Farmers in Benin are implementing their own research findings to boost the soil fertility and moisture retention of their plots. The experiment is part of the project Strengthening the Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change in Rural Benin (PARBCC) — established in late 2007 — which aims to create a three-way conversation between farmers, meteorologists and the government, and help farmers make informed choices about when to sow and harvest crops.

Lake Chad, once one of the world’s largest water bodies, could disappear in 20 years due to climate change and population pressures, resulting in a humanitarian disaster in central Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned. The lake – surrounded by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – has shrunk by 90 per cent, going from 25,000 square kilometers in 1963 to less than 1,500 square kilometers in 2001.

All public land will be identified, registered and handed over to a National Land Commission after the proposed National Land Policy becomes law. This will make it difficult for public land to be grabbed, a practice rampant in Kenya. There is no system for registration of public land and it is left to the Finance ministry permanent secretary, in whose name it is registered, to safeguard it.

Kenya’s search for oil will intensify with the drilling of oil at Boghal near Isiolo in the next two weeks. Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi said the government had signed 18 oil production sharing contracts in the last 18 months noting that they were at various stages of exploration. Speaking during the opening of the second South-South meeting on gas and oil management at Windsor Golf and Country Club in Nairobi, the minister said exploration had been stepped up in recent years. He said there were high hopes that the country could strike oil soon.

At least 29 people have died of cholera and hundreds more are being treated for cholera-related symptoms such as acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) in the larger Turkana District in the northwest and in the eastern regions of Garbatulla and Laisamis, say health officials. "Two people have died in Garbatulla, five in Laisamis, three in Turkana North, one in Turkana South and 18 in Turkana Central," said an official in Kenya's Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation.

Uganda has become the first country in Africa to undertake a reforestation project that will help reduce global warming emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The Nile Basin Reforestation Project in Uganda is a ground-breaking project being implemented by Uganda's National Forestry Authority (NFA) in association with local community organisations. The growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in exchange for revenues from the World Bank BioCarbon Fund paid to NFA and the communities.

The International Rivers Network has released a new report damning the Mozambican project to dam the Zambezi river and build a huge hydro-power station at Mphanda Nkuwa. The network has said while the choice is to create more power, the region would be without water in the future. "That's a choice Southern Africa could face in a few years if current plans to build more large dams on the Zambezi proceed," the network criticised.

Thandi Sihadi stands next to a dry tap. As a maize and dairy farmer in one of South Africa’s driest districts, the lack of running water is nothing new to her. In fact, she says, she is one of many new black farmers who may now be fortunate enough to have land, but who still have problems accessing water for farming. Sihadi, a beneficiary of the Hereford land reform project – a project aimed at assisting small-scale black farmers, is from Sekhukhune in Limpopo.

As the rainy season approaches, and sewage from pit latrines seep further into the Zimbabwe's groundwater, Irene Ngubeni will be at risk as the country faces another possible cholera outbreak. Even now, just before the rains have started falling Ngubeni is ill. She has travelled the 170 kilometres from her village in Matebeleland North to Bulawayo for treatment after drinking contaminated groundwater.

South Africa said on Friday it had been offered 48 square miles of land for farming in Angola and Uganda but that it would not take up land offers without security of tenure. Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said at a conference Zambia had also offered South Africa, the continent's largest economy, a 48-year lease agreement for land.

Human rights activists in Chad say they fear a new Chinese-backed oil project will displace hundreds of people and will destroy at least 10 villages. Work has begun to build a 300km (185 mile) pipeline from the Koudalwa oilfields in the south of the country, to a new refinery north of the capital. But activists say an environmental impact assessment was inadequate and residents were not properly consulted.

South Africa’s Government plans to resubmit a Bill to parliament that would allow it to seize land from farmers if negotiations to buy the land from them failed, a government official has said.The expropriation Bill was submitted to parliament last year as part of efforts to speed up the process of handing over 30 per cent of agricultural land to landless blacks by 2014.

A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) top official has said the Copenhagen climate change agreement which is expected to be clinched in December needs to come up with a financial architecture that puts governments and parties to the convention in control, as well as decide what will be financed and how. UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer said it was also critical that the Copenh agen conference in Denmark also comes away with an architecture that clearly responds to nationally-defined needs and priorities, as opposed to priorities at national institutions.

People and the environment in the vicinity of the North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania are being exposed to heavy metals and cyanide pollution, according to a report published in June for the Christian Council of Tanzania (CCT). The study collected and analysed samples of water, sediments/soil for four heavy metals Nickel, Cadmium, Lead and Chromium. Concentrations of almost all of these were found to exceed the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Tanzanian and US Environmental Protection agencies.

The Sudanese government will take back a plot of land allocated for a Jordanian agricultural megaproject if the government does not implement the project within two weeks, Agriculture Minister Saeed Masri has said. The project was supposed to be implemented by a private company with government support, but last week, Masri announced that the private sector partner had withdrawn from the plan, noting that their decision was made unilaterally without prior notification.

As experts on food and agriculture come together in Rome on October 12, 2009 to discuss the challenge of feeding the world by 2050, a new report from the Oakland Institute, The Great Land Grab: Rush for World's Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor, sounds the alarm on the threat that land grabbing poses to food security and livelihoods.

Criminal charges and the closure of several radio stations over alleged incitement to violence in Kampala have sparked a debate about the limits of free speech in Uganda. The Uganda Broadcasting Council (UBC) silenced four Luganda* radio stations during three days of riots in September 2009 sparked by the government's refusal to allow the king of Buganda, Kabaka Ronald Mutebi, from travelling to a district within his kingdom.

A plan to develop a biodiversity corridor across the border between Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia will be the focus of discussions to be held in Abidjan next week in cooperation the United Nations and other organizations. Hosted by the Ivorian Minister of Environment, Water and Forests, the meeting on 5-6 October is part of a transnational initiative launched by the UN-led Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) and the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF).

Damage to wetlands high in Lesotho's Maluti mountains has impacts on the health of the whole of the Orange-Senqu river system. The wetlands in this mountainous region stabilise soil, retain sediment and contribute to river flow from this area of high rainfall. In so doing, they indirectly support the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), which captures water in dams and supplies it to water-thirsty South African industry and agriculture. The water Lesotho sells to South Africa is the mountain kingdom's largest source of foreign income.

It wasn't an oil spill that made Nnimmo Bassey an environmentalist. It was a massacre — the 1990 assault by Nigeria's armed forces on the village of Umuechem, where residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta had accused the Shell Petroleum Development Company of environmental degradation and economic neglect.