Pambazuka News 480: Sonangol and the looting of Angola's oil

Namibia and Angola have partnered to build a US$1.1 billion hydropower plant on a river that runs along their common borders. The move is to help end power disruptions that have plagued their economies for decades.

The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has appealed for greater attention to be focused on the food security situation in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly one third of the population is hungry. With nearly 270 million people malnourished out of a total population in the region of more than 800 million, “this situation clearly demands our urgent and undivided attention,” Jacques Diouf, FAO Director-General, told government ministers at the agency’s regional conf...read more

A United Nations-backed pilot programme that supplies electric generators to rural women farmers in Burkina Faso, freeing them from lengthy chores so that they can devote more time to education, childcare and health care, is to be adopted on a national scale.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people living in eastern Chad, including more than 450,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur and internally displaced Chadians, are at risk if the UN mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) leaves or no longer has a mandate to protect civilians.

In a remote southern part of Chad, the UNHCR began this week the transfer of some 1,100 newly arrived Central African refugees from the border to a refugee camp where they can be assisted. These refugees crossed into southern Chad's Moyen Chari province two weeks ago, after violence forced them from villages in northern Central African Republic (CAR).

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