Beppe Grillo’s thoughts on South Korean company Daewoo and the ‘neocolonial’ invasion of Madagascar…

What have Madagascar and South Korea got in common? On the face of it, nothing. The former is a country in development, the second is an economic power. One is in Africa, the other in Asia. The Malagasy have uncontaminated land. The [...]

Could the key to Africa’s future have been there from day one? In sustainable agriculture, Busani Bufana thinks so…

Forget the view of climate change as impending catastrophe for a moment: if negotiators can recognise sustainable agriculture by African smallholders and forests as mitigating factors in climate change, carbon trading could become an important support for [...]

Gremz is a web widget that allows users to plant trees by posting blogs. There’s a graphic that shows a tiny tree, as you post more entries, your tree grows. When your virtual tree grows to a certain size, the Gremz staff actually goes out and plants a tree for you in areas [...]

Robert Kaplan recently wrote this take on African development in the 21st century. The Current:
Oil production is already booming, and food production may follow suit. Africa is the only part of the world without a green revolution. Scientific breakthroughs that tripled crop yields in Eurasia and Latin America have bypassed Africa’s, mainly because no single [...]

Farmers in South Africa are using cellphone-based technology to help decide when to irrigate crops. Indications are that the mobile-based initiative can reduce farmers’ irrigation costs by approximately €200/ha. The system, called My Canesim, uses automatic weather stations, the Internet and cellular technology to produce information about when to irrigate. Extrapolating information from real-time [...]

Farmers in Uganda struggling to sell their commodities have a new ally in the marketplace, SMS messaging. Information Communication and Technologies for Africa Rural Development (ICTARD) is the group behind this effort:
There is growing demand for market information as farmers strive to sell their commodities. On a fact finding mission at FOODNET offices in [...]