US President Barack Obama has announced a $3bn (£1.9bn) plan to boost food security and farm productivity in Africa, US officials say. They say the initiative is aimed at alleviating shortages as world food supplies are being stretched by rising demand in Asia’s emerging markets. Food security is also on the agenda of this weekend’s [...]
BAMAKO, 11 April 2012 (IRIN) – One week after the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu in northern Mali were captured by rebel and Islamist groups, many Malians are trapped and have limited access to food and other basic necessities, while aid operations remain largely suspended. “Everything is running out here – water, electricity, food, [...]
NYINTAR, 4 April 2012 (IRIN) – Akec Tut is among 110,000 civilians who fled Abyei when the contested region on the border between Sudan and South Sudan was occupied by Khartoum’s troops in May 2011. Too scared to return home with her five children, Tut has since been living about an hour’s drive south from [...]
JOHANNESBURG, 3 April 2012 IRIN – A Nobel laureate, a Swedish environmentalist’s idea, the “doughnut” concept, Scandinavia’s sense of social capital, measuring the quality of life, and valuing the oceans are just some of the things trending in the run-up to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development due to be held on 20-22 June [...]
DAR, 22 March 2012 (IRIN) – Driving north across the border from South Sudan into the warring Sudanese state of South Kordofan, the landscape abruptly changes from the swamps and seasonal grasslands into the fertile foothills of the Nuba Mountains, rising gently from the plains. Each hill is topped by a village, with acorn-shaped clusters [...]
TILLABERI/KIGALI/JOHANNESBURG, 8 March 2012 (IRIN) – The UN theme for International Women’s Day – “Empower rural women – end poverty and hunger”, probably does not mean much to people like Hani Issa, a woman in rural southwestern Niger trying single-handedly to feed her seven grandchildren. Six months ago, when the rains failed, the able-bodied men [...]
FOUDOUK, 6 March 2012 (IRIN) – Years of successive drought in the Sahel have driven millions of people to despair and death. Even the normally adaptive nomads, who range this southern fringe of the Western Sahara Desert, are finding life extremely difficult. In Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, Nassamu Malan, chief [...]
BEIRUT/DUBAI, 21 February 2012 (IRIN) – Experts worry that Syrians will have increasing problems accessing food in the coming months, as prices rise, conflict disrupts supply lines, dwindling finances strain subsidies and imports face challenges. Nearly one year of unrest in Syria has made it difficult for aid workers to assess the exact food needs [...]
JUBA, 20 February 2012 (IRIN) – An already dire food situation in South Sudan could deteriorate amid growing economic problems, food shortages and a mass influx of people fleeing Sudan in the next two months, agencies warn. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that in South Sudan’s first [...]
NAIROBI, 17 February 2012 (IRIN) – The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) boasts sufficient arable land and water sources to produce food well beyond its own needs, yet it has the world’s highest rates of malnutrition, as the following data illustrate … 48 percent: Cases of infant mortality due to malnutrition. 45.8 percent: Children of [...]