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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)

Sakina Mati is a farmer and community leader in the village of Guidan Batoye, in the Maradi Region of Niger. She began to manage the regeneration of useful trees on her fields 15 years ago together with other women farmers in the village. While she started with no trees on her farm, she now has up to 150 trees. She is very committed to this effort and is now leading the village committee that supervises the village-wide effort of tree and vegetation regeneration. She is among the most respected people of the village because of her commitment to the protection of the environment.  [This introduction reprinted from Oxfam America's: "The Other Green Revolution: How Farmers Reclaimed the Desert to Create an Agricultural Future for Africa".] AllAfrica talked to Sakina Mati, who spoke in Hausa through a translator. (AllAfrica)

Yacouba Savadogo is a farmer, community leader and natural resource innovator from the village of Gourma, in the Yatenga Province of Burkina Faso. Yacouba began to experiment with planting pits and contour stone bunds (small dikes) in order to produce more sorghum and millet on his degraded land in 1979 after observing other farmers use similar techniques through an Oxfam program. By digging deeper pits and adding manure, he brought land back into production. After trees grew spontaneously in the pits, he began to protect them. His barren land was steadily turned into a forest with diverse, useful tree species. For many years, Yacouba has organized events to exchange seeds and ideas, and to train other farmers. [This introduction reprinted from Oxfam America's: "The Other Green Revolution: How Farmers Reclaimed the Desert to Create an Agricultural Future for Africa".] AllAfrica talked to Yacouba Savadodo, who spoke through a translator. (AllAfrica)

Land reform has always been a popular part of political rhetoric for a democratic South Africa, but agrarian transformation has not been realized in the post-apartheid era. The vast majority of agricultural land is still owned by whites. Black landowners tend to have tiny plots in the former homelands. (AllAfrica)

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) considers gender mainstreaming, or involving women in farming development efforts, an essential component of its efforts to improve food security in Africa. This is especially the case when it comes to economic empowerment. Annina Lubbock is Ifad's senior technical advisor for gender and household food security. She oversees how to improve the impact of Ifad's programs, both in terms of loans and grants, as well as empowering women to achieve gender equality. (AllAfrica)

In South Africa's not-too-distant past, the image of a commercial farmer usually brought to mind middle-aged white men in short pants or, in a few cases, black farmers struggling against the odds to compete in far-away markets. (AllAfrica)

The debate around genetically modified (GM) crops in South Africa has flared up once again after the rejection of a permit application for the general release of the SpuntaG2, a potato that is resistant to the Potato Tuber Moth (PTM). While the developers argue that this potato is a blessing to small-scale farmers, who suffer the most from the pest, other organizations reject these claims. (AllAfrica)

The recent rejection of a permit application for the general release in South Africa of a potato that has been genetically altered has received a standing ovation from the African Centre of Biodiversity (ACB). (AllAfrica)

Below are snapshots of some of South Africa's successful women farmers. All of them are recent winners of a female farmer competition run by provincial departments of agriculture, rural development and land administration in South Africa. (AllAfrica)

People's rights to work the land – an indispensable pre-condition for food security in Africa – are the subject of two key initiatives by international agencies working to improve agricultural production on the continent. (AllAfrica)

A French Appeal Court in Paris yesterday rejected the demand of the Transparency International (TI) organization for leave to open a probe in France into the estates of three African heads of state. (AllAfrica)

Following is the text of the first Senator Edward Kennedy Memorial Lecture delivered at the University of Pretoria in Pretoria, South Africa (AllAfrica)

A potentially serious infestation of desert locusts has broken out in Mauritania, but experts are hopeful that quickly implemented countermeasures will prevent a  repeat of the plague that hit the region five years ago. (AllAfrica)

A project which began as an effort to empower citizens of Cape Town's poorest neighbourhoods to grow their own food has mushroomed into a scheme for selling vegetables for the city's wealthier residents. (AllAfrica)

Gender inequalities are a key impediment to achieving food security in many households in sub-Saharan Africa. Although women do most of the farming on the continent, growing an estimated 70 percent of its food, they often have little control over the money that their crops generate. (AllAfrica)

Daniel Mataruka is director of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) in Nairobi. The non-profit organization aims to improve the lives and agricultural output of resource-poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Mataruka spoke with AllAfrica.com’s Cindy Shiner about some of the foundation’s projects and prospects for genetically modified (GM) crops on the continent. (AllAfrica)

Digital mapping has been used in the West to ascertain soil variation and help determine why some crops perform better than others in particular regions. In Africa, digital concepts have been largely missing in agricultural planning, but now African scientists are working with their western counterparts to bring the benefits of digital mapping to the continent. Dr. Peter Okoth is the project information manager at the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute in Nairobi. He spoke with AllAfrica contributor Rebecca Wanjiku about the latest in digital mapping. (AllAfrica)

European Union (EU) naval forces seized seven suspected Somali pirates on Tuesday after an attack on a French fishing vessel east of Mogadishu. (AllAfrica)

The European Union (EU) has placed an arms embargo on Guinea and banned members of its military junta from travelling to Europe. (AllAfrica)

Nathaniel Ziayee and his family live in a single-room hut built with mud bricks and palm branches, held firmly together by sticks cut from the bushes that surround their small farm. (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 one of the conversation.What's new about what Agra is doing?We are going to be putting 40% of all our investment in core countries: Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and Somalia - what we call "portfolio one countries." Within those countries, we are drilling down to focus on the "bread basket" areas of high population density, with relatively good infrastructure, relatively good market access, and good agro-ecological environments to stimulate productivity growth. (AllAfrica)