By Refiloe Joala As a nation I believe we have made a concerted effort of doing away with the overplayed notion of an Africa that conjures up images of hungry children with flies around their faces staring blankly into a camera lens. Although in the case of South Africa, one would imagine images of endless […]
food security
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Global population dynamics and its implications for sustainable development
In 2011 the planet’s population exceeded the threshold of 7-billion people. Based on data from the most recent United Nations (UN) population projections, the world’s population will swell to over 9-billion by the year 2050. As a result of these population growth forecasts, between now and the year 2050, approximately as many people will be […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Understanding the growing trend of large-scale land acquisitions in Africa
The exponential international interest in investing in African farmland has attracted considerable attention recently. A 2011 Africa Development Bank study notes that 29 million of the 56 million hectares of land – approximately 51.8 percent – sought after by foreign investors globally is located in sub-Saharan Africa. Though countries with abundant uncultivated land attracted the […]
Posted inGeneral
Going green in 2012: 12 steps for the developing world
Many of us are thinking about the changes we want to make this year. For some, these changes will be financial; for others, physical or spiritual. But for all of us, there are important resolutions we can make to “green” our lives. Although this is often a subject focused on by industrialised nations, people in […]
Posted inGeneral
COP17: Are all the essential things on the agenda?
Reading the daily reports on what has been happening at COP17 in Durban leaves one with a mixture of disappointment and hope — disappointment in Northern, developed countries like the US and Canada, for not showing greater commitment to doing what is necessary to (attempt to) secure the world’s future by lessening greenhouse gas emissions […]