I’m starting to feel right at home. We spent most of the day Wednesday in Waterloo, in the Western Area Rural District, where we met with three youth farming groups. They all had interesting stories and seemed very determined to get their projects off the ground. But they all mentioned one similar problem: Because they were women’s groups, they were all dealing with the issue of getting young girls out of prostitution.

The journey to Sierra Leone was long. I left California Tuesday afternoon and, after two layovers, I finally arrived at my destination the next evening. It really didn’t start to sink in that I was heading to Africa until our plane began flying over the Sahara. All I remember seeing was vast areas of sand, with layers of blue and orange coating the horizon. The nice lady sitting next to me described it as an “ocean of brown.” I would concur.

We launch our One Question series today with a Q&A with Patrick Vinck, our speaker for the week, who spoke about how to understand and achieve food security after conflict in Africa.

New York Times: Monsanto to Allow Use of Seed After Patent Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company and one of the major proponents of genetically modified crops, said in a letter to farm groups this week that it would allow farmers to grow its Roundup Ready soybeans even after a patent protecting the technology expired [...]

This photo gallery shows the images our correspondents have taken along their various reporting travels. Click on the play button to view the gallery. You can also add your images related to Africa, agriculture and women to our flickr photostream.

By ARP Staff
December 5, 2009

Africa Reporting Project correspondent Madeleine Bair published a story this week in the East Bay Express about economist Ted Miguel’s research on climate change and civil conflict in Africa. The study, produced by Miguel and a UC Berkeley doctoral student, is the first to link global warming to human warfare.

Financial donations and other efforts to attack food insecurity around the globe need to be “scaled up,” the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization said on Wednesday, as the World Summit on Food Security concluded in Rome. But the lack of attendance at the summit by all G8 country leaders–except Italy, where the three-day summit was held–did not bode well for increasing investment, donations and food aid to where they are needed most.

In this Q&A, Martin Ricard talks with a Kenyan-born scientist who believes genetically modified crops are good for developing countries.

By MARTIN RICARD
A Nigerian immigrant’s involvement in the country’s first private refinery project represents more than just a new business venture. It shows, some say, how one of the country’s most profitable resources, for years controlled by and benefiting those outside Nigeria, is finally bearing fruit on its own soil.