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The Water Crisis in African Cities
Access to running water remains in a state of crisis for a huge number of people across Africa, writes Michel Makpenon. With growing urbanisation across the continent, African cities will need the political determination to ensure sustainable water resources based on social need rather than commercial concerns, he stresses.
The water issue is a major problem for people in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the water situation in sub-Saharan Africa remains characterised by the difficult access to this resource, the poor supply management of watering places and the high costs of water network connections. For instance, in Benin one household in three doesn’t have access to drinking water, and the problem is much more acute in rural areas.
Households having access to drinking water are considered as households who have drinking water at home or within 200 metres from home: running water from the company’s distribution network, fountain water, water from the village pump, water tank and water from protected wells.
Various consultations led with the populations have indeed confirmed that the water issue is a major problem for them. The concerns, as raised by the populations, focus on the difficult access to water and the poor management of the watering places, the difficulties to call for the financial participation of the population for the creation and the management of watering places and the borehole characteristics which are Read more…
North America, southern Europe and China all likely to undergo extreme temperature shifts within 60 years
Tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see ‘the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat’ in the next 20 years, scientists have warned.
The tropics and much of the 
Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their present rate, a study claims.
Researchers at Stanford University said North America – including the U.S. – southern Europe and China are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years.
Red dunes in Namibia. Much of Africa, Asia and South America could see ‘the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat’ in the next 20 years
This dramatic change could have severe consequences for human health, agricultural production and Read more…
E.coli outbreak in Europe caused by new toxic strain
An employee of Czech center of national reference laboratories prepares samples of vegetables for molecular testing on EHEC bacteria (bacterium Escherichia coli.) in Brno June 1, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/David W Cerny
By Tan Ee Lyn
HONG KONG | Thu Jun 2, 2011 8:13am EDT
HONG KONG (Reuters) – The E. coli epidemic in Europe is caused by a new, highly infectious and toxic strain of bacteria that carries genes giving it resistance to a few classes of antibiotics, Chinese scientists who analyzed the organism said.
The scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute, who are collaborating with Germany’s University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, completed sequencing the genome of the bacterium in three days after receiving its DNA samples.
“This E. coli is a new strain of bacteria that is highly infectious and toxic,” said the scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen city in southern China.
They said in a press release on Thursday the bacterium was closely related to Read more…
Medvedev Commits Russia’s Support to Africa
In a congratulatory message to the continent on Africa Day, the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, said that his country is ready to continue supporting Rwanda and other African countries in their quest for development.
In his message sent to The New Times, Medvedev said that Africa Day is important for the continent to reflect on its aspirations for freedom, unity, peace, stability and sustainable development.
“In the recent years African countries have been steadily moving on the way of fundamental transformations and modernisation. A lot has been done for acceleration of growth rate, Read more…
Mysterious Ancient Rock Carvings Found Near Nile
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| Here a rock etched with patterns forming a crescent moon and orb, an example of another piece of rock art discovered at Wadi Abu Dom in northern Sudan. CREDIT: Courtesy of Tim Karberg/Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. |
An archaeological team in the Bayuda Desert in northern Sudan has discovered dozens of new rock art drawings, some of which were etched more than 5,000 years ago and reveal scenes that scientists can’t explain.
The team discovered 15 new rock art sites in an arid valley known as Wadi Abu Dom, some 18 miles (29 kilometers) from the Nile River. It’s an arid valley that flows with water only during rainy periods. Many of the drawings were carved into the rock faces — no paint was used — of small stream beds known as “khors” that flow into the valley.
Some of the sites revealed just a single drawing while others have up to 30, said lead researcher Tim Karberg, of the Westfälische Wilhelms- Read more…
Disease hits wheat crops in Africa, Mideast
PARIS — Aggressive new strains of wheat rust disease have decimated up to 40 percent of harvests in some regions of north Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus, researchers said Wednesday.
The countries most affected are Syria and Uzbekistan, with Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Iran, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya also hit hard, they reported at a scientific conference in Aleppo, Syria.
“These epidemics increase the price of food and pose a real threat to rural livelihoods and regional food security,” Mahmoud Solh, director general of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), said in a statement.
In some nations hit by the blight, wheat accounts for 50 percent of calorie intake, and 20 percent of protein nutrition.
“Wheat is the cornerstone for food security in many of these countries,” said Hans Braun, director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), near Mexico City, singling out Syria.
“Looking at the political and social situation, what they don’t need is a food crisis,” he told AFP by phone.
Wheat rust is a fungal disease that attacks the stems, grains and especially the Read more…
Extreme weather is moving tectonic plates, scientists claim
People who are ridiculed for saying that earthquakes are a result of global warming could actually be right, scientists claim.
Long-term climate change has the potential to spin Earth’s tectonic plates, according to a news study from the Australian National University.
Working with researchers in Germany and France, they have established a link between the motion of the Indian plate over the last ten million years and the intensification of Indian monsoons.
Movements of the earth: Tectonic plate movement could be sped up as a result of the weather
Monsoon rain increased by four metres every year, speeding up the motion in the Indian plate by one centimetre a year, said Dr Giampiero Iaffaldano from the ANU research school of earth sciences.
They discovered that enough rocks were worn away from the eastern side of the plate to account for the plate’s anti-clockwise movement.
Dr Iaffaldano said: ‘The significance of this finding lies in recognising for the first time that long-term climate changes have the potential to act as a force and influence the motion of tectonic plates.
‘It is known that certain geologic events caused by plate motions – for example the drift of continents, the closure of ocean basins and the building of large mountain belts – have the ability to influence the Read more…
Prepare for the Next Conflict: Water Wars
Every minute, 15 children die from drinking dirty water. Every time you eat a hamburger, you consume 2400 liters of the planet’s fresh water resources — that is the amount of water needed to produce one hamburger. Today poor people are dying from lack of water, while rich people are consuming enormous amounts of water. This water paradox illustrates that we are currently looking at a global water conflict in the making.
We are terrifyingly fast consuming one of the most important and perishable resources of the planet — our water. Global water use has tripled over the last 50 years. The World Bank reports that 80 countries now have water shortages with more than 2.8 billion people living in areas of high water stress. This is expected to rise to 3.9 billion — more than half of Read more…
Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from ‘single prehistoric African mother tongue’
Every language in the world – from English to Mandarin – evolved from a prehistoric ‘mother tongue’ first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago, a new study reveals.
After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.
The findings don’t just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa – they also show that speech evolved at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.
Scientists have found that every language can be traced back to a Read more…African Pathogens Must Be Secured, Lugar Says
A senior U.S. senator highlighted the need to protect deadly pathogen samples housed in African laboratories from hostile actors who might seek to deploy them in a biological attack, Chemical & Engineering News reported on Monday (see GSN, Nov., 23, 2010).
During the Cold War, the former Soviet Union conducted research into the biowarfare uses of African-origin disease agents. While Russia has since shuttered that biological weapons effort, a number of those naturally occurring pathogens are sill being studied in facilities throughout Africa that often have limited defenses.
“Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are active in Africa, and it is imperative that deadly pathogens stored in labs there are secure. This is a threat we cannot ignore,” said Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a co-creator of the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative.
Lugar and a delegation of U.S. defense officials traveled last fall to Uganda and Kenya to assess security at biological research facilities that stored such deadly agents as Ebola and anthrax. While biodefense laboratories in the United States that work with similarly dangerous pathogens have advanced security measures in place, defenses at the African research institutes were more likely to consist of barbed wire, according to the magazine.
At a laboratory in Uganda’s capital, the U.S. delegation observed significant security vulnerabilities including a failure to track Read more…
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