Search Results for: Malawi

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IF a global poll was taken to identify the best known international organisation, the Egmont Group would be lucky to get a mention, despite it linking 116 financial intelligence units (FIU) worldwide.

It is partly to raise profile that the group last June appointed its first chair, Luis Urrutia, who heads Mexico’s FIU.…

BY BILL CORCORAN and ALAN OSBORN

IT is now some five years since a group of London-based multinationals, among them British American Tobacco (BAT), set up a group aimed at improving the conditions for doing business with and through Africa – named the Business Action for Improving Customs Administration in Africa (BAFICAA) initiative.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A KILLER disease is decimating fish stocks in the Zambezi river valley, threatening rural livelihoods in Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned. Its ‘global information and early warning system’ (GIEWS) says the disease ‘epizootic ulcerative syndrome’ (EUS) (caused by a fungus ‘aphanomyces invadans’ with "a high rate of mortality") is spreading through the Zambesi system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IT has long been outmoded and inaccurate to split the world into two camps: industrialised developed economies, and largely agricultural developing countries. The growth of the 1990s and the current decade means there is a wide range of social and economic sophistication and wealth amongst the poorer of these two old-fashioned categories.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

"THE STONE Age did not end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil," said Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani in 2003, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia. Six years on Mr Yamani’s words appear to ring true more than ever before – with alternative fuels becoming a viable petroleum substitute.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo, EMMA JACKSON and LEAH GERMAIN

TIME was when counterfeit personal care products were commonly crude fake perfumes pedalled in markets and workplaces during the Christmas and other festive periods to bargain hunters who knew they were buying rubbish.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A BOUNTY of cheap carbon free energy is lurking beneath many developing countries in the shape of geothermal power generation, with new technology making it cheaper and easier to source than ever before. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Kenyan power company KenGen have carried out a demonstration project testing advanced seismic and drilling techniques to make geothermal power plants cheaper to build.…

BY CLEMENCE MANYUKWE

ZIMBABWE tobacco farmer Kobus Joubert looks to the heavens gloomily as he prepares to sleep by the roadside next to his Chegutu farm. Those who know him say they have only seen that look when there is an impending drought.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

A NEW initiative to improve the health, wealth and environment of Africans is being driven by the Kyoto Protocol’s international trades in carbon credits. This allows wealthy developed countries to scale back their emission reductions, if they can invest in slashing greenhouse gas pollution abroad.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

THE WIDESPREAD implementation of new technological developments in Malawi’s flue-cured tobacco process could enable local producers to dramatically increase their output and its quality, according to industry experts.

Results from tests run during Malawi’s latest tobacco curing season using a new method of heating have shown a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency over standard methods, and an improved quality of the end product compared to traditionally cured tobacco.…