A team of 23 swimmers, aged between 11 and 23, will represent Namibia at the XXI Africa Aquatics Zone IV Championships in Manzini, Eswatini from 3 to 6 September. Both teams will have the task to defend their championship winning titles from the 2024 Zone IV Championships. According to a press release issued by the…
Climate change is going to be expensive for all of us. The only question really is whether we are prepared to pay for it. I think I can count on one hand the number of things for which I’m prepared to pay more than I absolutely have to. A friend once told me he realised…
The global health body described suicide as a devastating outcome of mental health conditions, which claimed an estimated 727,000 lives in 2021. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says more than one billion people are currently living with mental health disorders, making it one of the most pressing public health challenges worldwide. The figure, published in…
Global education funding is facing sharp reductions that could leave an extra six million children out of school by 2026, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday. Official Development Assistance (ODA) for education is projected to fall by $3.2 billion – a 24 per cent drop from 2023 – with just three donor governments…
Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the water used to…
West Africa is navigating one of its most turbulent democratic cycles in decades. Coups in Mali, Guinea, Niger, and Burkina Faso have challenged regional stability, while civiliangovernments elsewhere face rising discontent and shrinking legitimacy. Civil discontent in Togo threatens national stability, and in Côte d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara’s is potentially bidding for a fourth term,…
Burkina Faso Passes Law Criminalizing Homosexual Acts Burkina Faso’s transitional parliament passed a bill banning homosexual acts, a year after the cabinet adopted a draft of an amended family code criminalising homosexuality. The law, unanimously approved, imposed prison sentences of two to five years and fines, with foreign nationals facing deportation. Justice Minister Edasso…
As Malawi prepares for national elections this September, women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health has taken center stage in political dialogue. In a two-day engagement organized by Amref Health Africa in Malawi under the Collaborative Advocacy Action Plan (CAAP), more than 20 civil society organizations met with the country’s four major political parties—MCP, UTM, UDF, and…
STORY HIGHLIGHTS Imran Abba Jihad, a disabled farmer in southwest Ethiopia, improved his livelihood through poultry farming under the Livestock and Fisheries Sector Development Project (LFSDP), gaining income, skills, and food security. LFSDP, a national initiative backed by the World Bank, has empowered 3.2 million farmers–including women, youth, and people with disabilities–by providing training, livestock,…
What’s the link between an exploding star, climate change and human evolution? Francis Thackeray, who has researched ancient environments and fossils for many years, sets out his ideas about what happened in the distant past – with enormous consequences. Global cooling that happened millions of years ago was thought to be the result of ocean…
