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Researchers from the Global Development Institute have been awarded a new research contract of £32 million to establish the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as part of UK Aid. Led by Professor Diana Mitlin, ACRC and its international partners will tackle complex problems in some of Africa’s fastest…

The Smallholder Data Gap Smallholder farms — holdings of less than 2 hectares — produce one-third of global food consumed, employ 2 billion people, and make up 84% of the world’s farms. Yet our collective knowledge of their food production remains limited: questions like what crop types smallholders are growing and where they grow them remain unanswered, making it hard to track yield…

There is no debate: People need to restore the world's degraded land by growing trees and transforming farms, forests, and pasture into more productive ecosystems. That's how we can grow more food, safeguard biodiversity, and store carbon. But to know where we're going, we need to know where we have been. We need to track progress toward our restoration goals, but it's not quite as simple as it…

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in towns and cities. Urban living brings many benefits, but city dwellers worldwide are seeing a rapid increase in noncommunicable health problems, such as asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. Some scientists now think this is linked to biodiversity loss – the ongoing depletion of the varied forms of life on Earth. The rate…

The UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, which yielded the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality. The meeting took place in the context of the ‘Generation Equality’ campaign led by UN Women. In 2021, Mexico, France, and UN Women will host a civil society-centered,…

Helping to reshape the UN's approach to better serve the continent and merge the UN-led Sustainable Development Goals with Africa's own 2063 Agenda, are top priorities for the newly minted UN Special Adviser on Africa. Cristina Duarte, who is also Under-Secretary-General on African Affairs, took up her position at the helm of the Office (OSAA), in August. Previously, she had served…