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Environment in East Africa

  • More than 41 million in southern Africa face food insecurity

    AFRICA, 2016/06/17 An estimated 41 million people are food insecure with 21 million people requiring immediate assistance in Southern Africa, a regional economic bloc said on Wednesday, next a drought ravaged the region. The Southern African Development Community director for food, agriculture and natural resources, Margaret Nyirenda, said in a statement that a new statement as well showed that nearly 2.7 million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
  • Smallholder farmers can overcome the negative effects of the climate change by using new varieties of seeds.

    AFRICA, 2016/06/04
  • USAID to grant Ethiopia $128M to fight drought

    UNITED STATES, 2016/05/16 U.S Agency for International Improvment(USAID) just announced it would grant Ethiopia $128 million to fight the drought it has been facing over the completed 50 years. This grant should serve to buy food, water, treat malnutrition, and pay mobile health teams, said Thomas Stall, assistant at the humanitarian affairs, conflicts and institution’s democracy office.
  • Africa: To Burn or Sell Ivory - Which Can Put an End to Elephant Poaching?

    AFRICA, 2016/04/30 Tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year for their tusks. The Kenyan government plans to burn additional than 100 metric tons of ivory, the majority ever to be destroyed. But can burning ivory really help end poaching? A towering pyre of burning ivory - it's a powerful image, and one that the Kenyan government hopes will send a clear message: the illegal trade in ivory, which kills around 30,000 elephants across Africa each year, will not be tolerated. Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman have been invited to join conservationists and politicians to attend the mass burning on April 30, 2016, at the same time as Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta will set fire to 105 metric tons of ivory - that's seven times the size of the major stockpile before destroyed - along with 1.35 metric tons of rhino horn.
  • Climate Change Hits Hard in Zambia, an African Success Story

    ZAMBIA, 2016/04/14 Even as drought and the effects of climate change grew visible across this land, the Kariba Dam was always a steady, and seemingly limitless, source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbors. The power generated from the Kariba — one of the world’s major hydroelectric dams, in one of the world’s major artificial lakes — contributed to Zambia’s political stability and helped turn its economy into one of the fastest growing on the continent. But today, as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record lows, the Kariba is generating so little juice that blackouts have crippled the country’s by presently hurting businesses. Next a decade of being heralded as a vanguard of African increase, Zambia, in a quick, mortifying letdown, is presently struggling to pay its own civil servants and has reached out to the International Monetary Fund for help.
  • Japan donates meteorological equipment to Mozambique

    JAPAN, 2016/03/26 Japan has donated meteorological equipment to the National Institute of Meteorology of Mozambique in order to increase its capacity to monitor, estimate and prepare weather warnings, at an event held Wednesday in Maputo. The equipment, costing an estimated US$100,000, includes equipment for calibration of barometers and thermometers, and its delivery was witnessed by the Minister of Transport and Communications, Carlos Mesquita, according to Mozambican newspaper Notícias.
  • Tanzania has been protesting the torching of the jumbos ivory

    MALAWI, 2016/03/16 Malawi government officials in the northern city of Mzuzu yesterday went ahead to burn 781 pieces of elephants ivory believed to have been smuggled from Tanzania following a court order granting the permission to burn the trophy. Tanzania has been protesting the torching of the jumbos ivory arguing that most of it was poached in the country and that it was part of evidence to be tendered in court against poachers. Malawi, through the country's tax agency, the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), last year impounded the 781 pieces at the Songwe Border Post from alleged smugglers travelling from Dar es Salaam to the country.
  • Seychelles: Hunt for Rare Coral in Seychelles Finds the Pearl Bubble Coral

    SEYCHELLES, 2016/01/18 Finding the majority threatened coral in Seychelles proved to be a difficult task for Sylvanna Antha and her team at the Seychelles National Parks Authority. Five types of coral found in the Indian Ocean islands have been listed as in danger of extinction by the Zoological Society of London under the EDGE - Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered - programme. During a two-year study of Seychelles' coral, Antha's team was able to locate the pearl bubble coral - scientific name Physogyra lichtensteini. But it was not able to find the other species.
  • Mozambique: 'Orange Alert' Declared in Mozambique

    MAPUTO CITY, 2016/01/18 The Mozambican government's Disaster Management Technical Commission (CTGC) on Friday announced an orange alert, only one step removed from the maximum national of disaster readiness, a red alert. The move was prompted by a combination of torrential rains north of the Zambezi and a severe drought in southern Mozambique. The soils in the north of the country are presently saturated, and the weather estimate is for 300 millimetres of rain in the next 15 days in Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado provinces. In Cabo Delgado, the Messalo, Muagide and Megaruma rivers are presently all at flood alert level.
  • A herd of elephants run from bee sounds in Samburu national park in Kenya

    BOTSWANA, 2016/01/05 A community near the famed Serengeti national park in Tanzania is enlisting the help of bees to reduce escalating tensions with elephants that enrage locals by trampling upon their crops. A fence made of beehives is being constructed around a one-acre farm close to the Ngorongoro conservation area as part of the pilot project to see if the buzzing bees will deter elephants that stroll on to cropland. It’s hoped that the “bee fence” concept, which has by presently been deployed in Kenya and Botswana, will help reduce conflict in northern Tanzania, which has become a hotspot for clashes between humans and elephants.