s image of a smart city is of high-tech digital infrastructure and perfect public transport. Indeed much of the Smart City World Expo on show in Barcelona does little to dispel that. Among the exhibits you can ride an electric bike, sit in the latest electric car models and even talk to a robot assistant. What relevance can any of this have for the developing world? Pieter van Heyningen, programmes...
s 4,250-mile length, an omission Levison Wood intends to rectify and hopes he can do it in a year. Setting off from dense forest in the highlands of Rwanda on 1 December, Wood, 31, a former parachute regiment captain from Putney, south London, will work his way through up to seven countries – depending which side of the river he takes – some of which have been riven by civil unrest and war. Wood will...
union Investigators raided the computer servers of the civil service union in Goyang, Gyeonggi province because members of the organisation are suspected of trying to interfere in the December 19 2012 presidential election. They are accused of posting messages on their website in favour of the opposition candidate. The state prosecution investigators were sent to the computer hosting centre of the...
s international development secretary, launched a $16m (£10.5m) fund that will award innovative ideas to cut transport costs, Logistics Innovation for Trade (Lift). The fund will provide matching grants to encourage private sector investment in freight and other logistics technologies in east Africa. The fund, managed by Trade Mark East Africa , a not-for-profit organisation, aims to reduce transport...
s tea farmers and other agricultural initiatives The UK's international development secretary has announced four major projects in Tanzania worth £20m. The schemes form part of Britain's drive to increase private sector involvement in development by putting more money through entrepreneurs and doubling the number of UK companies doing business in the country. The announcement by Justine Greening was...
t be planted here because it was genetically modified. Opponents of genetically modified crops have made a stand in Africa – and now villages like Engaruka are squarely in the middle of a global ideological war over agricultural technology. Since US farmers first adopted genetically modified (GM) crops in 1996, 17 million farmers in 29 countries have followed suit. Europe rejected the crops, though,...
s first, two-year OGP Action Plan , and delivery has been disappointing. By my calculations, of the 25 commitments in the plan, only two have been met in full: to publish a citizens' budget and to establish an OGP focal person within government. Given that the first of these was already happening before the OGP began and was largely delivered by Policy Forum, an NGO network, it's not great news. But...
s proposal for perpetrators of the illicit ivory trade to be executed "on the spot" divided opinion, with some conservationists backing it as a necessary deterrent but others warning that it would lead to an escalation of violence. There are already signs of an increasing militarisation of Africa's wildlife parks with more than 1,000 rangers having been killed while protecting animals over the past...
s allocation in the early 1990s of the area for use by a foreign hunting company, an action that did not take account of existing community land rights and uses of the resident Masai. The result has been years of conflict over access and use of land and other resources, when the interests of the hunting company come into conflict with the resident communities' traditional livestock grazing practices...
s royal family . Government officials had planned to annex 1,500 sq km bordering the Serengeti national park for a "wildlife corridor" that would benefit a luxury hunting and safari company based in the United Arab Emirates. But campaigners said ministers dropped the scheme after visiting the Masai, who complained that their livestock would be cut off from vital grazing pasture, as well as 18 months...