Deserts threaten to expand across much of North and Southern Africa, with the Science and Development Network reporting that global warming is set to put the dunes of the Kalahari on the march, for example. But elsewhere in the world, one country has launched a major plan to reclaim 250 000 square kilometres of land it has lost to expanding deserts.
No image available
/ 20 January 2006
Two separate studies, using different techniques, have for the first time reached the same conclusion about how many South Africans are infected with HIV. The research has raised hopes of reconciling feuding government departments and eventually of a more effective war on HIV/Aids.
Hundreds of Capetonians face 2006 homeless following fires in the Masiphumelele neighbourhood in the South Peninsula last week. Among them, undoubtedly, are schoolchildren who may now enter their new classes without uniforms, books and possibly without even school fees, let alone somewhere to study and sleep and eat.
No image available
/ 20 December 2005
India will gain nearly $6-billion in information technology investment over the next few years from just three United States companies, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website, <i>SciDev.Net</i>. But critics claim the computer world is drawing the country’s scientific talent away from other areas of research.
No image available
/ 14 December 2005
Africa’s fabled grasslands could vanish due to climate change, causing huge changes to both the economy and the ecology of much of the continent, say researchers on the Science and Development Network website, <i>SciDev.Net</i>. Savannahs are both economically important and ecologically unique.
No image available
/ 21 October 2005
Africa’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, South Africa, this week unveiled plans for a research and development strategy to address climate change at a national conference in Midrand. However, some local scientists were unimpressed with the conference.
No image available
/ 21 October 2005
The threat posed by biological weapons such as anthrax must be taken seriously by both African governments and African scientists, warned a meeting of international experts in Kampala in Uganda this month. Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park recently recovered from an outbreak of anthrax among wildlife there.
No image available
/ 19 October 2005
Traditionally, cash for fixing roads has been dished out on the basis of the number of vehicles travelling up and down that stretch of bitumen or concrete or gravel. After all, roads with lots of people travelling on them are clearly roads that are important to the economy. Right? Not quite, warns Samson Muradzikwa, a rural development economist from the University of Cape Town.
No image available
/ 12 October 2005
Are you earning money for yourself, your children, your home and your retirement — or are you working hard just to make other people rich?
No image available
/ 1 September 2005
Researchers have found long-awaited proof that a drug derived from a Chinese plant fights severe malaria far more effectively than older treatments do — but this breakthrough may not help children in Africa, where severe malaria progresses differently than it does in Asia.