks earlier, she visited Washington, DC to receive the Civil Courage Prize, sponsored by the U.S.-based Train Foundation. AllAfrica interviewed her there. (AllAfrica)

There's only one slot left to be filled in Africa's line-up at the 2010 Fifa World Cup, to be played in South Africa next June, and it will be taken after what has the makings of an epic playoff between Algeria and Egypt in Sudan on Wednesday. (AllAfrica)

In the wake of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting with Moroccan King Mohammed VI last week, a prominent human rights activist was detained on her arrival in Western Sahara, which Morocco controls. (AllAfrica)

Akin Adesina, vice president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), talked to AllAfrica about the work of the young, Nairobi-based institution and how its priorities and programs are evolving to improve food security across Africa. Agra was founded in 2006, with initial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Bill Gates recently announced that the foundation will give another $15 million to enhance Agra's effectiveness. Here is part two of the conversation.How do you address the impact that climate change is having on agricultural output? (AllAfrica)

South African and American diplomats said this week that they expected Zimbabwe to implement "stringent controls" according to a "very tight work plan" to make the country's diamond exports comply with the Kimberley Process (KP). (AllAfrica)

The Obama administration earlier this year named a former United States Peace Corps volunteer, Aaron S. Williams, as the program's new director. The Peace Corps, which will soon celebrate its 50th anniversary, draws thousands of Americans who want to work abroad and under the new administration, it is looking at its areas of focus and how best to continue implementing its programs most effectively. Williams spoke with AllAfrica during a visit to South Africa. (AllAfrica)

Somali pirates hijacked a vessel carrying 22 crew members that was heading to Durban, South Africa, early Wednesday morning. It was the fourth attack on a ship off the Somali coast in three days. (AllAfrica)

Guinea's opposition has rejected a proposal for a government of national unity which would include the military junta which seized power last December, reports Le Potentiel of Kinshasa. (AllAfrica)

When Zimbabweans were being attacked and killed in political violence, a little-known South African musician was inspired to act by the stories she heard from refugees living illegally in South Africa. (AllAfrica)

Thousands of Liberians living in Montserrado county, the seat of the country's capital Monrovia, headed for the polls Tuesday to cast their votes in a senatorial by-election to replace Senator Hannah Brent, who died in August. (AllAfrica)

The American government’s new special adviser on the Great Lakes region, Howard Wolpe, comes to the post with the best part of three decades’ experience in the Africa policies of U.S. administrations behind him. In the second of a two-part interview with AllAfrica, he discusses how the Obama administration could improve its diplomacy and strengthen peace-building in Central Africa. (AllAfrica)

Pirates today fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at a 330-metre long oil tanker sailing 1,000 miles from the Somali coast. (AllAfrica)

The decision to give Zimbabwe no more than a slap on the wrist for the human rights abuses which its army has committed on the Marange alluvial diamond fields in the south-east of the country seriously threatens the future of the diamond industry's initiative to avert consumer boycotts of its gemstones. (AllAfrica)

Howard Wolpe has spent the best part of three decades helping to form and implement American policies on Africa. After chairing the Subcommittee on Africa of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives for 10 years, he later served as President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Great Lakes region. (AllAfrica)

A coalition of Guinean opposition leaders has presented President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso a set of proposals they believe will end  the political crisis precipitated by a military takeover in Guinea last December, reports Sidwaya from Ouagadougou. (AllAfrica)

Top executives from African media houses gather in Lagos on Thursday for two days of consultations on how to sustain the development of good journalism on the continent. Owners, publishers and editors will join panel discussions on topics ranging from the media and governance to the challenges and opportunities of digital media and the monetization of content. (AllAfrica)

Mount Kenya rises majestically from the Kenyan landscape, dwarfing all around it, a magisterial monument. The mountain is a fertile giant, but this year it became a killing field for the hundreds of thousands of cattle driven there to escape the fiercest drought in a decade. (AllAfrica)

The government of Equatorial Guinea has freed four South African mercenaries jailed for plotting to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, South Africa's foreign ministry has announced. (AllAfrica)

In recent years Zimbabweans have faced severe food shortages and staggering hyperinflation. As a result, residents in the capital, Harare, have increasingly turned to urban gardening. They grow produce just about anywhere they can – in backyards, vacant lots, on roadsides and on rooftops. (AllAfrica)

This year, the world will witness a new record, albeit a devastating one: for the first time in our history, over one billion people in the world suffer from daily hunger. That’s almost one in every six people on this planet living in fear of starvation. (AllAfrica)

Lonrho is a London-listed conglomerate with a rich history and long involvement in Africa. Established in 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Mining Company, the company became well known under Tiny Rowland, who led it for three decades from 1961 and was a flamboyant and controversial supporter of, and investor in, newly-independent African states. Following Rowland's ouster in the mid-1990s, most of the assets were sold. (AllAfrica)

Tensions are rising in Sudan as the country prepares for elections in 2010 and a subsequent referendum over whether the people of South Sudan want to break away and become an independent state. (AllAfrica)

Widows are often looked down on and pitied in Kenya. But the widows in the village of Angata Barakoi in the Transmara area of Kenya were determined to help each other and make a life for themselves, without relying on handouts and charity from relatives. Eighty-six widows banded together to form a support group to deal with the effects of HIV, grief, and the difficulties of living in a community where they had lost their status after the death of their husbands. The group decided to support themselves by growing their own maize. They were able to get loans from a local bank to buy seeds and other inputs. Finally, at harvest time, the World Food Programme (WFP) gave the group a contract to buy 250 metric tons of their surplus harvest through the Purchase for Progress programme. The following are profiles of two of Angata Barakoi's widow farmers.Consefta KimunduConsefta Kimundu, 28, is delighted that for the first time the widows were able to sell their maize for a decent price. (AllAfrica)

Headquartered in Nairobi Kenya and working across sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Latin America and Asia, the World Agroforestry Centre aims to enhance soil fertility and the livelihoods of poor families and communities by introducing – or improving the varieties of - nutrient providing trees into farm feeds. Dr. Dennis Garrity, Director General of the Centre, told AllAfrica that trees on farmland can play a transformative role in rural agriculture.Tell us about your organization.The World Agroforestry Center is the scientific leader in research and development on what is known as agroforestry, or the science and practice of trees on farms. It is all about trees that farmers use in their farming systems for a better livelihood, for better services, for products that they need and for income for their families. (AllAfrica)