africa

A total of 120 young people, orphaned or affected by HIV/AIDS in northern Malawi are being trained to build these solar lanterns and act as campaigners and educational collaborators for the project.

In the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba river basins in the DRC where the bonobos live, humans have it very rough – we couldn’t say if they have it better or worse than the bonobos. However, we can say that the human women have it worse than the human men in the DRC. In the United States, women are free to get jobs, go to school and live by themselves – you may think it’s strange that we’re even mentioning those things because we are so used to these freedoms!

Conservationists in Kenya are opposing a multi-million dollar biofuels project citing threats to bird life abundant in a riverine delta area. The 50,000 acre sugar cane project was meant to provide raw cane for a giant sugar milling company too but it is believed its vision was more for biofuel than food.

Coral gardens have also been popular spots for water sports tourism especially diving. I joined this custom safari with a group of friends on this fine May morning that combined a variety of both marine and terrestrial research together with community development projects within the tropical environment of East Africa.

When you go to www.bonobokids.com to play and learn and buy tons of I’m Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo books, you are filled with a playful, joyful feeling. Of course, seeing Lucy makes you happy, but that music, that flowing melody…what is it? who created it? WE ALL LOVE IT! The music was written and performed by a very cool guy named Alex Reiser. We interviewed him so that we could find out as much as we could about this musical genius. Here are our questions and his answers:

There are currently about 170 bonobos in zoos across the world. And, while zoos are usually great, sometimes bad things can happen at zoos. On Christmas Day, 2007, a Siberian Tiger escaped from its zoo home and attacked three people in the zoo. Which makes us wonder for the bazillionth time:

Are zoos good or are zoos bad? What do you think?

Follow a group of scientists as they traverse the Namib Desert on foot to map a new 15-million-acre wildlife park in the heart of the African desert. Includes stunning photos and video.

Did you know that regular old crayons (think Crayola) have petroleum in them? Petroleum is a fossil fuel – we often call it ‘oil’ and it runs cars, heats homes, etc. Is this something you want in your crayons?

A new project financed by the government of Norway and the Global Environment Facility will have inmates at an African prison working towards purifying human waste and producing biogas to reduce carbon emissions.

Less than 1% of the world's deserts could generate as much electricity as the world is currently using, according to an international network of scientists and engineers, and backed by detailed research by the German Aerospace Centre and the U.S. Department of Energy.

That's what Archbishop Desmond Tutu is asking the leaders of the most polluting economies, living up to his reputation for calling a spade a spade in, um, spades.

This university has a special program, called the Nelson Mandela extranet. In this program, Students go back to their communities and teach them about HIV/AIDS , bio-intensive farming, and money management.

Luxury travellers can make a huge difference to the local community. Jane Kaye-Bailey founded The Butterfly Tree project in aid of rural Zambia.

What would you spend £1.50 on? A couple of downloads from iTunes? A tube ticket? A bag of hand-cooked chips? In Africa, £1.50 could buy a water purification device, so that children can drink water from their local source, safe in the knowledge that it will not give them a life-threatening illness.