Read all posts for ‘Development’

South Africa is soon to enter its twentieth year as a democratic nation. Looking back over the 19 years of its existence up to this point, it is evident that, as with most teenagers, South Africa’s ride has been far from smooth. While South Africa has experienced significant and consistent […]

Joyce Bwambale is a smallholder coffee farmer on the slopes of the Rwenzori mountains. Like many smallholder farmers on the mountain, Joyce depends on coffee as her main cash crop. This season Joyce is upbeat that the coffee harvest will be good. In a season of bumper harvests like this […]

Poverty and unemployment are chronic ailments that afflict much of South Africa’s scattered township population. These townships, known as shanty towns in much of the rest of the world, comprise a large percentage of the overall population of the country and therefore any conversation about South Africa’s future cannot be […]

Money is, as Bernard Lietaer describes it: the ‘iron ring’ we have put through our own noses which now drags us around. We’ve forgotten that we designed the ring in the first place, and that it is within our capacity to reshape it. What Lietaer is telling us is that […]

  Valentyna is in her 70s. She sells used books on the street right under an old rusty fence. I come closer and pick up an extremely old copy of Boccaccio’s “Decameron”. She doesn’t mind a bit of a chat with me and says that she has been in this […]