NewsTrust - Africa - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

African Children Denounced As "Witches" By Christian Pastors

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 18 (Special Report) - EKET, Nigeria — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall. His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Mapping out refugees and asylum seekers worldwide

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - Oct. 14 (News Report) - In our show tonight, we take a look at Indonesia, where hundreds of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who fled the violence back home are now threatening to blow themselves up. We also explore how police have mounted operations to wipe out makeshift camps around Calais in northern France. Hamish MacDonald reports on the predominantly Afghan [...]

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Kenya: Waiting for El Nino

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Samuel Maina - Oct. 09 (Special Report) - Kenyans are waiting for the El Nino rains anticipated between now and December 2009 with mixed feelings. Inasmuch as the El Nino is itself a natural disaster that in it's ‘moderate' form is expected to displace at least 100,000 people and leave 750,000 in need of humanitarian aid according to IRIN, most Kenyans actually want [...]

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What Really Happened in Rwanda?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Christian Davenport/Allan C. Stam - Oct. 06 (Special Report) - Researchers Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam say the accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete, and the full truth — inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government — needs to come out.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Thousands of Sudanese flood victims need urgent help

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

reliefweb.int - Sep. 18 (News Report) - Entire communities in Khartoum were left without shelter when 20,000 homes from informal settlements were unable to hold out to the force of rushing waters after it rained incessantly for six hours on the 26th of August. The heavy showers that have pounded the region for the last three weeks have also left a death toll of 20 people and injured 30 others due to collapsed buildings, electric shocks and drowning. Extensive damage was also caused to infrastructure.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

New report on future scenarios in Sudan

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

reliefweb.int - Sep. 18 (Special Report) - Sudan is planning to hold elections in April 2010 and a referendum on southern autonomy the following year, but beyond this the future is uncertain, says a report entitled "Sudan 2012 - Scenarios for the Future".

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Straight Talk: Revealing the Real US-Africa Policy

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Gerald LeMelle - Jul. 06 (News Report) - Like the Cold War, the Global War on Terror establishes a rationale for bolstering U.S. military presence and support in Africa. Yet official pronouncement of U.S. policy is routinely presented as if neither of these two developments occurred. Unfortunately, the more evasive we are about our intentions on the continent, the more we invite not only skepticism, but even resistance.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Young Latinas and Sex - NAM

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New America Media - May. 29 (News Report) - WASHINGTON -- One in two Latina teenagers in the United States gets pregnant before the age of 20, according to a study published May 19 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez called the statistic a "disaster" that reflects the ineffectiveness of the abstinence-only policy pushed by the Bush administration. Nationally, pregnancy rates among adolescents have declined nearly 35 percent since 1991, but the rate among Hispanic women has grown at twice the national average. In the study, only half (49 percent) of girls said that their parents had given them information about contraception.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Fall and Rise of Zuma

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - May. 19 (News Analysis) - Media disdain one day, a new respect the next. Jacob Zuma's election as president of South Africa capped a remarkable political comeback. His savvy and charisma helped reverse a political downfall fueled by corruption and fraud.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Climate Change to Shrink Agricultural Production by Half

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Inter Press Service - By Kristin Palitza - Apr. 21 (Special Report) - Environmental researchers predict Southern Africa will be hit heavily by climate change over the next 70 years. Agricultural production is projected to be halved - a development that will threaten the livelihoods of farmers in a region where 70 percent of the population are smallholder farmers.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Somalia Piracy Began in Response to Illegal Fishing and Toxic Dumping by Western Ships off Somali Coast

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Mohamed Abshir Waldo, Amy Goodman - Apr. 14 (News Analysis) - While the pirates story has dominated the corporate media, there has been little to no discussion of the root causes driving piracy. We speak with consultant and analyst Mohamed Abshir Waldo. In January, he wrote a paper titled “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?”

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The global economic downturn makes more African children go hungry.

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Tristan McConnell - Apr. 02 (News Report) - NAIROBI, Kenya — El Wak in northeastern Kenya is more than 7,000 miles from Wall Street, and some 4,000 miles from world leaders meeting today at the G20 summit in London. But the children there are already feeling the pinch from the global economic meltdown.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Somali refugees' path of hardship

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Tristan McConnell - Mar. 30 (News Report) - The escalating violence in Somalia has meant that in the past year 165 people a day fled to the camps. At least 13 percent of the refugees in the camps are malnourished. Disease outbreaks are common. In February, cholera struck.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

France seals African uranium deals

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

mwcnews.net - Mar. 28 (News Report) - "Obviously we're here because we need your uranium but we're also here because we need strategic partners and Niger is a strategic partner that is absolutely essential," Sarkozy said. The former French colony is a major source of uranium for Areva.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ethanol's African Landgrab

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Adam Welz - Mar. 17 (Special Report) - ProCana is just the first in a long line of massive biofuel projects backed by investors ranging from local speculators to multinational corporations like BP. Some have asked the government—which legally owns all land here—for entire districts (the equivalent of US counties). Government officials told me that as of 2007, biofuel investors had applied for rights to use about 12 million acres, nearly one-seventh the country's 89 million acres of arable land; unofficial tallies are double that. The message is clear: This country, almost twice the size of California, is beckoning the plow. ProCana and its ilk are the vanguard of an underreported land revolution—a movement that could reshape vast terrains and the livelihoods of millions as international agribusiness sets its sights on the cheap soil of Africa.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Blackwater's New Frontier: Their Own Private Africa

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Bruce Falconer, Daniel Schulman - Mar. 11 (Special Report) - If the sheer number of companies represented at the ipoa conference is any indication, Blackwater's envoys will run into plenty of their competitors—and that makes some observers uneasy. "You start bringing these people on the scene, they come in as trainers, but at the drop of a hat they can be other things," said the ngo security director. "They have skills, they have something to bring, but it's a double-edged sword, and it depends on which edge is being presented."

