Medical records and other health information can now be easily shared via mobile phone and other modern technologies. Such information and communication technologies (ICTs) are an important way for Africa to some of its most pressing challenges. In this article, Africa Renewal magazine examines a project in Rwanda which shows how to bring better health to everyone in Africa with the click of a button.
Activists in South Africa say that equality between men and women will be achieved both by empowering women and by changing men’s behaviour and attitudes. “We realise that if we don’t bring men in as partners, we won’t win the battle.” Africa Renewal magazine examines how men are changing cultural practices to end violence against women.
African women account for about 61 per cent of all adult HIV cases. Although, HIV medicines are available, many do not seek treatment because of their fear of violence. Africa Renewal magazine, in this article, highlights how activists in Southern Africa are contributing to the fight against gender violence to break the link between gender violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Securing land rights has been a struggle for African women. Although they grow most of the food produced in Africa, women rarely have access to land in their own names, Land rights are often held by men or by kinship groups controlled by men. Activists are pressing for changes and in this article, Africa Renewal highlights some of the positive steps that are being taken to secure women’s access to land.
Africa’s vast forests help absorb the “greenhouse gases” that contribute to global warming, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. African countries need international support to help preserve this global asset.
With most formal banks inaccessible to many Africans, the service of mobile phone banking is expanding to the poor on the continent. Africa Renewal’s Mary Kimani examines how financial institutions are extending their services through the ubiquitous usage of cell phones in rural areas.
: New, more accurate United Nations estimates of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide reveal that deaths from the global epidemic have started to decline slightly. But there is no room for complacency, especially in Africa, where the disease persists at “nightmare” levels. Africa Renewal’s Ernest Harsch highlights the revision of the HIV/AIDS estimates and the call for the international community to increase funding for the fight against the epidemic.
Postponing childbirth, involving men, and addressing cultural practices that put women at risk of death or disability during pregnancy could help reduce maternal mortality in Africa. Africa Renewal’s Mary Kimani highlights some of the social barriers to maternal well-being on the continent.
Africa would like to join China, India, Brazil and other developing countries in benefiting from the Kyoto Protocol’s new Clean Development Mechanism. The hydro-electric power station on the Nyagak River in Uganda’s West Nile region is just one small example of how Africans can benefit from investments designed to help prevent climate change and global warming. Africa Renewal looks at the United Nations Nairobi Framework to see what it can do to make sure Africa wins its fair share of “green” development dollars.
With peace returning to war ravaged parts of Africa, communities, governments and human rights activists are struggling to balance the need to disarm and demobilize former fighters with the cries for justice from their victims. Africa Renewal weighs the issues and examines African responses to the sometimes contradictory demands of justice and of peace.
In Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and the Congo, radio was used to fan genocide and war. Now a new generation of broadcasters, with help from the United Nations, is using the airwaves for peace. Africa is tuning in but can peace radio stay on air? Africa Renewal's Mary Kimani looks at what is needed for the media to continue promoting peace on the continent.
Finding the best way to deliver clean water to the poor is a challenge in regions around the world and Africa is no exception. Is government the best supplier or is the private sector the way to go? Africa Renewal’s Efam Dovi examines the experiences of different countries as they try to keep the water flowing.
After years of neglect, Africa must play catch-up in the fast-moving world of science and technology. With a new plan, NEPAD, and new determination, African leaders and the UN are looking for new ways to boost the continent’s inventors and innovators, and give agriculture, industry and commerce a high-tech shot in the arm. Africa Renewal’s Gumisai Mutume reports.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s new envoy for AIDS in Africa, Elizabeth Mataka, is the first African and the first woman to hold the post. In an exclusive interview with Africa Renewal’s Michael Fleshman, Ms. Mataka lays out her agenda for tackling the disease and calls for an “African solution” to the crisis by empowering the women.
Agreement on a proposal to lay an underwater fibre-optic cable from South Africa to Sudan is a major breakthrough for telephone and Internet service in Africa. The $300 mn project will save African consumers and businesses $1 bn a year and improve the speed and reliability of telephone, Internet and data transmission service. When completed Africa will be ringed with modern telecommunications cables as envisaged by the continent’s development plan, NEPAD. Africa Renewal’s Itai Madamombe highlights this development.
