In a seven-year educational transformational programme for Eastern Cape schools, DFID has injected R360-million for the so–called Imbewu programme. The programme includes among other things turning 1500 Eastern Cape schools into self-governing schools. The programme will be officially launched at the JS Skenjana School in Idutywa today.

This position is in the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme (www.asb.cgiar.org) whose objective is to identify, develop and implement innovative policies, institutions and technologies that can reduce poverty and conserve tropical forests.

Miatta Sheriff and Maima Kromah are six-year old Liberian children. They have lived for several months in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and have no idea where their parents are. Sheriff and Kromah are among thousands of Liberian children separated from their parents by fighting between government troops and rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) since 1998.

A rupture in a pipeline belonging to oil giant Royal Dutch/ Shell has resulted in a major oil slick in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta, local residents reported last Friday. Residents of Rumuekpe community, near the Nigeria’s oil industry capital, Port Harcourt, said oil from a broken pipe, 20 inches diameter, was spreading through creeks and streams in the area, seeping into farmland and destroying plants and trees.