According to a new report on food security and nutrition, the hunger in Africa is still rising and the continent is not on track to meet the “Zero Hunger” goal set by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations by 2050.

Africa’s elephant population has plummeted from roughly a million in 1970 to around 400,000 today – a decline which is largely blamed on poaching for their ivory tusks. At its peak in 2011, poaching claimed 36,000 elephants a year, or one every 15 minutes.

The World Bank recently released an interesting book titled Agriculture in Africa: Telling Myths from Facts. It covers a wide range of topics from smallholder land access, post-harvest losses, financing of agricultural inputs, agricultural labour productivity and women’s work in agriculture amongst others.

Africa is facing dire times. Climate change is having major impacts on the region and on agriculture in particular, with smallholder farmers —many of them women — facing drought, general lack of water, shifting seasons, and floods in some areas. 

The US and China have for the past three months been locked in discussions about how to overcome a trade dispute that has slowed Chinese economic growth and seen the US-China trade balance slump to a record low last year.

It’s an old proverb in these lands that since man has learned to shoot without missing, birds have learned to fly without perching — and the same is true with farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Here are 25 of the most amazing places to see when you travel to Africa:

 The latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s annual Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition Report highlighted drought as one of the key factors contributing to the continuing rise in the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa. And in South Africa, the Government’s Crop Estimates Committee announced that the country would harvest 20 percent less maize in 2019 because of drought conditions. 

- The latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s annual Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition Report highlighted drought as one of the key factors contributing to the continuing rise in the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa. And in South Africa, the Government’s Crop Estimates Committee announced that the country would harvest 20 percent less maizein 2019 because of drought conditions.

African women are often at the heart of communities dealing with huge changes related to economic development and shoulder the burden of environmental mismanagement.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come to occupy an important role in Beijing’s ‘Made in China 2025’ blueprint. China wants to become a global leader in the field by 2030 and now has an edge in terms of academic papers, patents and both cross-border and global AI funding. 

Angola would be an excellent place to start a dairy in Africa because there is a large population with an economy fueled by the oil industry.

TROPICAL FORESTS GLOBALLY are being lost at a rate of 61,000 square miles a year. And despite conservation efforts, the global rate of loss is accelerating. In 2016, it reached a 15-year high, with 114,000 square miles cleared.

Any private sector investments in Africa’s food sector must take account of Africa’s smallholder farmers if the investments are to survive, particularly with climate change.

Africa’s legal cannabis industry could generate more than $ 7.1bn a year by 2023 if more of the continent’s major markets open up and follow the trend of legalisation seen in the US, Canada and Europe, according to a new report released.

The dwindling agrarian and small farming communities around the world have certainly not had it easy during the last 50 years or so.

African economies have grown rapidly over the past two decades. Growth between 2009 and 2017 averaged 3.8 percent per year, compared to the world average of 2.5 percent. Africa’s growth has been driven not only by high commodity prices but also economic reforms that have improved the macroeconomic and business environments.

African farming must modernise and replace its ageing workforce if the continent is going to be able to feed its rising population, a report by leading economists has warned.

Over the last decade we have become increasingly alarmed at the amount of plastic in our oceans. More than 8 million tons of it ends up in the ocean every year. If we continue to pollute at this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.

Insects, diseases and weeds are a farmer’s worst nightmare — pests cause severe crop damage and jeopardize harvests.