China is stepping into a soft power vacuum created by the new US administration. Since Donald Trump was elected president, the country has eschewed soft power.
A pall of inaction and apathy hangs over Delhi’s reaction to its air pollution crisis.
Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee
Africa has recorded a tremendous growth in its output of academic engineering research over the past 20 years. Greater collaboration can increase this growth even more.
As cities in developing countries - like Lagos in Nigeria, pictured here - grow, so do obesity risks.
Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
Governments must understand that the factors making cities convenient and productive also make their residents prone to obesity. They must confront this challenge with intelligent, focused policies.
Lake Victoria sustains about 200,000 fishers.
Jen Watson/Shutterstock
Social ties between Lake Victoria’s fisherfolk are critical for gaining access to credit, employment, maintaining reliable and skilled labour and access to markets.
New South African research supports evidence that urbanisation has a positive impact on people’s lives and must be managed appropriately for development.
Many girls in Dar es Salaam’s slums drop out of school because of the costs involved.
ICT4D.at/Flickr
Creating more opportunities for young women and girls to work and earn money is a possible solution to early marriages. Subsidising secondary education to keep poorer girls in school is another.
Much more must be done to keep teachers in South Africa.
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Policy needs to focus on making the teaching profession stable and more appealing. South Africa must ensure its locally trained teachers have more reason to stay in the country.
President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have become increasingly divisive figures in Zimbabwe.
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo
The protracted political crisis in Zimbabwe has worsened since President Mugabe fired vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Now the military has entered the fray, raising fears a coup is imminent.
Madonna with her adopted son, David Banda, at an orphanage, 40 km from the capital Lilongwe April 19, 2007.
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
Andrea Freidus, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Voluntourists’ ability to change systems, alleviate poverty or provide support for vulnerable children is limited. They don’t have the skills and can perpetuate patronising and unhelpful ideas.
The Oluwole Urban Market near Marina in Lagos. Being middle class is more than just being a consumer.
Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
Activists often face intransigent regimes and ruthless warlords. But women can use traditional insights into femininity and motherhood for political mobilisation and resistance.
Online retailing is a relatively new phenomenon and a small element of retailing in Africa.
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The rapid penetration of internet technologies in Africa provides hope for e-commerce’s continued growth. Potential online stores need to understand what draws or pushes customers away.
Children play at a school some 50 km south of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe.
Reuters/Antony Njuguna
Malawi’s government wants schools to promote democratic principles. But there’s a contradiction between what students are taught and how they’re expected to behave.
Unlike the European Parliament, the Pan African Parliament does not have supranational law-making powers.
REUTERS/Juda Ngwenya
For real integration to happen, the Pan African Parliament needs to be imbued with supranational law-making powers. But national sovereignty is something that many states are reluctant to give up.
Professor in Practice on Environmental Innovation, School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow, UK, National University of Singapore