20100522
PRESS TV

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on the international community to support Somalia's transitional federal government to end instability in the country.

"The only way to restore stability is to support this government in its reconciliation effort and its fight against extremism," Ban said as he opened an international conference on Somalia on Friday.

Delegates from 55 nations and 12 international organizations participated in the three-day conference.

"If the international community acts now, I think it can make the difference," AFP quoted the UN chief as saying.

"I think this conference offers the international community an opportunity to show the Somali leadership that we are ready to walk with them in partnership," he added.

The transitional government, which is challenged by insurgent groups, was established in January 2009 but it controls only a small part of the capital Mogadishu with the backing of African Union troops.

Somali's President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is attending the conference, which will also focus on international efforts to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since warlords toppled President Siad Barre in 1991.

20100521
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

US Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill will visit Egypt, Kenya and the World Cup in South Africa in June, the White House said Thursday.

Biden will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss "a full range of bilateral and regional issues" which are likely to include US-brokered proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

His office said in a statement that Biden will then move on to Kenya, to which President Barack Obama traces part of his ancestry, to meet President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

"In addition to discussing a range of bilateral issues, the Vice President will address our shared interests in peace and stability in the region, particularly in Sudan and Somalia," the statement said.

On the last leg of his trip, Biden will travel to South Africa to meet deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and other key officials.

But the highlight of the trip will likely be his visit to the World Cup, where he will represent the United States at opening ceremonies, and see the US team's first game, against England on June 12.

The statement said that Biden would travel during the week of June 7, but did not give a detailed breakdown of his schedule.

20100521
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

US officials Thursday unveiled a plan to fight hunger and promote global security by investing in agriculture in developing countries.

The United States will plow at least 3.5 billion dollars over three years into programs to promote farming and fight malnutrition in low-income countries, mainly in Africa, said US Agency for International Development (USAID) head Rajiv Khan, as he unveiled the plan called "Feed the Future."

"Combined with the investments of our partner countries, we believe this will lead to 40 million people over 10 years increasing their incomes by more than 10 percent a year, and we expect to reach 25 million children with nutritional interventions that will prevent stunting in 10 million kids," Khan told an international symposium on agriculture and food security.

"Agricultural development is a springboard for broader economic development, and food security is the foundation for peace and opportunity and, therefore, our own national security," Khan told the gathering that included Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the agriculture ministers of Bangladesh and Mali.

"Feed the Future" makes good on a pledge by President Barack Obama in his inaugural speech to work with poor nations to "make your farms flourish" and is based on principles the US president outlined at the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

Feed the Future will work with developing countries that already have their own roadmaps for raising agricultural productivity, and will follow the recipient country's plan.

"By the end of this year, we should have 15 African country investment plans, representing a total population of 650 million people," said Khan.

Fourteen countries committed in L'Aquila to contribute some 22 billion dollars to boost agriculture and fight hunger and poverty in developing countries.

As of last month, the United States, Canada, Spain and South Korea, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, already had begun transferring nearly 900 million dollars to back the pledge made in L'Aquila.

20100521
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Scientists have discovered thousands of potential new drug compounds for tackling malaria.

Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, with the highest disease burden in Sub-Saharan Africa, and resistance to existing drugs threatens to make it even deadlier.

But now, two papers in Nature report on a variety of chemicals, each active against malaria parasites, and thus with the potential to be developed into a future drug.

Armand Guiguemde, of St Jude's Children's Research Hospital, United States, and his team screened some 310,000 chemicals and found more than 1,100 with promising anti-malarial effects.

Many of these targeted places on the malarial parasite different from the places targeted by current drugs. This means there is unlikely to be pre-existing resistance to the new compounds. In models, two worked well alongside artemisins.

In the second paper, Francisco-Javier Gamo of drug company GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Tres Cantos Medicines Development Campus in Spain, and his team screened nearly 2 million compounds from GSK's library, identifying 13,500 antimalarial chemicals.

Some 8,000 worked well against multi drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum parasites, and some 11,000 that were previously property of GSK are now available to researchers for further study.

From today, the structures of the compounds will be available on public websites for the scientific community to use. It is the first time that a drug company has made public the structures of so many molecules

The research comes at a time when the first signs of resistance to the only fully effective antimalarial drugs - artemisins - are starting to emerge in South-East Asia.

20100521
AFRICA GOOD NEWS

Mozambique on Thursday signed a 100-million-dollar (81-million-euro) deal with donors to finance part of a major expansion in natural gas production.

The French development agency AFD and the Development Bank of Southern Africa signed the deal with the state-owned Companhia Mocambicana de Hidrocarbonetos (CMH) in the capital Maputo.

"This agreement represents an important step for Mozambique to participate in a project of great impact for the country," AFD country director Bruno Leclerc said at the signing.

The financing will fund CMH's 25 percent contribution to the 400-million-dollar expansion of natural gas production in southern Inhambane province, the company's chairman John Kachamila said.

Sasol Petroleum Temane, part of South African oil giant Sasol, owns 70 percent in the project.

Started in 2004, the scheme produces 120 million gigajoules of natural gas a year. The expansion will up production by more than half.

Mozambique will keep 36 million gigajoules, while the rest will be exported.

Mozambique Minerals Minister Esperanca Bias last year said sales from the project earned 230 million dollars in 2008.