Monthly Archives: April 2008

A new photo exhibit on display at the World Bank’s Washington, D.C., Main Complex until November 9 highlights a hopeful vision for Sub-Saharan Africa. The subject is four southern African countries that are helping to show the way through political stability and steady economic development. ...

Described as a hotspot of botanical diversity, there are more than 20,000 indigenous plant species in South Africa. Several thousand of them are used by traditional healers every day in that country for treating a range of problems from the common cold to serious diseases such as AIDS. How safe and effective these treatments are will be the focus of The International Center...

The objective of the project to simplify end user activation of mobile value added service. A value-added service (VAS) is a telecommunication industry term for non-core services or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls. Health, entertainment and financial are just a few of the services that provided by across networks in Africa. ...

William Masters and colleagues are building a novel approach to development assistance, through which donors could reward innovators for the new technologies needed to help African farmers raise their incomes and reduce malnutrition. These “prize rewards” would be cash payments, made to innovators after their technologies are adopted, like a royalty payment...

Despite gains in the second half of the 1990s, Sub­Saharan Africa (Africa) enters the 21 st century with many of the world’s poorest countries. Average income per capita is lower than at the end of the 1960s. Incomes, assets, and access to essential services are unequally distributed. And the region contains a growing share of the world’s absolute poor, who...

Biofuel holds great promise for Africa but the research isn’t yet in place to reap the rewards, or analyse the pitfalls, reports Kimani Chege. It is only ten o’clock in the morning and Kenyan taxi-van driver Richard Kamiri is already tired. Throughout the morning he has had to explain to his passengers the reason he has repeatedly hiked the fare. In just a...

The ‘Lisbon Declaration on GMES and Africa’ has been adopted at a meeting of organisations and governmental European and African bodies and entities under the aegis of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Lisbon, Portugal. The Lisbon Declaration falls under the wider framework of the Africa-European Union (EU) Partnership on Science, Information...