'The World Bank has approved a grant of US$7.0 million to support Somalia’s urgent need to increase crop and livestock production in rural areas adversely affected by the drought and the current global food crisis.'

'The only hope for alleviating Africa's ‘dire situation’ of poverty and malnutrition is for aid agencies to forget about supporting traditional farming and make full use of ‘modern agricultural technology’ including genetically modified crops, Sir David King, former government chief scientist, said in a conference ahead of his lecture to the opening of the British Association's Science Festival at Liverpool University.

'A joint team of officials from the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the United Nations, and the World Bank Group begins a Joint Needs Assessment mission in Georgia today.

This assessment, led by the World Bank and carried out from September 8-21, responds to a request from the Georgian government to identify priority areas and financial requirements needed for post-conflict recovery and recons more...

'World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Thursday called for sweeping reforms in the way international aid is managed if the current food crisis is to be effectively tackled. One option, he suggested, is to lift export bans and restrictions on humanitarian food aid.'

'The United Nations report says an ambitious goal embraced by wealthy countries to cut extreme global poverty by 2015 is in jeopardy.' The report card on the Millennium Development Goals, says pledges to help them with stepped-up aid and lower trade barriers were faltering. 'Development aid from the United States, the largest benefactor, fell 10% last year to $21.7 billion. Japan's dropped 30% and the European Union's nearly 6%. The report says the 22 donor countries committed to the plan must i more...

'At the time of decolonisation in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter.

'Its exports averaged 1.3 million tonnes a year between 1966-70. But today, the continent imports 25 per cent of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer.

'Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-Aids. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government c more...

'The heights and weights of preschool children whose diets included quality protein maize (QPM) as their main starchy staple increased more than 20% faster than those of children who ate conventional maize, according to a recent study in rural Ethiopia on the nutritional benefits of QPM and its acceptance as a food.'

ARBA MINCH, Ethiopia (AFP) - The top UN aid official John Holmes on Monday called for greater international efforts to help millions of Ethiopians suffering from a severe drought.

Some eight million people need urgent food relief and another 4.6 million need emergency assistance, accoring to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

'The response has been good in some ways, but we have a long way to go,' said Holmes on his way to a southern Ethiopian region devas more...

The Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D Journal) is an open access, peer-reviewed community based journal on knowledge management for development for and by development practitioners, researchers and policymakers. The journal is closely related to the KM4Dev community of practice [www.km4dev.org], and is openly available at www.km4dev.org/journal.


Volume 4, Issue 2, to be published in December 2008, will focus on organisational knowledge management strategies and their ro more...

FAUCHE, Haiti - Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Fay both slammed Haiti in the past two weeks, killing at least 95 people and dealing a serious setback to efforts to boost agricultural production and break the impoverished country's dependence on imported food.

Relief workers are scrambling to respond to a crisis within a crisis as storm damage combined with persistent food shortages threatened to destabilize an already fragile political situation. Even as Gustav assaulted the southern cit more...