The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) has come and gone and a draft global plan meant to bring about a better planet was adopted by world leaders. But experts warned that new trade and environmental agreements alone won’t provide the solution. In the view of Vinayagum Chinapah, a representative of Unesco, one of the […]
Hands shoot up enthusiastically around the small class of nine-year-olds. They seem to have got the hang of the Roman numerals their teacher is chalking on the blackboard. The children could be nine-year-olds anywhere if it weren’t for their red scarves, but their teacher looks young, even for a trainee. Giraldo Del Pino, it turns […]
As one of their first acts, the Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel Castro made education their priority. Faced with an illiteracy rate of more than 20% when they overthrew the Batista regime in 1959, the members of the new government set about trying to eradicate it altogether. On September 26 1960, Castro declared in the United […]
Traditional funeral rites in Angola are putting the families of Marburg victims at risk of contracting the killer virus. For most Angolan families, preparing the body and kissing and embracing the deceased are integral to bidding a final farewell. But the secretions from a body increase after death, making such practices highly dangerous in the case of a Marburg-related death.
Can academics succeed where successive governments, a huge nationalised industry and many otherwise successful entrepreneurs have failed, by making the trains run on time? Keith Madelin, professor of civil engineering at Birmingham University in England, briskly dismisses talk of targeted improvements in efficiency. ‘You just can’t do that,†he insists. The director of Rail Research […]
Growing coloured perceptions of an African threat on the jobs and housing fronts in the Western Cape have been thrown into relief by new research on race relations in the province. Tensions between black and coloured groups ebb and flow with pressure on social and economic resources, and the politics that plays on inter-group competition.
Deep in the Malawi bush where lions and hyenas roam, it is easy to imagine what the ruins would look like: the clocktower toppled, the Romanesque arches crumbled, the wrought-iron gates bent and rusted, the artificial lake a malarial swamp, the entire 1 380-acre site a deserted, soundless rubble. Fitting tribute to a megalomaniac’s folly. […]
The Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Oracle are helping disadvantaged learners solve for ‘x†in their newly established mathematics school. Three hundred and sixty youngsters from grades 9 to 11 no longer wander the streets on Saturday mornings, and RAU tutors are getting down to the business of science, mathematics and technology with them. The […]
The Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Oracle are helping disadvantaged learners solve for ‘x†in their newly established mathematics school. Three hundred and sixty youngsters from grades 9 to 11 no longer wander the streets on Saturday mornings, and RAU tutors are getting down to the business of science, mathematics and technology with them. The […]
The Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) and Oracle are helping disadvantaged learners solve for ‘x†in their newly established mathematics school. Three hundred and sixty youngsters from grades 9 to 11 no longer wander the streets on Saturday mornings, and RAU tutors are getting down to the business of science, mathematics and technology with them. The […]