The use of seawater as a home remedy for conjunctivitis—an eye infection that causes redness and itching—has been passed down in Ghana for generations. But now scientists and doctors in the country are warning people against the practice, calling it ineffective and potentially dangerous. Conjunctivitis is a common complaint in Ghana, especially during the country’s […]
Ghanaians are crazy about waakye, a local dish prepared by cooking rice and beans with red sorghum leaves. The leaves add flavour and give waakye (pronounced waa-che) its distinctive reddish-brown colour. The leaves are also rich in antioxidants, which in turn can be good for human health. But the health benefits of eating waakye are […]
A new treatment for patients suffering from both HIV and the deadly parasite-borne disease Kala-azar has shown impressive cure rates, raising hopes for thousands of patients worldwide. Kala-azar, also known as visceral leishmaniasis, is caused by parasites that infect humans through sandfly bites. The parasites attack the spleen, liver and bone marrow causing fever, weight-loss […]
Eleven thousand years ago in the Middle East, goats became one of the first herbivores that humans domesticated. Since then, the horned livestock has spread across the world. But how domestic goats (Capra hircus) found their way to all corners of the African continent—where they are now an important source of meat and milk—remains poorly […]
Landfills—those smelly, polluted no-man’s lands of modern life—often contain useful raw materials. Recycling them for profit presents opportunities and challenges for Africa, Eman El-Sherbiny reports. Just a bus ride away from the shimmering Nile-side skyscrapers of central Cairo lies Hay el- Zabaleen. Known locally as Garbage City, it’s where the unwanted clothes, food and, all […]
Smallholder tomato farming in Kenya remains dominated by older men despite efforts by the government NGOs to encourage women and youth into agriculture and to foster equality in land ownership, scientists have found. In Kenya, seven out of ten tomato growers are male according to a study conducted by a group of Nairobi-based scientists and […]
Watermelons are a popular fruit in Benin. But their profitability for market traders—95% of whom are women—is limited as a result of the country’s poor rural road network, a lack of storage facilities to stop melons from rotting, and the difficulty for traders to balance customer demand with supply. Sylvain Kpenavoun Chogou, an agronomist at […]
The thunk-thunk-thunk of generators is a common background noise in cities and villages where electrical power supplies are erratic. In Ghana, the government is investing in power generation capacity. But is it investing its money in the right technology? For a paper in Scientific African published in March 2019, four scientists from the country tested […]
Cooking on open fires can waste fuel and produce smoke dangerous to human health—especially if the stove is located indoors. So, in the 1980s, Ethiopia rolled out two improved cooking stove designs: the Mirt made of cement and the Gonzie that could be made of local clays. Both offered similar benefits, requiring less fuel and […]
Changes in land-use, population growth, and climate change spell trouble for wild plants that have fed Africans for centuries, writes Joseph Opoku Gakpo. At Nyankpala, a small town in northern Ghana,forests that covered the surrounding countryside a century ago are no more. Thousands of hectares have given way to homes, businesses, roads, a university campus—even […]