By focusing on evidence to inform policy, Africa can tackle some major problems.
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Africa has a real challenge when it comes to using academic research and evidence to design policies.
People feel a real sense of community in slums like Kibera in Nairobi.
EPA-EFE/DAI KUROKAWA
Moving people without taking their social and economic concerns into consideration isn’t the way to deal with urban slums.
Small businesses around Africa should be benefiting from e-commerce.
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E-commerce companies should deliberately build systems that are structured to provide supportive business environments for small and medium enterprises.
Students in a Nairobi slum school. There are more than monetary barriers for parents from poor neighbourhoods.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
Getting more children into secondary school in Kenya requires striking a balance between top-down policy and bottom-up implementation.
One of the refugee camps in Dadaab, northern Kenya, where more than 300,000 call home.
EPA/Boris Roessler
Kenya may never close Dadaab, but it has good reasons for wishing to do so
A new act is trying to lock down cyber crime in Kenya.
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Kenya’s new Computer and Cyber Crime Act must not be abused by the criminal justice system.
Devolving power and resources from the centre to the counties was a key pillar of Kenya’s 2010 referendum vote.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
In many counties, there are new health centres, roads and street lights that wouldn’t be there without devolution.
About 40% of Nairobi’s water supply gets lost on the way to consumers.
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The beauty of rainwater harvesting is that anybody can do it.
An elephant in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. The country wants the death penalty for poachers.
EPA-EFE/Dai Kurokawa
The death penalty and military intervention to combat poaching, isn’t the answer to saving endangered species.
Conservationists are at loggerheads about how to save elephants from poaching.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
Improving livelihoods by exploring alternatives to wildlife trade would help to curb the poaching of threatened species like elephants.
Kenya Wildlife Service rangers on patrol at the Meru National Park.
Flickr/IFAW
Kenya’s death penalty proposal is not the quick fix solution to curb wildlife poaching.
A woman sells charcoal in Nairobi, Kenya.
Flickr/Laura Rantanen
There are some big misconceptions about the charcoal sector and its role in environmental damage.
Farmers need support, investment and knowledge to thrive.
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Africa’s declaration to boost agriculture on the continent has seem some progress but a lot still needs to be done.
A woman harvests groundnuts in Malawi. Land ownership does not automatically empower women.
ILRI/Flickr
We found that even when women own land, their husbands are still perceived as household heads.
Voting – perhaps in vain – for the Ugandan opposition.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
Elections are easy to rig, and they give authoritarian leaders a veneer of legitimacy they badly need.
Millions of people without electricity access in Africa live close to existing power grid infrastructure.
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There are millions of energy poor people in sub-Saharan Africa who live in cities.
Seasonal influenza is a serious public health problem.
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Influenza is an important cause of severe respiratory illness in Kenya especially among children below two years of age.
African countries holding elections increases the quality of civil liberties.
EPA/Stringer
The process of institutionalisation may be patchy and uneven. But one thing is clear: Africa is not without functioning institutions.
Kenyan public university lecturers protest low pay and poor working conditions in Nairobi.
CrowdSpark/Maureen Ojiambo
Staff wages are a huge challenge facing the survival of Kenya’s public universities, but strikes are another.
A young boy collects maize spilled during the drying and loading process on a farm in Kenya.
EPA/Stephen Morrison
Post-harvest management will reduce losses and improve food availability.