It is estimated that up to 84% of Malawians earn their livelihoods directly from agriculture - it contributes over 90% to export earnings, 40% to GDP and accounts for 85% of total employment. While the advent of democratisation in May 1994 provided a rare opportunity to address the chronic imbalances in the patterns of land ownership and distribution, the major development strategies that the government has since implemented have shied away from addressing the land question.

Exploring the growing support for the newly formed Congress of the People (COPE) in much of South Africa, Mphutlane wa Bofelo cautions against people’s unquestioning backing of the party. The author argues that for all the hope it inspires in many South Africans, COPE is likely to be even more unfavourable to social spending than the African National Congress (ANC).

In his new book, Duncan Clarke describes oil as Africa's way out of poverty and assails those who see the resource as a corrupting influence on the continent's politics. Lara Pawson finds his thesis crude.

First, it took the animals. Goats fell silent and refused to stand up. Chickens died in handfuls, then en masse. Street dogs disappeared. Then it took the children. Toddlers stopped talking and their legs gave out. Women birthed stillborns. Infants withered and died. Some said the houses were cursed. Others said the families were cursed.

Regarding Stephen Marks’s article , China's (or Korea's or Britain's, for that matter) plan to secure future sources of food and raw materials for its people makes a lot of sense. What we need to figure out is the behaviour of Africa leaders who give away land, take in toxic waste by the shipload and condemn their own citizens to slave wages. What exactly are they doing?

One of the first studies to explore what persuades small farmers to adapt to climate change has found that access to information and technical institutions are the most important factors. A survey of 1,000 Ethiopian cereal crop farmers, carried out by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Nile River basin, Ethiopia, found that poor access to technology and weak informal networks are also hampering farmers' ability to adapt.

Delegates attending a pan-African ministerial conference have welcomed a proposal attempting to secure billion-dollar commitments for building critical hydropower and agricultural irrigation systems across the continent, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has announced.

On November 23, civil society groups convened a high-level meeting in Cairo to discuss the West Delta Irrigation project, which is financed in part by a $145 million World Bank loan. The project supports the construction of an irrigation system that will divert water from the Nile to supply modern, export-oriented farms on reclaimed desert lands that have severely depleted groundwater sources.

Tanzania has reiterated that the proposed land reforms being vigorously pursued by Kenyan politicians that seek to allow foreign citizens to own vast tracts of land within the country are totally out of the question. The Deputy Minister for East African Co-operation, Mohammed Aboud, told reporters in the Ugandan capital Kampala that Tanzania is not ready to adopt the controversial issue of cross-border private land ownership within the region.

Plummeting copper prices have caused investors to shy away from the $1.5 billion Kafue Lower Gorge Dam, which is designed exclusively for use by foreign mining companies. According to Reuters, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), reports that the proposed $1.5 billion Kafue Lower Gorge Dam in Zambia has been put on hold, as many investors shy away from major commitments in light of the financial crisis.

As the Poznan Climate Change conference enters its final days, IRIN, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is pleased to announce the launch of eight short videos exploring the human cost of climate change in Africa.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Pozna?, Poland, was held from 1-12 December 2008. The conference involved a series of events, including the fourteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 14) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and fourth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 4).

Diarrhoea and other deadly waterborne illnesses threaten some 28,000 Chadians in an eastern town, after armed attacks – including the theft of a water pump – forced out the last aid workers running already scaled-down operations. UN aid officials fear that people will begin to flee the area – Dogdore – if aid operations do not resume there soon, thus further complicating humanitarian efforts in Chad's volatile east. About 24,500 displaced Chadians live in Dogdore, along with some 4,000 local residents, according to the UN.

The Botswana government has given its approval to a controversial diamond mine on the land of the Kalahari Bushmen – on the condition that the mining company Gem Diamonds does not provide the Bushmen with water. The government has, however, reserved the right to use water boreholes drilled by Gem for wildlife.

Two years after the historic court victory that affirmed the Kalahari Bushmen’s right to live and hunt on their land, Botswana’s President Ian Khama has told the Bushmen that their hunting way of life is an ‘archaic fantasy’. Botswana’s High Court affirmed on 13 December 2006 that the government’s eviction of the Bushmen was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’, and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

After issuing statements denying that scores of people were murdered in the Chiadzwa diamond fields in Manicaland province, the truth finally came out on Thursday when the District Administrator for Mutare appealed to the City Council for land to bury 83 people. The Deputy Mayor for Mutare, Admire Mukovera, confirmed receiving a phone call from the DA Mr Mashava, requesting land for a mass burial.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a Green New Deal that would work for all nations, rich as well as poor, in the face of two crises: climate change and the global economy. Addressing the high-level segment of the gathering of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that kicked off Thursday, Ban pleaded for "global solidarity on climate change".

Marking the United Nations Human Rights Day, Friends of the Earth International has warned that industrialized nations' inaction on climate change at the UN climate talks flies in the face of international human rights obligations.

The European Union's defence ministers launched on 10 November 2008 an anti-piracy mission called "Atalanta" off the coast of Somalia. The bloc claims that the goal of the enterprise is "to escort the World Food Programme's humanitarian convoys to Somalia and to contribute to the improvement of maritime security off the Somali coast as part of the European Union's overall action to stabilise Somalia."

Stephen Marks looks at the latest rush by China and countries in the middle east to sign lease agreements in poor countries for agricultural production, and what this trend means in terms of food security and access to arable land for local populations.