Four years on, a Mozambique-South African gas pipeline is fueling economic growth and regional cooperation in Southern Africa. It challenges Western assumptions of a natural resources “curse” in Africa and offers evidence that the African development blueprint NEPAD is beginning to deliver on its development and economic integration promises. Africa Renewal’s Itai Madamombe examines this form of partnership.
Whether it is the impact of global warming or environmental degradation, agricultural conditions are becoming more difficult in many parts of Africa. Africa Renewal highlights how officials, farmers and activists in Burkina Faso are responding to the challenge.
The situation of women is improving in a number of African countries. Governments are providing more opportunities for women’s development but there is still a long way to go. The empowerment of women is a major goal of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the region’s blueprint for development. Africa Renewal reviews NEPAD’s commitment to the status of women on the continent.
Men who commit domestic and other forms of violence against women in Africa often go unpunished because of poorly functioning justice systems and discrimination. Women’s rights activists are mobilizing to protect women against violence. Africa Renewal highlights some of the ways women are working for change.
Transnational crime syndicates have found havens for their operations in Africa. With many governments lacking strong law enforcement capability, crime networks are on the rise on the continent. Africa Renewal analyzes what more can be done to fight organized crime.
The current trade talks between Europe and its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are spurring public debate about who benefits from free trade. Some major African groups are speaking out against the proposed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Africa Renewal analyzes the impact of trade liberalization in Africa and identifies alternatives to the current EPAs.
There is mounting concern around the world about the threat to people everywhere posed by climate change, as billions of tons of industrial wastes spew into the atmosphere each year, trapping too much of the sun’s heat and causing dangerous changes in climate and weather patterns around the world.
There is wide recognition that Africa, the region least responsible for generating the polluting “greenhouse gases” that cause global warming, will need significant financial aid to cope with its effects. Whether this money will be available is an open question. Africa is already struggling to find funds to lift its people out of poverty, and it has failed to attract investment in projects that will protect the African environment. Despite world leaders’ promises to increase assistance to developing countries, aid actually dropped last year by over 5 per cent.
In Burkina Faso, Abel Raogo, a farmer in Ipelcé, Burkina Faso, and Hamadou Tamboura, who raises livestock in nearby Sapouy, do not talk of “climate change,” an idea that features in national and international debates. But they see clearly the danger posed by poor soils, drying rivers and other environmental changes — and they want urgent, concrete solutions to those problems.
As recently as February, fighting raged between rebel militia fighters and government soldiers in the Ituri forests of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But on 8 May, following the agreement of the militia commanders to finally disarm, more than 200 members of the group handed in their weapons to United Nations peacekeepers in Doi, northeast of Bunia, the regional capital.
As crude oil prices soar on the world market, many African oil-importing countries are starting to think more seriously about ways to lessen their dependence on the fuel. They fear that continued high spending for imported oil may jeopardize the economic growth they have registered in recent years. As a result, alternative forms of energy are starting to look more attractive.
African
leaders are expressing a renewed sense of urgency about tackling
unemployment among young people and are beginning to develop and
implement plans to create jobs in the region. However, most employment
policies still fail to take into account the particular needs of young
people or the fact that creating employment for women often poses its
own challenges.
In many disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) initiatives around the world, "women combatants are often invisible and their needs are overlooked," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has observed. While the participation of women in combat has been minimal in some of Africa's recent conflicts, in others, as in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, women have taken part in significant numbers.
The seasonal rains returned to southern Niger in June, coaxing the green millet stalks from the dry earth and signalling an end, hopefully, to a food shortage that has left some 2.4 million Nigeriens —-- including 800,000 children —-- vulnerable to malnutrition. International relief workers have also started to arrive to distribute the emergency rations needed until the harvest is in.
But neither the millet nor the aid came soon enough for Fassoma Abdoulsalam. The one-year-old died on 10 August, one of some two dozen children to succumb to malnutrition in the village of Birgi Dangotcho in the hard-hit Zinder region.
