By Michael Snyder The locusts are back, and they are hungry. Last year, an unprecedented plague of locusts devastated crops in eastern Africa, across the Middle East and throughout much of Asia. Many were hoping that it would just be a one year phenomenon, but…
By Neenah Payne When Foster Gamble and Kimberly Carter Gamble released the 2011 documentary Thrive: What On Earth Will It Take?, it became one of the most widely seen films. The Gambles created the Thrive Movement with its 13 Sectors to help people around the…
By Phillip Schneider Tanzania’s recently appointed Agricultural Minister has announced a second cancellation of field research trials of genetically modified maize in order to preserve local diversity of African seed. In 2018, Tanzania’s previous Agricultural Minister Mathew Mtigumwe put a temporary ban on all GMO…
By Andrea Germanos Global environmental justice campaigners heralded a Dutch court’s ruling Friday that Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary must pay punitive restitution to Nigerian villages for oil spill contamination that brought death, illness, and destruction to Nigerian farmers and communities. “After 13 years, justice!”…
By 21st Century Wire This really should be one of the biggest scandals in public health, but it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organizations involved. The United Nations has been forced to admit that a major international…
By Brian Shilavy Testing on an experimental COVID vaccine began on 2000 “volunteers” in South Africa this week, and protesters gathered at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. This is the Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine trial from the UK, funded heavily by the World…
By Alexander Hammond In late March, most African states copied the approach taken by many countries worldwide and implemented a mass lockdown that saw schools close, curfews put in place, and people largely confined to their homes. In Sub-Saharan Africa—the world’s poorest region—these lockdowns have…
By Amanda Lichtenstein Check out Global Voices’ special coverage of the global impact of COVID-19. The mad rush by scientists and researchers to test potential treatments for COVID-19 in scientific trials has revived a heated debate over the use of humans in critical drug trials in…
By Neenah Payne “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” — Thomas Jefferson. Beans and rice are a daily staple in all Caribbean as well as Central and South American countries – for breakfast,…
By John Vibes The largest waste dump in Ethiopia has been converted into an energy plant that turns trash into power. The Koshe waste dump has been operational for nearly 50 years, but after a terrible accident that killed 140 people in March of 2017,…
By Neenah Payne The 2012 video “15-Yr-Old Kelvin Doe Wows M.I.T.” says Kelvin Doe is a 15-year-old engineering whiz from Sierra Leone. Kelvin taught himself to do very intricate things with very few resources. Kelvin created a battery to power homes because the electricity is…
By Neenah Payne Chiwetel Ejiofor, director of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was interviewed by The Daily Show host Trevor Noah in “Chiwetel Ejiofor – Telling a Malawian Story in ‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.’” Ejiofor is a British actor who made…
By Aaron Kesel Desert locusts are invading and feasting on crops across Africa, and those affected are calling for international help, a new report states. The outbreak of desert locusts is reportedly the worst that Kenya has seen in 70 years, according to the Associated…
By Alanna Ketler The Facts: Togo, a country in West Africa has decided to ban the use of toxic chemical pesticide, glyphosate because of growing health and environmental concerns. Reflect On: Togo joins 20 other countries who have decided to ban this pesticide, do you…
By Elias Marat Those of us living in the developed countries of Europe and North America often take our access to potable water for granted, spraying it needlessly over our cars and turf-covered lawns, or flushing gallons of it with abandon every time we visit…
By John Vibes According to new research published in the journal Science Advances, a third of tropical African plants are at risk of extinction. A team led by Dr. Thomas Couvreur of the French National Institute for Sustainable Development, collected data across Africa, documenting 22,000…
Op-Ed by Neenah Payne “How Bottled Water Became America’s Most Popular Beverage” explains the switch from soft drinks to bottled water — now the leading growth industry for the beverage market. Americans buy over half a billion bottles of water each week when water flows…
By Jason Erickson It’s well understood by most readers of this site that Egypt has experienced massive turmoil over the last decade in the aftermath of a contentious revolution in 2011. While it’s a tendency to ignore political machinations in far-off lands, unless they have…
By Mayukh Saha For a millennium, people have been trying to change oceanic water into potable water. But, it has never been really affordable or technologically efficient. Yet, Kenya has designed a facility specifically for that with GivePower, a nonprofit organization, heavily involved. This system…
By Mayukh Saha Italian designer Stefano Boeri is planning to bring about the first vertical forest in the New Administrative Capital, currently being set up in the deserted and barren region of Cairo. The three buildings designed for this would involve trees and plants that…
