The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday officially launched the Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative in Ethiopia.
Through the project financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WFP plans to support almost 70,000 smallholder farmers by purchasing some 126,000 metric tons of food over the next five years.
P4P takes WFP local procurement a [...]

Sub-Saharan Africa has achieved the fastest progress among all developing regions in making primary education available to school-age children – improving from 58 per cent enrolment in 1999 to 76 per cent in 2008, a UN reported issued in Nairobi on Thursday disclosed.
Moreover, with consistently high economic growth rates over most of the decade, [...]

The German Government has imported raw materials worth over 1.3 billion euro (about N205 billion) from Nigeria, Mr. Abdul Rimdap, the Nigeria Ambassador to Germany has said.
Rimdap said on Monday in Berlin that the raw materials were imported in 2009 alone.
He said that the raw materials were petroleum, liquefied natural gas, precious stones and agricultural [...]

The volume of trade between Nigeria and the Peoples Republic of China in 2009 stood at 6.373 billion dollars, Mr. Guo Kun, the Consul-General of the Asian country’s Consulate, said in Lagos.
Guo announced the figure when some members of the Nigeria-China Business Network Group, led by Chief Charles Adebiyi, a real estate consultant, paid him [...]

Kenya’s ministry of Local Government, Agence Française de Développement(AFD) and European Union Delegation have organised a conference on Financing Local Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The one day conference on financing local authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa will take place in Nairobi on June 29.
Organizers said in Nairobi on Wednesday conference will present lessons learned from various [...]

The Kenyan Parliament on Wednesday passed the price control bill that seeks to give the government the power to regulate the price of essential commodities like food and energy.
The bill that was moved as private members bill was on the basis that a liberal market had negatively affected consumers with prices of commodities skyrocketing. The [...]

Leading Kenyan mobile phone operator Safaricom was named Africa’s Telecoms Company of the Year at the African Business Awards 2010 held
in London on Monday evening.

Safaricom which is also East Africa’s most profitable company topped a keenly-contested final short list that featured other telecoms operators on the continent like Gateway Communications and Globacom Mobile, both of [...]

The European Investment Bank on Tuesday restated its firm commitment to support infrastructure and private sector growth in East Africa.

Over the last five years the European Union’s long term financing institution has contributed more than EUR 890m to the region, with over 52% in the energy sector.

”The European Investment Bank will do its best to [...]

Former Nigerian President Olosegun Obasanjo on Tuesday urged African universities to come up with programmes aimed finding solutions to challenges facing the continent.
Obasanjo said unless universities focus more attention on ways and means of finding solutions facing the continent, answers to the developmental challenges that society faces cannot be found.
He said it is time the [...]

As G-8 and G-20 leaders prepare to gather in Canada, new analysis issued on Tuesday by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the United Nations Millennium Campaign finds that, in absolute terms, many of the world’s poorest countries are making the most overall progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

MDG’s are the set of [...]