Africa Matters

Hunger is soaring and spreading across West Africa, says UN

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Hunger is soaring and spreading across West Africa, with some 48 million people, a 10-year-high, facing food insecurity in the conflict-riddled region, the United Nations warned Tuesday. Driven primarily by violence as well as the economic fallout from COVID-19 and inflation, food insecurity has heavily impacted Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria and Mauritania, U.N….

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Ghana first to approve Oxford’s malaria vaccine

London, Apr. 13 (BNA): A keenly-watched malaria vaccine from Oxford University has secured its first approval, in Ghana, as the African country ramps up efforts to combat the mosquito-borne disease that kills a child every minute. The effort is one of several focused on addressing the disease that kills over 600,000 each year, most of them children in Africa….

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190 million children at risk from water-related crises: UNICEF

A new analysis from the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, shows that some 190 million children in 10 African countries are at the highest risk from a convergence of three water-related threats – inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); related diseases; and climate hazards. The study, released on Monday ahead of the historic UN Water Conference, reviewed household access to…

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Babycare: Why experts recommend breast over bottle

When babies do not feed directly from their mothers’ breasts during the first six months after birth, it puts them at higher risk of contracting a number of fatal diseases most significantly, diarrhoea, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). By Rodgers Otiso Diarrhoea, according to the WHO, is the leading cause of death among infants in developing countries…

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Estonia president launches partnership for transforming education digitally in Kenya

Kenya Literature Bureau, StarCloud LLC Estonia, Risk Africa Innovatis, UNICEF and Liquid Intelligent Technologies partnered to digitise books and make them available to learners in school   NAIROBI, Kenya, September 10, 2021/ — The rapid adoption of technology over the last 18 months has transformatively powered production and service delivery around the globe. In the education sector, integration of…

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