An African garment and textile sector rebounding from the Covid-19 pandemic has seen strong export growth in the first three-quarters of 2022 start to sputter through a tightening of retail demand in Europe and the United States. These remain Africa’s two primary export markets and their consumers are reducing spending as inflation and recession concerns grow.…

European Union (EU) confectionery, chocolate and biscuit industry association CAOBISCO has called on the EU to take a smart and integrated approach when amending and approving a planned EU directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. Proposed by the European Commission in February (2022), the law would insist that larger companies identify, prevent, end or mitigate their adverse impacts on human rights, (such as child labour and worker exploitation), and the environment, (such as pollution and biodiversity loss).…

The Covid-19 pandemic’s expansion of online learning has created new higher education opportunities to teach African prison inmates, even if some jail administrators and government officials have often been reluctant to take advantage of these options. The idea that prison can deliver personal growth and reform as well as punishment and justice is not universally accepted across the continent, restricting the potential of higher online learning for inmates.…

A lack of reliable data across Africa has weakened policies to improve higher education across the continent, development experts argue. They claim the problem is compromising the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) (1) to leave no one behind in tertiary education by 2030, even though several local data development initiatives are trying to improve the flow of useful statistics.…

RUSSIA’S invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major increase in sugar prices, the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said. Its FAO Sugar Price Index averaged 117.9 points in March, up 7.4 points (6.7%) from February, and up 20% year-on-year.…

Cigar sellers are exploring the potential offered by southern Africa’s two Portuguese-speaking countries, Angola and Mozambique, not only as sustainable growth markets, but also as African cigar production centres. Both countries have tobacco production and growing traditions that date back well into the Portuguese colonial times that ended with independence in 1975.…

INTRODUCTION 

ACCOUNTING used to be restricted to financially measurable matters of profit and loss; expenditure and revenue; taxes and subsidies; investment and liabilities. But the mathematical and statistical skills underpinning a solid set of books and filed accounts are today increasingly being used to measure the environmental and social sustainability of a product, input, production process and supply chain.…

Sub-Saharan Africa has natural resources that aids the development of renewable energy, it has lots of sun, plentiful wind, and much potentially sustainable biomass. With the development of small-scale affordable renewable energy technologies, such systems have been promoted by major aid agencies keen to prevent deforestation and excessive reliance on fossil fuels, that – even where they are plentiful, have not usually led to widespread economic development.

THE NEED for a proactive effort to improve the teaching and researching of physics in sub-Saharan Africa, as a foundation for critically important scientific work, has been highlighted in a new report from the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP).…

THE RULING council of the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) is preparing to agree major reforms to the International Cocoa Agreement, which should see the agreement increase its commitment to boost sustainability in the chocolate sector.

Council members are considering final changes committing the ICCO to ensuring that cocoa production, processing and manufacture is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.…