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Genuine Education For All, essential to Vision 2020 — Pai Obanya

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

vanguardngr.com - By Olubusuyi Adenipekun - Jan. 29 (News Report) - In an attempt to employ the instrumentality of education to fast-track the realisation of Vision 2020, some stakeholders have stressed the need for Nigeria to embrace a type of education which is not synonymous to schooling. The system of education they are clamouring for is Genuine Education For All (GEFA) which implies education in all its possible ramifications to all segments of the population, and most importantly, as a lifelong process. The arrowhead of GEFA is Professor Pai Obanya, an international education strategist. According to Obanya, the prevailing notion of equating education with schooling leads to the exclusion of a large number of “educables” within a society from benefitting from education and that this narrow conception of education also prevents a government from linking education intimately with other national development sectors, adding that the country is thus unable to harness the education potentials of all sectors of national life, as well as of all social and economic activities of society.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

the international window into East African business opportunities - How women can bridge the pension gap

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Business Daily Africa - By Wanjiru Waithaka - Jan. 26 (News Report) - In Kenya, women have traditionally invested in mutual aid societies or merry-go-rounds, church groups, or cooperatives, and in their children by providing them with an education with the expectation that they will take care of them in old age.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Out of Africa

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Carl Gershman, Maina Kiai - Jan. 23 (Special Report) - Obama's rise to the presidency is a vindication of this vision of post- racialism, and the impact it has had on American democracy illuminates an even more profound observation Mboya offered, almost in passing, about race in America. Commenting on the gains that blacks had made in Africa and elsewhere in the 1960s, he wrote that American society had "been forced to undergo a genuine social revolution in response to the black struggle." This was true as far as it went--the black struggle was, indeed, the spark that ignited a broader social revolution. But it was able to do so in the same way the anti- slavery movement had transformed America a century earlier--by mobilizing social forces to address what Gunnar Myrdal called "the American dilemma," the contradiction between the American creed of equality for all and the unequal condition of American blacks. Obama built upon that legacy, using the vision of an America overcoming racial division to inspire a movement to broaden and deepen our democracy.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

AIDS battle burnishes Bush's legacy in Africa

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ledger-dispatch.com - By Clare Nullis - Jan. 08 (News Report) - In her AIDS-scarred South African township, Sweetness Mzolisa leads a chorus of praise for George W. Bush that echoes to the deserts of Namibia, the hills of Rwanda and the villages of Ethiopia. Like countless Africans, Mzolisa looks forward to Barack Obama becoming America's first black president Jan 20. But - like countless Africans - Mzolisa says she will always be grateful to Bush for his war on AIDS, which has helped to treat more than 2 million Africans, support 10 million more, and revitalize the global fight against the disease. "It has done a lot for the people of South Africa, for the whole of the African continent," says Mzolisa, a feisty mother of seven. "It has changed so many people's lives, saved so many people's lives."

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Lead for car batteries poisons an African town

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The State - By Heidi Vogt - Jan. 03 (News Report) - Although North America and Europe continue to be the world's biggest buyers of cars, fewer and fewer car batteries are made there. Manufacturing has moved where labor is cheaper and environmental protections regulations are more lenient, or at least more leniently enforced. "There's not a developing country where this isn't happening," says Perry Gottesfeld, of OK International.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Community Gardens Contribute to Food Security

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Inter Press Service - By Stephanie Nieuwoudt - Dec. 29 (Special Report) - In the global economic downturn where food insecurity has increased due to soaring food prices, backyard and community gardens are some of the most basic survival strategies.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Pattern of this World

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Sojourners - By Emmanuel M. Katongole - Dec. 21 (Special Report) - Looking back at the history of Rwanda, it is striking to see how the church could name the injustice of the colonial system without fundamentally questioning its power to determine who people are. In all of this, no one was ever able to say that the racial categories of Hutu and Tutsi were part of the colonialists’ propaganda. Rwandans didn’t even get rid of their identity cards. Hutu and Tutsi had become so fixed—so natural—that people could not begin to imagine how they might live without these categories.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The 10 Poorest Countries Of The World

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

hottnez.com - Nov. 25 (Special Report) - Consider several facts of income disparity between rich and poor nations to measure the cleavage between the haves and the haves not. The combined income of the world’s richest individuals leaves far behind that of the poorest 416 million. 982 million out of 4.8 billion people in the developing world live on $1 a day. Another 2.5 billion live on below $2 a day. 40% of the poorest population made up 5% of world income while 20% of the richest population made up 75% of global income in 2005.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Kenya Farmers Reap Profits Sown by Joined Hands

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Women's eNews - By Zoe Alsop - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Efforts to improve agriculture in Kenya often miss the mark by targeting men instead of women. One woman spent 20 years organizing female farmers to share investments and training. Now men are joining too, and the women's work is paying off.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer