Brazzaville, 28 October 2010 - "Malnutrition is an area that requires further progress: in Congo, more than a quarter of deaths among children under five are attributable to malnutrition," said Gianfranco Rotigliano, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) regional director for West and Central Africa, at the launch of a campaign to reduce maternal mortality.The Act Now, No Woman Should Die Giving Life campaign was launched across the country on 20 October, and involves the government, three UN agencies (the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund - UNFPA), civil society and private partners. It aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate of 781 per 100,000 live births."The mor...

JOHANNESBURG, 24 October , 2010 - Inadequate access to water, recurring floods and droughts as well as a lack of political will to invest in small-scale agriculture perpetuate hunger across Africa, the continent’s food security experts say.They are responding to the 2010 Global Hunger Index (GHI), published in mid-October, which shows that 29 countries in the world have hunger levels that are considered alarming or worse. Twenty-two of these - more than two thirds – are located in sub-Saharan Africa.The GHI – a 100-point system calculated based on the proportion of people who are undernourished, the percentage of children under five who are underweight and countries’ child mortality ...

SHURUGWI, 14 October 2010 - The economic upswing in Zimbabwe is luring workers under 18-years-old to the now bustling mining town of Shurugwi, about 350km south of the capital Harare in Midlands Province.Tinashe Mugwira, 15, left home in January this year and walked the 50km to Shurugwi in search of work at the mines in the mineral belt known as the Great Dyke, where gold, chrome and nickel are found."I had always heard that these Chinese were employing young children for as long as they can work on the mines, so I decided to come here when I stopped going to school after my father fell ill and my mother could not raise money for food," a skinny Mugwira told IRIN.Foreign mining companies sta...

Nigeria, 1 September 2010 - Nigeria has been elected into an eight-man Board of Directors to push for the adoption of convention of Youth Rights at the United Nations General Assembly session slated for September this year.The election was conducted at the just concluded Mexico World Youth Conference, according to a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary of the Nigeria Ministry of Youth Development, Mr. Goddy Ewerem.The statement said Nigeria and South Africa represent Africa on the board of directors because of what delegates at the conference described as political commitment to youth development in both countries.He said Nigeria was elected alongside Spain, Mexico, Russia, South Af...