Rural Africa Weekly Report: 5 Things You May Have Missed
Every week, Rural Reporters collates a report on development in rural Africa and its environs. The reports include are some of our top picks of recent must-read research, interviews, reports, blogs and in-depth articles to help you keep on top of global crises.
Here are some of the updates you ma have missed from the previous week.
Why we should promote clean energy in rural areas
Seeing as the demand for clean, affordable and reliable energy is the fantasy of many a people in rural Uganda, the news of Sunpost’s inauguration is good news. Having access to clean energy improves the health conditions and living standards, especially of women and children, who are the main energy users at homes.
How to really help the world’s new refugees
That refugee relief should be more development-oriented is an old and oft-repeated refrain, used to the point that it may sound trite. UNHCR has taken steps to better coordinate with development donors, many of whom have placed a greater emphasis on incorporating displacement into local development programs, from urban planning to social service delivery. However, these donors operate largely apart from the refugee regime, rather than as a part of it. Thus, as the internal UNHCR evaluation makes clear, the agency still has “not fully engaged with development partners on solutions and transition programming.”
70% of SA nurses have a secondary job – study
According to the research, the government’s spending on agency nursing is as a result of “poorly managed staff absenteeism, sub-optimal planning for patient loads, and not involving nurses in decisions on their shifts or how best to cover hospital wards.”
Q&A: “If We Don’t Close the Poverty Gap, the 21st Century Will End in Extreme Violence”
We must fight against the scandal of a world where 870 million human beings are malnourished, a world where nearly 30 percent of children on the African continent suffer from chronic malnutrition, leading to backwardness at school and a cruel loss of growth.
Faced with this scourge which decimates generations, destabilises societies and severely penalises nations, notably in Africa, we have the duty to imagine a response combining efficacy and solidarity: this is why we want to launch UNITLIFE.
Lack of progress on sanitation undermining child survival – UN Report
A joint report by the WHO and UNICEF has warned that lack of progress on sanitation threatens to undermine child survival and health benefits from gains in access to safe drinking water.
The final MDG progress report on water and sanitation tracks access to drinking water and sanitation against the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
The Joint Monitoring Programme report, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment, says worldwide, one in three people, or 2.4 billion, are still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open.
