
News in Development


Is India too wealthy for British aid?
Britain's decision to give £280m ($457m) in annual aid to India for the next four years has prompted questions in the UK about whether India needs the aid these days. The BBC's Geeta Pandey travels to the northern state of Bihar to see where a sizeable chunk of the British money will be spent.

Kenya’s Schools to Benefit from Wikimedia - Local Developers Partnership
Kenya’s learning institutions - both primary and secondary – are set to benefit from learning content developed by the Wikimedia Foundation working in partnership with local content developers.

World Bank: Chronic hunger to affect 1 billion
Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, said on Tuesday that the rise in food prices had already pushed an additional 44m people into extreme poverty, which is closely associated with hunger.The rate of the increase suggests the number of undernourished people, which the UN said last year was 925m, will now hit 1bn by the end of this year.

Report: Urgent action needed to avert global hunger
A UK government-commissioned study into food security has called for urgent action to avert global hunger. The Foresight Report on Food and Farming Futures says the current system is unsustainable and will fail to end hunger unless radically redesigned.

Pneumonia vaccine 'to save thousands of lives'
A new vaccine against pneumonia is being rolled out in Africa which estimates suggest could save more than half a million lives a year globally. Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness, claiming around 1.7 million lives every year. The charity Save the Children has launched a report, No Child Born to Die, which highlights the potential funding shortfall for global immunisation.

Importance of Agriculture
"The current economic crisis, which was also examined during the recent meeting of the G20, must be faced in all its seriousness. It has many causes, and sends out a strong call for a profound revision in the model of global economic development."