Almost 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa, supply about 80 percent of its food. In order for Africa to establish a prosperous and sustainable economic future, the voices of its farmers must be amplified.

To enable this, journalists from across the West Africa region attended a media workshop in Accra, Ghana, hosted by Inter Press Service IPS Africa on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The workshop aimed to build the capacity of local journalists and editors from West and Central Africa to gain the skills and knowledge they need to report on the food crisis and how it can be solved, particularly with the contribution of smallholder farmers. Read more »

The website is part of a major global media and communication project of IPS running through 2009 - 2011 called “Communicating for Change: Getting Voice, Visibility and Impact for Gender Equality“.

The project is financed by the Dutch MDG3 Fund set up by the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, Bert Koenders, to finance activities that advance Millennium Development Goal 3: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Read more »

Adhemar Gabriel Bahadian, Brazilian
Ambassador in Italy, representing his country, and Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General, signed an agreement on Tuesday 10 March in Rome.

Brazil has signed a new agreement to support IPS activities, especially to strengthen information flows among countries in the South recognising the changing global geography of power. There is a special focus on communication from and between three major democracies in the South: India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA).

The South American country has been a member of the IPS Core Group of donors since 2005. It is the main country of the South in this group, Read more »

Mario Osava, IPS Correspondent in Brazil, has been awarded the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Media Award 2009. This award is made every eighteen months to recognize long-term journalistic contributions to analysis and public debate about Latin America in the United States and in Latin America, as well as breakthrough journalism.

The 2009 Media Award Committee was chaired by Christy Thornton (North American Congress on Latin America). Committee members included Peter Kornbluh (National Security Archive/George Washington University); Fred Moehn (Stony Brook University); and Blanche Petrich (La Jornada, Mexico). Read more »

In 2009 and 2010 IPS will be implementing a major media and communication project financed by the Dutch MDG3 Fund. The Fund was set up by the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, Bert Koenders, to finance activities that advance Millennium Development Goal 3: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. IPS is committed to involving fellow MDG3 Fund recipients and other women’s NGOs in many of its project activities primarily in Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Read more »