Mercedes Sayagues

Women, especially the poor, face innumerable obstacles when they try to access technology

Good things are being said about the World Health Organisation since Ethiopia’s man came on board

Infrastructure is abysmal in Maputo, toilets stink, events start late but the cultural scene is lively and diverse, writes Mercedes Sayagues.

A new festival of contemporary arts is shaking up the Comoros with provocative works that confront the island nation's fraught post-colonial history.

Mpumalanga-based journalists discovered a new circumcision device, called PrePex, at a Bhekisisa media training event on Monday.

Researchers say the increase in male medical circumcision services should go hand in hand with a plan to maintain quality, according to a study.

Mercedes Sayagues visits chocolate baron Claudio Corallo on the island of São Tomé

From April 18 to 29 Maputo hosted opera singing, a baroque orchestra, a choir, acoustic jazz, new flamenco and outreach workshops with local singers.

I love a country where having a mojito at 10am is perfectly fine. Muy chévere. Have another one. Otro mojito. And one Cuba Libre, please. Cubans start drinking whenever it pleases them. No hang-ups, just hangovers. Such a nice way to while away the time in this Jurassic Park of 50-year-old technology that still works -- Soviet-era tractors, washing machines and typewriters clanking on.

In that pleasant land, the universal myths of Cinderella and Peter Pan -- the woman who marries up and the boy who does not want to grow up -- are re-enacted collectively every year in one of Africa's most beautiful and heartfelt pageants: Umhlanga, the Reed Dance, in Swaziland.

Passion, power and sex wrapped in fab music: see U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. I couldn't disagree more with Mail & Guardian reviewer Khubu Meth (Friday, May 13), who finds it irrelevant to 21st-century South Africa. What could be more relevant to a country where a woman is murdered by her partner every six hours, than a story where the heroine is killed by her lover?

My friend in Mutare, Zimbabwe, writes me an e-mail: ''The roses are blooming in the garden, my German shepherd sleeps under the window and my young lover is back in my arms.'' Sounds like bliss. They were together in 2000, split, and hitched up again this year. My friend is 53 and he is 33. How does tiny Mutare react to them?