The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation will be hosted by Rwanda. It is part of the African Development Bank’s commitment to spend at least USD 3 billion over the next ten years to …
Dr. Jharendu Pant is Senior Scientist – Sustainable Aquaculture Program, WorldFish
Fish farmers harvest genetically improved farmed tilapia. Credit: Shandy Santos
PENANG, Malaysia, May 3 2023 (IPS) – For Timor-Leste, as with most other islands in the Pacific, fortunes are to be found in fish – an equity food available to all regardless of status.
Nevertheless, the island is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change, hampering domestic food production and contributing to Timor-Leste’s ranking of out of 121 countries for malnutrition. Meanwhile, the country is highly dependent on imported foods – including aquatic foods.
But a na…
Women’s rights groups have questioned the legal provision requiring doctors to collect records on all pregnancies, saying it could be used to monitor abortions.
BRATISLAVA, Jul 5 2022 (IPS) – Women’s rights groups fear a new legal provision in Poland requiring doctors to collect records on all pregnancies could create what they have described as a ‘pregnancy register’ to monitor whether women are having abortions.
Poland has some of Europe’s strictest abortion laws with terminations allowed in o…
Oct 5 2022 –
Sigrid van Aken is the CEO of , a private company with a social purpose, that brings together business and ideals. It sets up and operates Postcode Lotteries worldwide to raise funds for charity. With a lucky winning postcode (zipcode), neighbours win together. At the same time, thanks to these player communities, vital funding is raised for charities and good causes (yearly €825 million), making the Postcode Lottery Group the 3rd largest private charity donor in the world after the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
Since 2013, Sigrid has been a member of the international Executive Board. Postcode Lotteries are operated in the Ne…
Ibrahim Mayaki, the Africa Union Special Envoy for Food Systems, previously served as the CEO of the AU Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD). Ahead of the UN Food System Stocktaking Moment scheduled to take place in Rome on 24 – 26 July 2023, Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor interviewed Dr. Mayaki. They discussed various issues regarding the state of Africa’s food systems and the opportunities and challenges involved in feeding a rapidly growing population. Credit Africa Renewal, United Nations.
Below are excerpts from their insightful conversation:
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 20 2023 (IPS) –
Q: As the African Union Special Envoy for Food Systems, w…
A pregnant woman in Kenya’s North Eastern Province with one of her children. Overpopulation in the area contributes to poor maternal health. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 27 2020 (IPS) – Sexual and reproductive health and pandemics might seem to be unrelated topics, but large and dense populations are drivers of the high velocity transmission of COVID-19, and there are lessons to be learned for the future.
Gains made in women’s sexual reproductive health and rights just took several steps backward in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to contraceptives has been interrupted, resulting in an increase in unintended pregnancies. With sch…
A man’s legs chained in a Christian rehabilitation center in Ibadan City, Oyo State, Nigeria, Ibadan City, Oyo State, Nigeria, September 2019. Women and men are chained and tied for perceived or actual mental health condition or intellectual disability. © 2019 Robin Hammond for Human Rights Watch.
NEW YORK, Apr 7 2020 (IPS) – When Akanni’s mother died in early 2018, she stopped eating for three weeks. Her mood became unpredictable; she was often shouting or sulking angrily. Medicine from a local pharmacist didn’t help. At a loss for what to do to handle the trauma, Akanni’s father took her to a church in Abeokuta, Ogun state, in Nigeria. And then he left her the…
Credit: United Nations
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2020 (IPS) – When US President Donald Trump repeatedly characterized the fast-spreading COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus” last week, it prompted some white supremacists to resurrect an age old ethnic slur against Chinese and East Asians: the “Yellow Peril” which, in a bygone era, was touted as a xenophobic threat to the Western world.
But Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, is highly critical of the racist interpretation to a disease which has claimed over 16,500 deaths worldwide and accounted for more than 378,000 infections, with the epice…
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 2 2020 (IPS) – The Covid-19 crisis has had several unexpected effects, including renewed attention to food security concerns. Earlier understandings of food security in terms of production self-sufficiency have given way to importing supplies since late 20th century promotion of trade liberalization.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Transnational food business
Disruption of transnational food supply chains and the devastation of many vulnerable livelihoods by policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have revived interest in earlier understandings of food self-sufficiency. But, even if successful, winding back policy will not address more recently recogni…
SINGAPORE, Jun 9 2020 – Politics have exacerbated the already severe pains that the raging COVID Pandemic have been inflicting on the global population. The spread of Coronavirus coincided with three major developments in the global arena. First was the end of what Charles Krauthammer, the American neo-conservative guru had called, as the title of his book on that subject suggested, America’s “Unipolar Moment”. This was the period, since the implosion of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when the United states was the only pre-dominant superpower that ruled the roost in the global arena. Though China was rising in the meantime, politically, economically and militarily, it was still coy about it, conforming to the Deng Xia0ping counsel to “hide its capabilities and bide its ti…