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Cameroonian Farmer Won’t Let Low Rainfall Defeat Him By Ngala Killian Chimtom SANTA, Cameroon - Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died. MORE >>
South Africa’s Smallholders Lose Battle for Seed Security By Kristin Palitza CAPE TOWN, South Africa - In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the "pillar of my family," says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. MORE >>
More Toilets in Zimbabwe, Better Livelihoods By Busani Bafana BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe - Government and sanitation experts say Zimbabwe needs to increase efforts to promote good hygiene and invest in toilets and clean water provision, as the country grapples with a typhoid outbreak. MORE >>
Ghanaian Fisherfolk Blasting Their Way to Finding Fish By Jessica McDiarmid TAKORADI-SEKONDI, Ghana - Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores. MORE >>
/CORRECTED REPEAT**/ Listening to the Hum of Tilling Machinery in the Sierra Leone Countryside By Damon Van der Linde LAMBAYAMA, Sierra Leone - In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago. MORE >>
Western Ghana’s Fisherfolk Starve Amid Algae Infestation By Jessica McDiarmid BEYIN, Ghana - Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin. MORE >>
Steady Water Supply for Zimbabwean City Still a Pipe Dream By Busani Bafana BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe - Residents of Zimbabwe's water-scarce city, Bulawayo, are concerned about the government’s slow response to finding a permanent source of water to cover their needs. MORE >>
The Business of South Africa’s Garbage By Kristin Palitza CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products. MORE >>
Zimbabwe’s Mopani Worms Disappearing from Rural Diets By Ignatius Banda* PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe - Job Mthombeni loves traditional food. One of his favourite culinary delights is Mopani worms, referred to locally as amacimbi, which means caterpillar in Ndebele. At an early age he understood the nutritional value of the worm, which is found in his rural hometown of Plumtree, in southwestern Zimbabwe. MORE >>
As the Taps Run Dry in Mauritius By Nasseem Ackbarally PORT-LOUIS - Rani Murthy, a public officer who lives in Plaines Wilhems, central Mauritius, wakes at three every morning to wait for the water tanker from the Central Water Authority so that she can collect water for cooking and household chores. MORE >>
‘Green Morocco Plan’ Fails to Confront Climate Change By Abderrahim El Ouali CASABLANCA - An unprecedented cold spell that struck Morocco in February and continues to linger well into March has raised serious questions about the country's national agricultural development programme, which will fail to achieve its desired results if climate change continues to be mismanaged. MORE >>
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Green Clippings A weekly digest of environmental and conservation news.
The African Conservation Foundation
