In an agronomy lab and farm field in Montpellier, France, scientists are uncovering the secrets of one of the world’s great crops. The potential spin-offs for global green economies are huge.
Africa
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Mention Rwanda to someone, what comes first to their mind? Bloody genocide, most likely; certainly not swank men’s fashion. Think again.
Twenty-four hours in Zanzibar. What’s a person to do? Following up on a contact, I go visit the Dhow Countries Music Academy … and am amazed.
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Plants that grow from seeds are the foundation of humanity’s food supply. Wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes and a dizzying variety of beans and legumes … Conserving these seeds of survival is one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
This coming spring will mark the twenty-second anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. An estimated eight hundred thousand were killed by ethnic Hutu extremists armed with knives, hoes and machetes. Over the radio, venom flowed.
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Who coined the phrase “Think globally, act locally” is a matter of dispute. Dinah Ceplis and Zack Gross certainly exemplify the philosophy in action.
Tanzania was applauded for attaining its UN Millennium Development Goal on universal education four years in advance of the 2015 deadline it had set for itself. But in this rural east African nation, enormous challenges remain.
Until recently, Rwandan farmers knew when the rains would come; when best to plant their crops. These days, with varying weather patterns attributed to climate change, more and more Rwandan farmers struggle to grow food.
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When it comes to garbage, it’s a matter of perspective. One person’s trash is another person’s cash. Outside of Kigali, in the east African nation of Rwanda, villagers have figured out how to turn food waste into cooking fuel.
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Dar es Salaam … City of Peace on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. Driving a car into, out of or around the city, or commuting in one of the Tanzanian capital’s jam-packed dala-dalas, is anything but a peaceful enterprise.
Some thoughts on Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. Under Gaddafi’s autocratic rule Libya improved greatly, especially for the poor and women, with a distribution of wealth hitherto unknown in any country on the continent. But he was a dictator.
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In this final chapter in our series, Christine Hamilton and I head off to a fishing settlement called Lushonga, in search of a woman named Josie, who suffers from an advanced case of AIDS.
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The third in a series of voicescapes from a visit to Bumbire Island, in Southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania … Dale Hamilton and I travel to nearby Kinagi Island to visit a big fishing camp.
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Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, in Tanzania, East Africa. Nature on and around Bumbire is gorgeous—but the hardscrabble fishing camps scattered along its shores—and those of nearby rocky islets—are a different story.
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Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania, East Africa. The landscape is gorgeous, but hardscrabble fishing camps tell a different story.
Little Rwanda will soon commemorate the twenty-second anniversary of the 1994 genocide. Between April 6 and early July 1994, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and some tens of thousands of Hutus perished.
Recent cuts in government support for students is causing enormous dismay on Rwandan university campuses, and exposed cracks in the Kagame government’s post-genocide reconciliation efforts.
Amid growing concerns about how to survive on a paltry income, Rwandan teachers turn to a traditional practice, whereby groups of people communally contribute money to help one another out.
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During South Africa’s Apartheid years, black families were routinely evicted from their land. Women and girls fared the worst. Sixteen years after the collapse of Apartheid, life in South Africa is as difficult as it’s ever been for women.
Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania’s life and economy. Three quarters of her people are small-scale, peasant farmers. Policies that empower farmers — particularly women — need to be implemented.
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[…] Toxic pollution is not just an urban problem, as the purple haze hovering over Alberta’s lovely Lochend district suggests. Past GPM stories have focused