EcoWorldly

According to an old adage, necessity is the mother of invention; it forces people to find alternative ways and tools. In Zimbabwe today, devising skills to survive is the norm of daily living.

As a means to cope with erratic electricity power cuts which are undoubtedly a defining characteristic of the ongoing socio-economic crisis in Zimbabwe, many Zimbabweans living in urban areas have resorted to using the tsotso stove because of its low labour and energy saving characteristics.

Traditionally, rural as well as low-income households have always depended on fuelwood which usually chews up loads of firewood, thereby endangering the environment. Read the rest of this entry »

The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.

Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as “emerging infectious diseases” or EIDs.

Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ‘emerging’.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Kenyan schoolgirl has revealed how she hid in a forest habited by elephants as she made an escape from a marriage suitor two and a half times her age.

She gathered all her inner strength and courage to cross a crocodile infested river near her home deep in the arid Masai warrior tribe country with her father and her wannabe husband in hot pursuit.

Betty Lason, now 17 and still in primary school, said recently that she vividly remembers the incident six years ago because she executed her plan one evening after returning to her new husband’s home from day-long sheep and goat herding in the bush under the scorching sun.

Read the rest of this entry »

After months of a bitter and violent political dispute, Zimbabwe’s political protagonists have decided to take to the negotiating table.

Besides resolving the country’s longstanding socio-economic problems, the ongoing political talks in Zimbabwe will go a long way to start redressing the damage that has been inflicted onto the environment over the past decade.

A botched government led land reform programme resulted in the unmonitored movement of people and the untoward cutting down of trees and an increase in the poaching of endangered animal species.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is Olympics season and every video house in this farming town is full with home fans following the athletics races in Beijing that their local heroes are featuring.

Eldoret is the bread basket of Kenya’s athletics elite and famous runners, including Kipchoge Keino who made history by winning the east African country’s first gold medal in the 1500 meters run at the Mexico City Games.

But the town is also home to Hanna Jeruto, a 24 year old HIV+ mother who exclusively breastfeeds her 4 month old son, Kipruto. Kipruto, however, is HIV negative and when she was delivering at the provincial hospital doctors had advised her not to breastfeed him.

Read the rest of this entry »

We spend a lot of time speaking about what we, as the ruling industrialized western nations, should be doing for the planet. And rightfully so. We have singlehandedly managed to send our planet into an environmental spin. With one hand we complain that China and India are putting out more and more in the way of harmful emissions while with the other hand we send them contracts to make everything from our clothes to our cutlery.

So it doesn’t come as a real surprise that we often end up forgetting the little people. Of course, whenever Africa is forced into the category of “little people,” there may just be a greater problem at hand.

Thankfully, despite the lack of attention that anyone in the world seems to be giving them, environmentally, Africa is taking matters into its own hands.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch this space: Africa is fast becoming an important player in cleaner energy sources. If only 0.3% of sunlight falling on the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts can potentially provide all of Europe’s energy needs because of its intensity, according to a report, how about everything else?

How much wind blows from Nouakchott to Natal, and how much of this is ever utilized as an alternative energy source? How much water flowing in the Zambezi is used to power villages in Zambia and Zimbabwe; and how much more of the great Nile waters that flow into the Mediterranean can sustainably be harnessed to run corn mills in Nakuru and cotton ginneries in Jinja and Khartoum or fisheries in Cairo?

And now some bold African should emulate John McCain. He may be better known for his tenacity inside the muddle of US politics than for his expertise on the quest for cleaner energy sources. But many surely gaped at the figures he offered for a battery to power America’s engines in the wake of the oil price burst recently.

Read the rest of this entry »

In spite of the sweltering heat, smallholder farmers in this border district of Zimbabwe can cheer about the black-eyed beans. The beans – a new crop in the area - are small, creamy white, with a black mark at the sprouting point, making them easy to recognize.

From the way they cook to the way they sell, black-eyed beans have proved a big hit among the small farmers in this district, traditionally known for growing maize, groundnuts, cotton and sunflowers.

In 2002, USAID’s Linkages for the Economic Advancement of the Disadvantaged (LEAD Program) sub-contracted VeCO, a non-governmental organization, to provide 1,250 farmers with the necessary extension support services, skills and resources to produce both black-eyed beans and Macia sorghum, crops which are drought tolerant. The overall objective was to reduce food insecurity, improve food intake with a new edible crop, and provide a new source of income for poor smallholders in drought prone regions.

Nyarai Njenge, 35, one of the beneficiary farmers, did not know anything about black-eyed beans prior to 2002. But, now, as most of the beneficiary farmers, she knowledgeably recounts the nutritional, income and food security benefits of the crop. Read the rest of this entry »

Many thanks to our friends at ZapRoot for featuring Sam Aola Ooko’s post on Chinese importation of African ivory on their latest show (above). We’re big fans… no one does indepth coverage with a healthy dose of humor better. Keep an eye out for more from ZapRoot on Thursdays: we’re going to start featuring them regularly on the GO Media blog network.

Dr Rene Haller’s is one story of how a man transformed a wasteland corner of Africa into a fledging green paradise that today attracts thousands of tourists from around the world, and may offer lessons for green progress in America on sustainability successes elsewhere.

1957 AD: A young Swiss agronomist goes to Africa, the dark continent, to manage a coffee plantation at the foot of the ice-capped mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest; a few years later, he gets another brief - to produce food - fruit and vegetables - for cement factory workers, many of whom were undernourished, as well as spruce up the area surrounding the site.

1970 AD: Dr Haller starts a unique ecological experiment, attempting to rehabilitate the limestone quarries scarring the Mombasa coastline, including the 7 square kilometer Bamburi cement quarry site from a barren and dusty lunar landscape to an ecological haven.

Read the rest of this entry »