Food analyst Raj Patel, on his blog, featured the Mozambican Farmers Union's (UNAC) statement on the Maputo protests, in which the social movement stated 'there's something rotten in the kingdom of globalization'. UNAC focuses on the need to concentrate on internal food production and marketing, in what it refers to as “food sovereignty” approach. For a comprehensive round-up of what bloggers and other commentators said in the aftermath of the Mozambique food riots, read the Global Voices article available through the link provided.

Animal production - that is nutrition.” The statement by Victoria Tsekpo of Ghana’s Food and Agriculture Ministry summed up one of the themes that emerged at a nutrition forum of the Economic Community of West African States – helping nutrition find its place in the agriculture sector. Health, nutrition and agriculture experts from the 15 ECOWAS countries said nutrition usually gains attention only in the context of crisis and emergency response, but it should be integral to agricultural and development programmes if countries are to pre-empt child malnutrition.

Over the past decade there has been rapid growth in mobile phone penetration worldwide, making the mobile phone the most ubiquitous communications device in the world. This commercial growth has also opened up a tremendous opportunity for organisations seeking to provide life-changing services and provide useful information to citizens even in low-income and remote communities. One particular area that has seen a number of innovations, specifically in leveraging mobile social media, is HIV/AIDS awareness, public education and counseling.

On 1 - 2 September, in popular neighbourhoods of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and in the town of Matola, in the industrial belt of Maputo, there were extremely violent demonstrations and looting. UNAC, the National Union of Peasant Farmers, condemns both the use of blind repression and lethal force on the part of the forces of law and order, and the unjustifiable destruction by some elements of the population of buildings, vehicles , filling stations and other structures.

Big investment banks are making a killing out of reckless speculation, with disastrous consequences for the lives of poor people around the world. Come and find out how, and what we’re going to do to stop them.

On the eve of an emergency FAO-meeting devoted to instability in agricultural markets, the UN Special Rapporteur has published a study analysing the impact of speculation on food price volatility. The study shows that a significant portion of the increases in price and volatility of essential food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a speculative bubble. In particular, there is a reason to believe that a significant role is played by the entry into markets for derivatives based on food commodities of large, powerful institutional investors such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks, all of which are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals.

From the Contents:
* The land is not for sale!
* Mission to the World Trade Organisation
* The impacts of climate change on human rights
* The CFS - platform for global governance of food security
* Kenya: Landmark decision on indigenous people's rights
* India's National Food Security Act: prospects and challenges
* Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2010
* New publications

There have been unprecedented developments in HIV vaccine research recently, but the field is threatened by the global downturn in funding for HIV/AIDS. Ahead of the AIDS Vaccine 2010 conference starting in Atlanta on 28 September, IRIN/PlusNews spoke to Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, about the future of HIV vaccine research and development.

The ANC's discussion document on a national health insurance (NHI), unveiled at the party's national general council last week, contains few details on how to fix the embattled public health system and little in the way of innovation, experts complained last week. To ensure that an NHI brought better access to healthcare, there would need to be a concurrent improvement in the reach and quality of healthcare services and an increase in the number of facilities and staff in the sector.

African leaders and global health experts rallied at the United Nations today to boost access to life-saving bednets and medicines as part of the fight against malaria, aiming to reach the goal of near-zero deaths by 2015. “We have made solid advances in recent years both in reducing deaths and increasing the use of life-saving nets. The goal of ending malaria deaths is within reach, and I urge all partners to sustain the momentum,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Although the majority of Kenyans are agricultural producers, only 3.6 percent of the country’s national budget goes towards the sector. This falls severely short of government’s promise to spend at least ten percent on agriculture. About five million out of Kenya’s eight million households are directly involved in agricultural production, according to Vision 2030, a government strategy document geared towards the country’s growth and development. And yet, ten million out of 38 million Kenyans face starvation and will require food aid this year, a recent census showed.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has called for universal testing and treatment for HIV to help combat the pandemic, the local media reported.The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted the veteran leader, who is attending the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, as saying HIV should be treated the same way as diseases such as smallpox where nations vaccinated their entire citizens against it.

Expectant mothers living in internally displaced people’s camps in western Kenya need qualified medical help to minimise the possible risks associated with delivery, the residents said. 'It is by God’s grace that mothers and children survive,' Paul Thiongo, chairman of Pipeline IDP camp along the Nakuru-Eldoret highway, said. 'Safety during birth is a luxury here; even getting three meals is like a dream. Though it may sound odd for us to be depending on traditional birth attendants [TBAs] in the 21st century, there is not much choice.'

Cheating, mistresses and having more than one partner might sound very sexy and intriguing. But beneath the surface lies a dangerous web of sexual partners which is leading to the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS. This documentary which was aired on e-tv's 3rd Degree in South Africa, engages with a group of HIV+ individuals who all contracted the disease by having sexual relations with more than one person at a time, examines why they did so, and how they hope to educate others to not follow in their footsteps.

Speculation on food commodities in global financial markets is pushing up and destablising the price of food. In 2008, high prices caused riots because people were going hungry. Big investment banks are making a killing out of reckless speculation, with disastrous consequences for the lives of poor people around the world. Come and find out how, and what we’re going to do to stop them.

The latest estimates, which will soon be published in its annual State of Food and Agriculture report, show that there are 925 million hungry people on our planet – that’s roughly one in our six of us. '...there is a fundamental structural problem with our food system that goes beyond temporary increases and decreases in food prices. That the food problem is rooted in poverty and radically unequal distributions of income and assets, within and across countries, which influence both food production systems and food consumption patterns.'

If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch’s recent announcement of the Foundation’s investment of $23.1million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead.

Ahead of the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on 20-22 September 2010, UNAIDS today released data on progress towards MDG 6 and called for leveraging the AIDS response to support all MDGs. The data shows that countries with the largest epidemics in Africa—Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe—are leading the drop in new HIV infections. Between 2001 and 2009, 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a decline of more than 25% in new HIV infections. The number of new HIV infections is steadily falling or stabilising in most parts of the world.

Home-based voluntary HIV counselling and testing (HCT) provided an opportunity to identify 60 new paediatric HIV cases among 1300 high-risk children between the ages of 18 months and 13 years of age in a single community in rural western Kenya between June 2008 and June 2009, researchers reported in a retrospective analysis published in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

The resident representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cameroon, Charlotte Faty Ndiaye, has called for a 'cross-border intervention' involving Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to tackle the cholera epidemic that is ravaging the three countries. Cameroon has recorded 417 cases from 6,239 cases, Chad has recorded 65 deaths from 10,040 cases while 614 have died from 11,359 cases in Nigeria, according to Ms Ndiaye.