How the Lack of Affordable Vegetables is Creating a Billion-Dollar Obesity Epidemic in South Africa

The number of young South Africans suffering from obesity doubled in the last six years, while it had taken the United States 13 years for this to happen.

Fruit and vegetable prices in South Africa have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 10 2018 (IPS) – Every Sunday afternoon, Thembi Majola* cooks a meal of chicken and rice for her mother and herself in their home in Alexandra, an informal settlement adjacent to South Africa’s wealthy economic hub, Sandton.

“Vegetables is only on Sunday,” Majola tells IPS, adding that these constitute potatoes, sweet potato and pum…

Civil Society Urges Inclusive, Resilient & Sustainable Urban Areas of the Future

Cristina Fan is Coordinator, World Development Foundation

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, USA, Sep 9 2019 (IPS) – The United Nations held its first major international conference in one of America’s mountain states, bringing scores of civil society organizations (CSOs) to discuss ways on making “cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable by 2030.”

The annual UN Civil Society Conference, which had been meeting mostly in New York, site of the UN world headquarters, and in some foreign capitals, was hosted by Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s office August 26-28 under the title “Building Inclusive and sustainable cities and communit…

2020: a Year Full of Danger

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Protesters demonstrate against direction taken by climate change talks. Credit: Ana Libisch/IPS

ROME, Jan 6 2020 (IPS) – Let’s face what lies ahead with open eyes: 2020 is going to be a very tough year for the world, and developing countries in particular. The infant decade has already begun with the harbingers of climate disaster as thousands fled to beaches in Australia from raging bush fire…