Features

    “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect the United States and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” remarked President Donald J Trump, in his long-awaited televised briefing from White House’s Rose Garden on June 1, 2017.   This pronouncement effectively…

  As countries commemorate the 2017 World Breastfeeding Week (August 1- 7) no country in the world fully meets recommended standards for breastfeeding, says a new report by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the Global Breastfeeding Collective, a new initiative to increase global breastfeeding rates.…

The news emerging from Hamburg were dominated by the narrative of the emerging 19 +1 on issues such as climate change or trade protectionism. Yvanka Trump replacing her father in the US seat was a particularly juicy bit, with few realizing that happened when the leaders were discussing Africa. Street…

Tina Balewa is the executive director of Ziongate Empowerment Initiative for the Less Privileged (ZEIP) a grassroots civic organization  working around gender mainstreaming and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Nigeria. Here, she speaks about her organization’s #Women2030 project which seeks to ensure women play important roles in combating climate…

Ashraf Swelam is director general of the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA). Here, he speaks about the Centre’s Preventing Radicalisation and Extremism Leading to Terrorism (PRELT) project in Nigeria and Somalia     CCCPA uses Islamic Shariah to provide alternative narrative to the narratives…

Estimated at almost $2tn in 2015, Islamic finance is often overlooked by development organisations as a potential source of funds A student reads the Qur’an at the Al-Ashriyyah Nurul Iman Islamic boarding school in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country. Photograph: Tatan Syuflana/AP   Usman, a fisherman in North Sumatra, used…

  The World Environment Day (WED), which is the UN’s biggest annual event for positive environmental action and takes place every 5 June, was celebrated across the globe on Wednesday under the theme: “Connecting People to Nature.” “ ‘Connecting People to Nature’, the theme for World Environment Day 2017, implores…

The broader context of the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad region, particularly in Borno State in the northeast of Nigeria, remains largely unknown to a Western audience, and in the media coverage it is mostly the stories about Boko Haram’s atrocities that are being told.   Fleeing the Boko…

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has decried the ‘alarming surge’ in the number of children used in ‘suicide’ attacks in the Lake Chad conflict; the figures has surged to 27 in the first quarter of 2017, compared to nine over the same period last year, says a new report…

  In accelerating the implementation of these commitments, young people need to engage the leadership of the African Union commission (AUC), national governments, and policymaking institutions on how to harness the demographic dividend, which is crucial for the attainment of both the Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals…