Kim Harrisberg

As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, roughly half of Africa - some 600 million people - is struggling to access reliable energy, making it the world's least electrified continent, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think-tank said.

This number is still likely an underestimate because existing data is failing to account for everyone suffering from 'energy poverty' - a lack of stable and affordable access to electricity.

Sithandekile Nyathi confidently hoists herself into the compact loader, lowers the metal caging around the vehicle, and drives towards large mounds of wood timber chips.

The chips eventually go up a conveyer belt into a converter, where they are heated and turned into a type of 'biochar' called activated carbon - a charcoal that stores carbon and could help to cut planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions.

South African street vendor and widow Brenda Mtshali is furious that an automated message on her phone means she will have to skimp on food for her six children.

She is one of an estimated 10 million eligible South Africans excluded from welfare payments due to administrative obstacles, including problems with an algorithm-based income verification check, recent research has found.

A short walk from their university classes, four South African students traded textbooks for gumboots as they collected and analysed water samples from the Wilgespruit river in Johannesburg.

They are part of a growing movement of citizen scientists collecting water samples across the country to monitor pollution and brainstorm about what can be done about it.

At a tense meeting in Nigeria's capital Abuja, health workers poured over drug registers and testing records to gauge whether U.S. aid cuts would unravel years of painstaking work against tuberculosis in one of Africa's hardest hit countries.

For several days in May, they brainstormed ways to limit the fallout from a halt to U.S. funding for the TB Local Network (TB LON), which delivers screening, diagnosis and treatment.

Beth Hyland thought she had met the love of her life on Tinder. 

In reality, the Michigan-based administrative assistant had been manipulated by an online scam artist who posed as a French man named 'Richard', used deepfake video on Skype calls and posted photos of another man to pull off his con.

Alongside forests, soil and wetlands, another powerful natural carbon absorber critical to tackling climate change lies hidden beneath the ocean surface: seagrass.

The loss of these underwater meadows, also known as blue carbon, could hobble efforts to tackle climate change, both financially and environmentally, a new study has found.

The U.S. aid funding cuts have sent high-profile shockwaves across world health care access and humanitarian relief efforts, but another vital sector has also been hit: energy access in Africa.

On a continent where 600 million people lack reliable access to electricity, the U.S.-led Power Africa initiative sought to improve power supplies in sub-Saharan Africa for schools, clinics, households, farms and businesses.

Tarryn Lokotsch can see the U.S. aid money she desperately needs to help South African rape survivors sitting in her organisation's bank account, but she cannot touch a cent of it.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump froze funds under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in January, even the donor-funded cars Lokotsch and her colleagues use to visit rape victims have sat idle.

When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020,  the international community had dire predictions for Africa: the region's underfunded and poorly equipped health facilities would crumble and millions of people could die.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said in April 2020 that up to 3.3 million Africans could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19.