On 10 December, 2004, the noted environmentalist, women's rights activist and pro-democracy campaigner Ms. Wangari Maathai became the first African woman -- and one of only 12 women in history -- to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She first gained international recognition in 1977, when she founded the Green Belt Movement to combat deforestation and soil erosion in her native Kenya. Nearly three decades and 30 mn trees later, the movement had literally transformed the Kenyan landscape and become an influential force for democracy and women's rights.
During an exclusive interview with Africa Renewal in New York on 19 December, the 64-year-old biologist spoke about her long struggle for environmental and social justice and challenged African governments to "do their part" to accelerate Africa's social and economic development. She spoke about the connection between human rights, democracy and environmental conservation, and called on industrialized countries to support African initiatives for peace, democracy and environmental justice.
United Nations, New York, 4 October 2004 -- Africa today is afflicted by fewer serious armed conflicts than it was just six years ago, says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. When he issued his first major report on the causes of conflict in Africa in 1998, there were 14 countries in the midst of war and another 11 were suffering from severe political turbulence. Today, Mr. Annan notes in his annual follow-up report, just a half-dozen African countries are suffering from serious armed conflicts, among them Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. And very few other countries are facing deep political crises.
United Nations, New York, 29 September 2004 -- Industrial nations need to play fair in international trade if African countries are to benefit from the opportunities opening up in the global marketplace. This is a key message of the Economic Report on Africa 2004 - Unlocking Africa's Trade Potential, released today by the Addis Ababa-based UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The report examines constraints -- some created by policies in donor countries, others homegrown -- that Africa faces as it struggles to take its place in the world economy.
United Nations, New York, 17 September 2004 -- African countries are making considerable progress in carrying out their continental plan, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says. Yet to help them surmount the serious challenges they continue to face, he argues in his second annual report on NEPAD's implementation, Africans also require firmer and more coherent support from the international community. This should entail more aid, debt relief, foreign investment and trade opportunities. It also should involve greater consistency in external policies, so that advances on one front are not undercut by lags on another.
United Nations, New York, 20 July 2004 -- International support for NEPAD, the African development roadmap, will be strengthened by an international panel of eminent economists, development practitioners and academics newly appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Special Adviser on Africa, Ibrahim Gambari, said at a New York press briefing today.
United Nations, New York, 14 July 2004 -- African countries are taking concrete steps towards integrating their economies -- building regional communities, adopting common currencies and increasing trade with each other -- and laying the groundwork for the establishment of an African Economic Community which, like the European Union, could enable them to benefit from larger markets.
Reprint edition of Africa Recovery articles on AIDS
NEW:
Africa map with newly released
data (14 July 2004)
on Adult HIV rates per country (PDF
version, 66 k)
Ten years after one of the most horrific genocides of the 20th century, Rwanda is still in the process of rebuilding its devastated society. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, meanwhile, is challenging the international community to take steps to avert any similar catastrophe anywhere in the world. On 7 April -- the anniversary of the start of the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda -- he will outline a UN plan of action to prevent genocide.
Local Nigerian suspicions fuelled by the war on terrorism and disputed safety tests of UN-supplied vaccines have halted a vital immunization campaign in the northern part of that West African country. The controversy is jeopardizing what the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as the world's "best and perhaps last" chance to eliminate polio entirely. Since the immunization campaign was suspended in October, the polio strains unique to the area have spread to southern Nigeria and seven other West African countries -- Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. The outbreak has required costly new immunization campaigns in these otherwise polio-free areas and is endangering a 15-year, $3 bn international effort to completely eradicate the crippling illness.
On 28 November the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interviewed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the struggle against HIV/AIDS, his own personal reflections about the the scourge and the urgent need for more concerted action by political leaders and ordinary citizens to help those suffering from the disease or threatened by it.
Nearly a year after the UN General Assembly first endorsed the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the body convened again on 15-16 October to review the plan's progress. Delegate after delegate, from poor and rich countries alike, noted the many difficulties facing Africa, but also found signs of improvement, notably a modest rise in donor assistance and progress towards peace in some of the continent's most deadly armed conflicts.
Over the past year, there has been progress by both African countries and the international community in implementing the continent's development plan, reports United Nations Under-Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari. African countries have increased spending for health and education, are coordinating efforts to promote regional transportation and communications links and have set up a peer review mechanism to improve standards of political governance, economic management and respect for human rights. Meanwhile, the donor countries, including the industrialized nations' Group of Eight, have modestly increased aid flows to Africa, reversing a decade-long decline to the continent.
Japan and other Asian countries reaffirmed their backing for Africa's own initiatives for development and peace at the close of a three-day summit meeting in Tokyo of leaders from the two continents. "We . . . pledge to support Africa's ownership," especially in implementation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the delegates stated in their final declaration.
Declaring the inability of the poor to obtain HIV/AIDS medications "a global health emergency," the Director-General of WHO, the World Health Organization, Dr. Lee Jong-wook, announced plans to provide life-saving anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to 3 million people by the end of 2005, including 2 million in Africa. Only 50,000 of the estimated 30 million Africans infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS have access to ARVs, which have dramatically reduced fatalities in wealthy countries.
United Nations, New York, 30 July 2003 -- Reflecting the weaker global economy, the negative effects of low commodity prices in 2001, drought in East and Southern Africa and armed conflict in several countries, the performance of African economies fell short of expectations in 2002. External factors, such as the decision by the US to increase agricultural subsidies and the stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on reforming farm trade, do not bode well for the continent, notes the Economic Report on Africa 2003, released 30 July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
Reports of government neglect, discrimination, intimidation, violence and other violations of human, political and civil rights were rife as representatives of the the world's marginalized indigenous populations met at UN headquarters in May. "The state does not care about us," said Ms. Adolphine Muley, of the Batwa pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Because of the war there, she told the 12-23 May Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, "the situation is even worse."
"There will be no stability and prosperity in the world in the 21st century unless the problems of Africa are resolved," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi emphasized during a 12-14 May visit to Tokyo by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. Both the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) featured prominently in the discussions between the two leaders, and President Wade praised Japan for its lasting partnership with Africa.
African leaders are pressing the international community to not let the enormous challenges of post-war reconstruction in Iraq again relegate their continent's needs to the "back burner," as South African President Thabo Mbeki characterizes the problem.
"Clearly the attention is now on Iraq," Lesotho's Finance Minister Timothy Thahane observed during the annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, in April. "Yesterday it was on Kosovo and Eastern Europe."
Alarmed by the many wars on their continent, African leaders recently met for the first extraordinary summit of heads of state of the newly constituted African Union (AU), to give fresh impetus to their search for peace.
The 28 heads of state and six prime ministers, who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the first week of February, agreed that they must ratify, as soon as possible, a protocol to create a Peace and Security Council within the African Union. More immediately, they decided to send a peace mission to Burundi, embroiled in a decade-long civil war, under the terms of a December 2002 ceasefire agreement between the government and rebel forces.
Already battered by the world's highest HIV/AIDS infection rates, Southern Africa is now reeling under the weight of a widespread drought that threatens entire countries with a devastating famine. Returning to New York from a two-week tour of Southern Africa at the end of January, Mr. Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, delivered a dire message: the interlocking HIV/AIDS and hunger crises are causing a breakdown not only in agriculture, but throughout all sectors. "Some government officials have said it feels like an overall societal collapse and that they are fighting for survival," he told reporters following his joint tour with Mr. James Morris, executive director of the UN World Food Programme.
Final Review: United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa
The international community this week begins a month-long special session of the UN General Assembly that will determine its support for Africa's new development programme.
In a major break with the past, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is recommending endorsement of Africa's own initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), instead of another UN-sponsored programme. For the New Partnership to succeed, Mr. Annan emphasizes, both African governments and the world's richest countries must adhere to their commitments. In particular, he proposed, developed countries should double the aid they provide to Africa and open their markets to more African goods.
UN Africa Recovery, New York -- The world will be watching the leaders of the richest countries to see if they live up to the pledges they have made to Africa, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the close of the 26-27 June Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Kananaskis, Canada. A key test, he said, will come at the UN-sponsored World Summit for Sustainable Development, to be held in South Africa, "in the heart of a region acutely affected by poverty, by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and now also affected by a terrible drought, with a serious threat of famine in several countries." He urged all the G-8 leaders to attend the summit, to be held 26 August4 September in Johannesburg.
Final Review of UN-NADAF
(United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa)
A panel of experts has just concluded an independent evaluation
of developments in Africa over the last decade.
Africa Recovery, New York -- World leaders ended a three-day summit at UN headquarters in New York on 10 May by promising to build "a world fit for children." But nowhere will that pledge be more difficult to honour than Africa, where poverty, disease and war have engulfed tens of millions of children and their families. African children spoke out loud and clear at the conference and African leaders promised to do their part. Will the world match its words with deeds?
New issue posted: Volume 16 #1, April 2002
The fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa got a major boost today with the announcement of the first round of grants approved by the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund, a multilateral funding agency launched last year by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, approved a total of $378 mn over two years for treatment and prevention programmes to combat the three deadly diseases in 31 countries around the world. This includes 17 sub-Saharan African countries which will receive $145 mn in the first year. An additional 18 projects in 12 countries, totalling $238 mn, have been placed on a "fast track" for final approval within the next six weeks, bringing the total committed by the fund today to $616 mn over the next two years. Nearly three-quarters of the funding went to combat AIDS and related diseases. Sixteen per cent of the grants went to anti-tuberculosis projects, with the remaining 10 per cent directed at programmes to combat malaria.
In 1990 the world's leaders gathered at UN headquarters for
the World Summit for Children and solemnly pledged to build them
a better world. "There can be no task nobler," the
leaders said, "than giving every child a better future."
For Africa's children, however, it remains a task undone. Today,
12 years after those promises were made, African kids are poorer,
sicker, less likely to be in school and much more likely to die
in childhood than children in any other part of the world.
This special collection of Africa Recovery articles, prepared for the May 2002 UN Special Session on Children, looks at African children and the critical economic, social and political challenges they face. One article provides an overview of the economic and social condition of African children a decade after the World Summit declaration. Other articles explore education, the mounting crisis of AIDS orphans and the victimization of children in armed conflict. Articles on the trafficking of children, the use of child labour, and efforts to end a traditional form of sexual slavery of girls in Ghana underscore the scope and complexity of the dangers African children and their families confront. The example of Mali, however, shows that limited financing need not hold back progress, provided the political commitment is there.
The articles have been selected to highlight African children's urgent needs and strengthen their claim to "first call" on the world's humanitarian and development resources. But the setbacks of the past decade are a reminder that solemn declarations and good intentions are meaningless unless accompanied by political will and economic resources. The cost of meeting these commitments undoubtedly is high. But the price of failure, as these articles seek to show, is immeasurably higher. Nothing less than Africa's future is at stake.
United Nations, New York -- Diplomatic efforts to end the decades-long Angolan civil war after the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi have shifted into high gear with the arrival in Luanda of Ibrahim Gambari, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special adviser on Africa. The veteran diplomat arrived in the Angolan capital 72 hours after the government and UNITA rebels initialled a ceasefire and agreed to resume negotiations over implementation of the 1994 peace plan, known as the Lusaka Protocol. He attended the signing of a formal truce between the two sides on 4 April and delivered a personal message from Mr. Annan to Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos.
New issue posted: Volume 15 #4, December 2001
Africa made some notable gains in the shifting economic and political sands of the 9-14 November World Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar. But developing countries also reluctantly gave ground to Northern demands for talks aimed at opening up whole new areas of the global economy to liberalization. WTO head Mike Moore termed Doha a success, but at what cost, and to whom?
They call it "women's gold." When crushed and processed, the nuts of the shea tree yield a vegetable fat known as shea butter. It has long been a common ingredient in local foods and soap, but its qualities also make it a valuable export, for use in the manufacture of chocolate and cosmetics. The tree grows throughout the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, but the largest concentration is in Burkina Faso, where exports of shea butter and unprocessed shea kernels brought in CFA5 bn ($7 mn) in 2000, making it the country's third most important export, after cotton and livestock.
New
Issue: Volume 15 #3, October 2001
On the eve of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting, scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar, from 9-13 November, African countries are unified in their opposition to a new round of trade negotiations. This could again halt efforts by industrial nations to launch formal talks on further liberalizing global trade.
Together with other developing regions, Africa blocked the launch of a new "round" at the WTO's last ministerial meeting, in Seattle in December 1999, on the grounds that the continent had not seen any benefits from the agreements it had signed as part of the 1994 Uruguay Round. According to the UN Development Programme, some 70 per cent of gains registered have gone to industrialized nations; the remainder mostly to a few large export-oriented, developing countries.
Related box:
Africa's agenda for a 'development' round
>>Full story
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative will not go far enough to relieve Tanzania's external debt, Finance Minister Basil Mramba recently told parliament. While the programme has provided some relief during the last two years, he said, Tanzania still owes billions of dollars to its foreign lenders. Under current conditions, it would take a long time for the country to get rid of its debt.
Tanzania's situation mirrors that of many other sub-Saharan African countries that have qualified for debt relief -- a substantial lowering of debt initially, with rising obligations as new money is borrowed to service old debt and finance basic development programmes.
Related boxes:
Channelling debt savings to social development
Foreign investment to Africa slips
>>Full story
Mr. Kamran Kousari is one of the senior African development specialists at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and has been responsible for a number of the agency's major reports on Africa. Over the past year, UNCTAD has been pushing strongly for doubling foreign aid to Africa -- a "Marshall Plan." Africa Recovery interviewed Mr. Kousari at UNCTAD's headquarters, in Geneva. >>Full story
Africa and African leaders dominated the debate at the three-day UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS that ended in New York on 27 June. Just two months after convening in Abuja to consider emergency measures to combat the pandemic (see Africa Recovery, June 2001), 17 African heads of state and government attended the special session to affirm their commitment to strengthen domestic anti-AIDS efforts and call for expanded international support.
New York -- Africa has joined other regions of the world in applauding the unanimous election of Mr. Kofi Annan to a second term as UN Secretary-General embracing him both as a global statesman and as an advocate for the continent in the global economic and political system. Speaking on behalf of the African ambassadors at the UN, Nigerian Chief Representative Arthur Mbanefo said of the Ghanaian-born international civil servant, "We in Africa are very proud of this African son."
NEW ISSUE
POSTED! Volume 15 #1-2, June 2001
"AIDS is not an African problem alone," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has declared. "AIDS is a global problem. But if we do not win in Africa, we are not going to win anywhere else." He was speaking to African leaders, policy-makers and activists who met recently in Nigeria to map out the continent's strategy to combat a disease that already has taken 17 million African lives and infected tens of millions more. That effort is a key component of the global fight against AIDS, to be furthered at a special session of the UN General Assembly 25-27 June, as Africa Recovery goes to press with this double issue focusing on HIV/AIDS.
| Drug price plunge
energizes AIDS fight [ related box ] |
html document | download pdf |
| Africa puts fight against AIDS
at forefront [ related boxes ] |
html document | download pdf |
| Interview with Stephen Lewis | html document | download pdf |
| Health and 'intellectual property' | html document | download pdf |
| AIDS prevention in the military | html document | download pdf |
| AIDS takes an economic and social toll [ related box ] |
html document | download pdf |
| Senegal's recipe for success | html document | download pdf |
| Uganda beating back AIDS | html document | download pdf |
| Interview with Dr. Ebrahim Samba | html document | download pdf |
| Linking AIDS fight with devlopment | html document | download pdf |
The central districts of many of Africa's major cities now boast numerous skyscrapers of cement, glass and steel. But far into the distance spread Africa's real urban conglomerations: unplanned, chaotic settlements built of wood, corrugated metal sheeting, mud bricks and whatever other materials may be at hand. They have only dirt roads and open sewer ditches. They lack piped water, refuse collection, electricity and most other basic municipal services.
Full story
Related boxes:
[Land rights in Nairobi]
[Nakuru, Kenya: Cleaning a
town, from the ground up]
[Senegal experiments with
decentralization]