Africa

One third of children in Sikasso are underweight for their age, and for acute malnutrition, the rate in Sikasso was 16 percent, according to the most recent government survey. Photo: Phuong Tran/ IRIN

In Mali’s richest region, Sikasso, malnutrition is as high as in the country’s barren north, due in large part to concentration on cash ...

by IRIN News December 29, 2009

Sikasso is one of Mali's most fertile regions, but under-five malnutrition is as high here as in the country’s barren north, according to government health data.Health workers and agricultural experts explain the paradox as a combination of a lack of nutritional awareness, and the concentration on...

Aid to African families that take in orphaned children gives alternative to orphanages

by Celia W. Dugger New York Times December 5, 2009

MCHINJI DISTRICT, Malawi — The Home of Hope orphanage provides Chikodano Lupanga, 15, with three nutritious meals a day, new school uniforms, sensible black shoes and a decent education....

Nigeria, once the worst-afflicted country in the world with an estimated 653,000 cases in 1989, appears to be free of guinea worm disease, which is a painful parasitic infection transmitted to humans through a  water supply contaminated with guinea worm larvae. Photo: Vanessa Vick/New York Times

Campaign to eradicate guinea worm in hard-hit Nigeria may have worked

by Donald G. McNeil Jr. New York Times December 5, 2009

After 20 years, the Carter Center is ready to declare a major victory in its war on guinea worm: Nigeria, once the worst-afflicted country in the world, appears to be free of the worms....

Ethiopian government inaction, repression, and obfuscation is a major cause of the developing Ethiopian famine (opinion)

by Alemayehu G. Mariam Huffington Post November 25, 2009

(November 25, 2009) It is hard to talk about Ethiopia these days in non-apocalyptic terms. Millions of Ethiopians are facing their old enemy again for the third time in nearly forty years. The black horseman of famine is stalking that ancient land. A year ago, Meles Zenawi's regime denied there was ...

A mother feeds her malnourished child in the malnutrition ward in a hospital in the town of Kebri Dehar, in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Photo: David Bebber/The Times

Wealthy nations flock to farmland in Ethiopia, locking in food supplies grown half a world away, with alarming implications for hunger in Ethiopia, cr...

by Stephanie McCrummen New York Times November 23, 2009

BAKO, ETHIOPIA -- In recent months, the Ethiopian government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland....

Population explosion to stop Africa’s attempt to attain MDGs

by AfriqueJet November 18, 2009

See Report...

Africa population tops one billion

by BBC News November 18, 2009

The number of people in Africa has passed the one billion mark, the UN Population Fund says in a report....

A new megafarm in Western Ethiopia, for palm-oil trees, sugar cane, rice and sesame.  All through the Rift Valley region, there are new fence posts signifying the recent rush for Ethiopian land. In the old days, farmers rarely bothered with such formal lines of demarcation, but now the country’s earth is in demand. One fence stretched on for a mile or more, very possibly belonging to Sheik Mohammed Al Amoudi, a Saudi Arabia-based oil-and-construction billionaire who was born in Ethiopia and maintains a close relationship with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s autocratic regime.  Photo: Simon Norfolk/New York Times

Is there such a thing as agro-imperialism?

by Andrew Rice New York Times November 16, 2009

Dr. Robert Zeigler, an eminent American botanist, flew to Saudi Arabia in March for a series of high-level discussions about the future of the kingdom’s food supply. Saudi leaders were frightened: heavily dependent on imports, they had seen the price of rice and wheat, their dietary staples, fluct...

The Ogiek are traditionally forest dwellers, hunting antelope with homemade bows and harvesting honey. In the past 15 years, because of ill-planned settlement schemes (the government essentially handed out chunks of forest to cronies), 25 percent of the trees in the Mau forest have been wiped out. Photo: Tim Freccia/New York Times

Ogiek tribesman may be driven from their ancestral forest home in Kenyan plan

by Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times November 14, 2009

MARASHONI, Kenya — With the stroke of a pen, the last of Kenya’s honey hunters may soon be homeless. Since time immemorial, the Ogiek have been Kenya’s traditional forest dwellers. They have stalked antelope with homemade bows, made medicine from leaves and trapped bees to produce honey, th...

The World Food Program has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-su...

by IRIN News November 6, 2009

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-sufficiency. Time to overhaul the approach, aid agencies say. ...

  • World Hunger Education
    Service
    P.O. Box 29015
    Washington, D.C. 20017
  • For the past 50 years, since its founding in 1976, the mission of World Hunger Education Service is to undertake programs, including Hunger Notes, that
    • Educate the general public and target groups about the extent and causes of hunger and malnutrition in the United States and the world
    • Advance comprehension which integrates ethical, religious, social, economic, political, and scientific perspectives on the world food problem
    • Facilitate communication and networking among those who are working for solutions
    • Promote individual and collective commitments to sustainable hunger solutions.