GAMBIA: Juju Gassama “Growing Nerica has changed my life as a woman farmer”
BANJUL, 6 November 2008 (IRIN) - Juju Gassama, 43, is a rice-farmer in western Gambia’s Jambur village, a small farming community 30km east of the capital Banjul. She is a member of the village’s Yiriwa Kafo, rice cooperative, which is made up of mainly women farmers.
full report
GAMBIA: Can farmers axe rice imports through ‘Nerica’?
BANJUL, 6 November 2008 (IRIN) - Heavy dependence on imported rice is crippling Gambian consumers, leading the government to call for New Rice for Africa, or Nerica, production to double.
full report
GAMBIA: Poor teaching quality slows education progress
BANJUL, 4 November 2008 (IRIN) - Enrolment rates at all levels of education have improved in The Gambia since 2000, but with too few qualified teachers and low staff retention levels, fewer than half of Gambian students pass standardised tests.
full report
GAMBIA: President’s herbal HIV/AIDS 'cure' boosts ARV use
BANJUL, 3 November 2008 (IRIN) - President Yahya Jammeh’s traditional herbal treatment for HIV has had an unanticipated side-effect, say HIV experts in the country – rather than pulling people towards a herbal cure, it has raised the profile of conventional antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat HIV.
full report
GAMBIA: Sex tourists exploiting children
BAKAU, 30 October 2008 (IRIN) - Child protection experts say sexual exploitation of children by tourists is on the increase in The Gambia, despite national laws against it.
full report
WEST AFRICA: Taking on climate change as a region
COTONOU, 23 October 2008 (IRIN) - Climate experts and ministers in West Africa have committed to coordinating national efforts to fight climate change, at the conclusion of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, on 22 October.
full report
WEST AFRICA: Train the soldiers, protect the children
DAKAR, 17 October 2008 (IRIN) - An international NGO is using cartoons to spell out to African soldiers the rights and wrongs of how to treat a child.
full report
WEST AFRICA: Region among the world’s hungriest
DAKAR, 14 October 2008 (IRIN) - The 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI) says sub-Saharan African countries have the highest level of hunger in the world, with Niger, Sierra Leone and Liberia experiencing “extremely alarming levels of hunger,” however, this is still an improvement over 1990 levels.
full report
WEST AFRICA: Mixed report card in 2008 corruption index
DAKAR, 23 September 2008 (IRIN) - Nine West African countries shot up while nine others sank lower in the 2008 Transparency International (TI) ranking of perceptions of corruption in 180 countries.
full report
WEST AFRICA: Policy overhaul needed to halt illegal migration
DAKAR, 10 September 2008 (IRIN) - Illegal migration continues, but is hard to track because most migrants enter a country legally, but then overstay their visas, according to the 2008 International Migration Outlook released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
full report
|
|
