Region: Southern Africa
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Beyond maize: Exploring agricultural diversification in Zambia
Zambia has one of the world’s highest rates of undernourishment: more than a third of children under five have stunted growth, and a quarter of adults are obese. The reason: the country’s over-dependence on maize. A new report looks at how to increase crop diversity, support better nutrition and support resilience at local and national level.…
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Beyond maize to fight hunger
While calls for crop diversification are frequently heard from government and CSOs, there has been little systematic examination or agreement to date on how to do it. Hivos and Sustainable Diets for All (SD4ALL) partners Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR), Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute (IAPRI), Consumer Unit Trust Society (CUTS) and Civil Society…
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Improving girls’ safety through sexual and reproductive health rights
Let youth lead When a 17-year-old girl in Zambia started a blog to discuss girls’ safety, she never imagined it would be read nearly 200,000 times in a few years. Esther Mwema started her blog to address the safety crisis she saw affecting girls. She soon found out she wasn’t alone.
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Consumer Unity and Trust Society, an SD4ALL partner appointed to sit on Food Safety Coordinating Committee in Zambia
The Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) has been appointed to sit on the Food Safety Coordinating Committee in Zambia. This development comes at a time when the Parliamentary Committee on Health, Community Development and Social Services is currently engaging in dialogue on the Food Safety Bill 2019 in Zambia. The objective of the Food…
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Editors undergo training in renewable energy and climate change
The Media Institute of Southern Africa Zimbabwe Chapter (MISA Zimbabwe), a Hivos Southern Africa partner under the Green and Inclusive Energy (GIE) program with technical support from Climate Tracker, conducted a two-day editors training on renewable energy and climate change in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo. A total of 14 editors drawn from both the…
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Anakazi Leaders, taking women leadership training a step further
Over 400 young women have been trained under the Anakazi Leaders project. A project under the Hivos’ Women empowered for Leadership program in Zambia implemented by Restless Development. Anakazi Leaders provides mentorship and pre-professional experience to young women through internships to potential employers / companies. What is the Anakazi Leadership project? The project is aimed at…
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Zambia commits to reduce stunting and malnutrition through agriculture
“The Zambian Government is committed to the reduction of stunting among Zambian children by half by 2030,” stated the Zambian minister of agriculture, Hon. Michael Katambo, in his video message at the Global Citizen Live event in Berlin on May 21, 2019. He promised to put agriculture at the center of the government’s plans for…
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Botswana High Court decriminalizes homosexuality!
In a victory for the LGBT+ community in Botswana, the Gaborone High Court ruled on June 11, 2019, that the sections of Botswana’s Penal Code (Sec.164, 165 & 167) criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct are unconstitutional. The Botswana Penal Code, based on old English colonial law, describes homosexual acts as unnatural “acts against the order of…
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Maize failure an opportunity for other crops
Zambia’s 2019 crop forecast report has revealed a decline in maize output from 2.4million tons from the previous season to 2,004,389 tons this year, representing a decline of 16 percent. According to Minister of Agriculture, the decline is due to poor rainfall that has resulted into poor crop yield in most parts of the country.…
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“STAWISHA”- the Hivos approach to women empowerment in Southern Africa
“Women usually juggle many tasks between the workplace and home, yet they are expected to cope with these different roles without complaining. Since I began working on WE4L in 2016, I have heard stories of how women have forgone opportunities for career advancement because they could not balance working life with the demands of their…
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Global conference: Scaling up energy access and finance in least developed countries
On 30-31 May, UN-OHRLLS* and GEIDCO** organize the Global conference on Scaling-up Energy Access and Finance in Least Developed countries in Beijing, China. The conference will focus on concrete measures to accelerate energy access and enhance financing for sustainable and modern energy (SDG7). Together with civil society partners and journalists from Nepal, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and…
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Report Launch: Beyond Fire: How to achieve electric cooking?
Cooking with renewable electricity is now cost-competitive with other cooking alternatives in most developing countries, concludes a new report called Beyond Fire: How to achieve electric cooking by Hivos and World Future Council. This is a significant improvement from three years ago when the two organizations studied this for the first time. Achieving sustainable…
