The Peace Parks Foundation in South Africa has paid back one-and-a-half million Euros to a Dutch Lottery, admitting that their project to protect rhinos from poaching by poisoning the horns doesn’t work. Scientists had been pointing out all along that there was no evidence to support the ‘poison solution’. The ‘Postcodeloterij’ had made more than 14 million Euros available to Peace Parks for a number of anti-poaching projects in February this year.
18/09/2014
The 'funny' slogan used by Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan for his re-election campaign, "Bring Back Jonathan 2015", is the subject of a recent, vehement attack by Nobel laureate author Wole Soyinka on the country's leaders. Soyinka wrote in the online Premium Times this week that "the dancing obscenity of (Boko Haram's) gang of psychopaths and child abductors, taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign on internet, finally met its match (...) by the unfurling of a political campaign banner."
17/09/2014
It was a small note in the newspaper that caught South African columnist Marvin Meintjies’ eye: it said that the diamond-rich country of Lesotho had signed a ‘relation strengthening’ agreement with the tax haven island of Barbados”.
03/07/2014
The furore about South African President Jacob Zuma’s mansion in Nkandla, KwaZuluNatal, has far from died down.
03/07/2014
Amidst all the panic about ebola, serious as the scare is, it must not be forgotten that infectious diseases are actually on their way out as the biggest health problem in low income countries.
15/06/2014