closing the gap...I hope they will get the funding soon!

Quoted: The initiative has proved so successful that four of South Africa's neighbouring countries - Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Swaziland - have entered into a partnership with MiET to develop similar programmes.

But the future of South Africa's SCCS initiative is shadowed by doubt, as MiET only has funding until 2009 to establish the programme in 1,192 primary schools in the two provinces.

"We are busy capacitating people, but there is only money until 2009. What will happen then?" said Aubrey Kgobokoe, a SCCS training coordinator in North West. "It should be rolled out in all schools, so that teenagers will also benefit. Are we going to have to leave those who have yet to benefit to fend for themselves?"

Pete you might find this interesting
urbanization without effective planning on infrastructure (speciifcally roads)...this issue is very common in a lot of major African cities (from what I have seen so far)...disparity in urbanization and displacement (eviction) of many poors living in major cities.

Quoted: Central Abuja looks like a modern capital with wide streets and a skyline with spectacular public buildings. But four years after a massive urban demolition programme began in 2003, little progress has been made in resettling the roughly 800,000 people that the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) estimate have been displaced.

"Despite the typhoons eventually veering off and weakening, Governor Salceda said that the preparations were worth it. “Was it worth P19.5 million to save a single life? Yes, it was,” the governor told IRIN, adding that they were now documenting their experience in readiness for the next typhoon. "

Quoted: In a sign of the nation truly coming together to thwart disaster, the Philippine military even suspended counterinsurgency operations against the New People’s Army as the typhoon approached to focus on disaster operations, and the communist rebels responded in kind by declaring an indefinite ceasefire in typhoon-ravaged areas.

Quoted: Pre-emptive evacuations. Provincial governors in coordinated with local officials activated local disaster coordinating councils to conduct “pre-emptive evacuation” of residents in threatened areas, particularly in ...

for Pete, this might interest you!

Quoted: NAIROBI, 22 November 2007 (IRIN) - Tomorrow's Crises Today explores the effect living in today's cities has on the millions of people who already live ...

Quoted: According to Ato Berhanu, community conversations are a homegrown way of dealing with issues. "In an African country like Ethiopia, where there is a well-established and accepted culture of sitting together and sorting out problems through traditional means, rather than formal and institutional approaches, methodologies like CC are the ones that should be promoted and supported."

Dozens of families have been leaving villages near the Iraq-Turkey border since 21 October, joining the hundreds who have already fled the area as tension rises between Turkish-Kurdish rebels and the Turkish army, local officials say.

Quoted: NAIROBI, 17 October 2007 (IRIN) - Dozens of heavily armed government security officials detained the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) office in Mogadishu, ...

If the bill were to become law, the US could stop military assistance to Ethiopia and impose travel restrictions on some government officials unless Addis Ababa released “political prisoners” and people detained without trial, prosecuted officials “involved in the unlawful killings of demonstrators” after elections in May 2005, and ensured the independence of the judiciary and the press.