AP: WFP Drops Food to War Refugees in South Sudan – Officials from the UN’s World Food Program air-dropped 32 metric tons of food to refugees on the Sudan-South Sudan border as an “expensive, last-ditch way to get food to tens of thousands of people who have been forced out of Sudan by fighting and hunger.” This marks the first in a series of airdrops aimed at replenishing rapidly diminishing food supplies for the over 100,000 people who have fled fighting north of the border.
NPR: Saving Lives In Africa With The Humble Sweet Potato – Harvest Plus, an international effort aimed at creating more nutritious, biofortified crops, has launched a new campaign aimed at promoting “orange varieties of sweet potatoes in Mozambique and Uganda” in order to improve “nutrition among the world’s poor.” Nutritionists discovered that micronutrients can make an enormous difference in people’s health, and “poor people often don’t get enough of them because they spend their scarce money on cheap and basic foods like rice or corn.” (Dan Charles)
Devex: No roads for aid in remote Nigerian region – Aid groups are having difficulty mobilizing aid in regions of northern Niger that are “practically inaccessibly due to floods caused by an unusual amount of rainfall last month.” Even prior to the floods the region was facing a food security crisis and saw its population grow by 60 percent in the past months due to the arrival of 15,000 refugees from Mali. Niger does seem more prepared for the annual drought and floods, as the government is developing contingency plans to identify risks of flooding and food insecurity. (Ivy Mungcal)
The Economist: Running home – Kenya’s running stars, who accounted for 53 of the country’s 59 Olympians at this year’s Games, are renowned for training in the heat and at high altitudes, yet Kenya’s National Olympic Committee chose Bristol, England for the country’s training camp this year. Many athletes refused to attend, some remaining in Kenya while others trained in Oregon. As Africa’s “Olympic giant,” Kenya was expected to outshine its performance, yet their team left with only two gold medals, and there is an “acute sense of dismay that such a surfeit of talent should have been hobbled by inept officialdom.”
