The tobacco industry claims that tobacco- growing is essential to the livelihoods of millions of small-scale rural farmers in Malawi, Zambia and Kenya. Research shows that’s untrue.
An image by MeerKAT shows hydrogen gas in M83, a famous spiral galaxy.
SKA SA
A precursor to the Square Kilometre Array- the MeerKAT telescope - is being built right now and remarkable progress has been made in the last 12 months.
A Zenzeleni cooperative member carefully aligns some equipment in the village of Mankosi, Eastern Cape.
Bill Tucker
South Africa has some of the highest mobile voice and data costs in the world. A project to deliver affordable services and keep money in communities with high unemployment rates could be the answer.
Carefully tracking the migration habits of birds like the Barn Swallow can help to conserve these species.
Shutterstock
If Europe is going to reap the benefits of conservation measures at home, its experts need an understanding of where “their” birds migrate to when they head off to Africa.
Zambia has gone from a country where people engaged freely in open political debate to one where most people now look over their shoulders to see who’s listening.
Zambia’s President Edgar Lungu is tightening his grip on power even further.
EPA/Abir Sultan
Zambia’s president is securing powers to consolidate his political control while generating ‘plausible deniability’ to whether or not he has fatally undermined democracy.
Farmers don’t get efficient information on weather changes, improving data can change this.
Flickr/CDKNetwork
Information to weather changes is often unavailable to Africa’s farmers and even if it does exist, the quality is poor or inaccessible to those who need it most.
There are fears that Zambia is slipping into authoritarian rule under President Edgar Lungu.
UN Women/Flickr
The IMF’s decision to go ahead with a bailout package for Zambia, despite the government’s democratic failings, could embolden the president to pursue an authoritarian strategy.
Cheetah’s rarity and elusiveness poses a problem for conservationists who need to know where they still persist, and whether their numbers are increasing or decreasing.
Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been criticised for turning the country into a dictatorship.
Reuters/Rogan Ward
The world’s media, which has in the past found Zambia uninteresting, are suddenly paying more attention to the impoverished nation, for all the wrong reasons.
Danielle Resnick, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
The harassment of informal food vendors by national and municipal governments remains a major impediment to improving the resilience of the urban poor in African cities.
The declining fishing yield in the Lake Tanganyika region is being exacerbated by an influx of refugees.
Reuters/Sala Lewis
Rhodesia’s white supremacists appealed to the white electorate by taking a stand against African liberation. Similarly, Donald Trump appealed to white Americans who feel overwhelmed by globalisation.
Malawi is a country that’s particularly vulnerable to the impact of drought and flood.
Shutterstock
Understanding the connections between basic food demands and accessibility to water and energy is important when it comes to climate change and its impact on agriculture and livelihoods.
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand