“The presidents of Indonesia and Liberia — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — and the prime minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, are to co-chair a U.N. panel to advise on approaches to development after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015,” SciDev.Net reports. “Announcing the chairs to the U.N. General Assembly [on Wednesday], Ban Ki-moon, the U.N.
By WhyDev.org
An article this week in the Times of Swaziland – “Corporal punishment to be phased out soon” – first filled me with encouragement regarding the progress Swaziland has made in its development issues in comparison to other countries. Then it whisked me down memory lane, making a pit stop at one of the mini crises I had dealt with in Ghana as Project Coordinator for an international volunteer organisation. It was the classic nightmare case: a 19-year-old boy from higher income country (HIC)-X imposed his beliefs and culture on another’s after two weeks on his project.Even with several hours of rigorous discussion courses specifically implemented to prevent circumstances such as this, he managed to do exactly what we instructed him to refrain from doing.Our organization placed him in a teaching assistant role with a primary school. This school, along with nearly every other primary school in Ghana, uses corporal punishment as its principal form of discipline.
By WhyDev.org
Women Deliver recently came out with their annual “Women Deliver 50” list of inspiring ideas and solutions put forward by women and girls. The women and groups celebrated in the list cover a broad range of topics and programs, from midwives in Ethiopia to advocating for women’s voices in Libya.One that sparked my interest was “Africans feeding Africa” by Backpack Farm, which is a social enterprise that hosts trainings for small-scale farmers in East Africa and sells them green agriculture technologies and supplies– all in a backpack.I caught the founder, Rachel Zedeck, in the middle of the busy planting season in Kenya, but she managed to spare some time to tell me about their program and some of the challenges in pursuing the social enterprise model.Tanya Cothran: Where does your funding come from? What drew you to the commercial model as opposed to the donor-funded aid model?Rachel Zedek: I used my life savings to build the company, which is a registered LTD (limited company) in Kenya. In retrospect I think I was naïve.
“The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent,” Inter Press Service reports. The article describes the presidents’ comments at a recent women’s right event in Monrovia, Liberia, and says, “[T]he challenges before them are great. Using the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a barometer, Liberia and Malawi generally score low in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, education for girls, and maternal health.”
By Abraar Karan
The first major independent evaluation of the famous Millenium Villages Project (MVP) was released last year by Kenyan economist Bernadette Wanjala of Tilburg University in the Netherlands and has found an insignificant increase in household income in a Millennium Village compared to a control village. This is primarily because the increased agricultural production in the [...]
An article caught my eye in last week’s Lancet. Soofi and colleagues conducted a cluster-randomised controlled trial of community case management of severe pneumonia in children aged 2-59 months in a rural district of Pakistan to try and understand how community health workers might be able to recognize and diagnose pneumonia in this population. Basically, [...]
After visiting Ghana on a recent tour to examine poverty reduction strategies and progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and “one of the world’s most prominent development economists, says Ghana is proving to be one of the strongest performers on the [MDGs] in Africa and unlike some of its African counterparts is likely to fulfill them by the 2015 deadline,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. Ghana “has been investing for a long time in health and education, gender and equality, and it has made a lot of progress. But there are parts of Ghana that are extremely poor and really need a lot of accelerated investments,” Sachs told the Christian Science Monitor during an interview in Accra, according to the news service
Nigeria’s “The Nation” examines whether, with three years until the deadline for attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the country will be able to meet the targets of reducing maternal and infant mortality by one-third as set by the U.N. The newspaper provides statistics from UNICEF regarding maternal and infant mortality in the country and quotes a number of health experts, including Edamisan Temiye, chair of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Lagos State Branch, who “said with the rate Nigeria is going, it may not realize its target of one-third reduction of maternal and infant deaths by 2015.” According to the newspaper, Temiye cites a “virtually failed” immunization program, a high poverty level, and limited access to education, water, and housing as contributing factors to Nigeria’s maternal and infant mortality rates (Adepoju, 1/10).
Jeffery Sachs, PhD – the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon – called on the membership of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to take urgent action Sunday evening. Sachs gave the opening plenary address during the organization’s 60th Annual ( Read more… )
By Humanosphere
Foreign Policy magazine has again issued its list of the 100 top global thinkers. There are some obvious inclusions such as Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu and Mohamed ElBaradai — and perhaps some surprising ones like blogger Andrew Sullivan and neuro-guru Steven Pinker.
“Children’s well-being has improved dramatically thanks to increased global political will and efficient supportive programs and policies, according to a report released [Wednesday] by [UNICEF] and Save the Children U.K., but it also warns that benefits need to reach the most disadvantaged children for gains to be sustainable,” the U.N. News Centre reports, adding, “Among the most prominent accomplishments highlighted by the report is the significant decline in child mortality rates.” According to the news service, “The authors of the report cite a number of factors for these advancements, but place particular emphasis on the high-level commitment and supportive government policies that have placed children’s well-being as a priority” (11/23).
Burundi can ring a bell in some heads: it is one of the poorest countries in the world. The former Belgian colony is a small east African country that went through a long lasting civil war, from 1962 until 1993. Both the 1972 mass killing of Hutus and the 1993 mass killing of Tutsis are still [...]
The title might be a cliché, but some clichés still make sense. Even if most of those who read these words can have very wonderful memories about their school times, the fact is that in our World only a few are able to collect such nice memories. Africa is overwhelmed with conflicts, food crisis and [...]
