Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries.The Population Reference Bureau's 2009 World Population Data Sheet and its summary report, released in this month, offer detailed information about country, regional, and global population patterns.

Child laborers in Malawi as young as five are picking tobacco for U.S. smokers. An outcome of this backbreaking work has been nicotine poisoning equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, a new study has found.
 
In the study by the U.S.-based child rights group Plan International, children reported common symptoms of green tobacco sickness including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.
 

By Rachel M. Anderson 

(Minneapolis) – Lamia Shapiro, 14, of Minneapolis has a warm bed to sleep in every night and a place to call home, but that’s not the case for a growing number of Twin Cities residents and she knows it. “On any given night there are probably hundreds of kids like me either sleeping on the streets or in homeless shelters right here in the Twin Cities,” she says. Shapiro knows this because for the past two years she has been volunteering to help homeless families through her church, Valley Community Presbyterian in Golden Valley. 

The West African community in Philadelphia is grieving this week for a young student from Mali shot to death in a senseless stick-up.
 
Mamadou Makadji, a French-speaker, spoke only a few English words and it is likely he did not understand the command to empty his pockets, police and family said.
 

After many visits to the Twin Cities by the Eldoret City Council and three years of conversations between Sister Cities’ Minneapolis and Eldoret Kenya, the International Leadership Institute announced that Minneapolis had donated a Fire Engine Pumper Truck to Eldoret from their relationship developed during the past 10 years. 

WASHINGTON and DENVER - The inaugural African Diaspora Marketplace (ADM) closed its call for proposals and has exceeded expectations by collecting 733 business proposals. The ADM is a business entrepreneurship program fostering economic development ideas from U.S.-based African diaspora to create plans for sustainable start-up and established businesses in 19 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

A newly released report finds that the State Department's Africa operations are beset with "leadership shortcomings" that compound "acute staffing problems."
 
Based on interviews with Bureau of African Affairs employees, investigators found that the group in charge of boosting the U.S. image is a "failed office" with no strategic plan and little integration with other diplomats.
 

By A. Kiatamba

It has been a long time coming. And recently the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its much-anticipated report, provoking an intense debate amongst Liberians everywhere, especially the Liberian Diaspora. 

Agreed upon in the August 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Accra and created by the TRC Act of 2005, The TRC was established to “Investigate gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law as well as abuses that occurred, including massacres, sexual violations, murder, extra-judicial killings and economic crimes, such as the exploitation of natural or public resources to perpetuate armed conflicts, during the period January 1979 to October 14, 2003.”

By Swallehe Msuya

Congressman Keith Ellison of the United States House of Representatives told a well-attended Town Hall forum in North Minneapolis that the aim of President Obama’s  health-care reform is to lower costs, create greater choice and improve quality of services as well as provide cover to the uninsured.

By  Paul Kagame, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Abdoulaye Wade & Seretse Khama Ian Khama 

Just three weeks after President Barack Obama’s triumphant return from Africa, the real challenge to achieving strategic change lies in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s own upcoming visit. Left unsaid as the president boarded Air Force One is the fact that Africa seeks not patrons but collaborators who will work “with” rather than “for” the continent. If the Obama administration wishes to truly make a difference, it must do so as an equal partner, addressing several low-cost, high-impact priorities.

By Ndze Ntuv Evaristus Tunka

African Global Roots' July 25th African Arts Festival sure heralded a new age of African culture and traditions. The flamboyantry of the participating artists, and showcases was a true telling of the diversified and beautiful customs from across the African continent.

Secretary of State Clinton will travel to Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde, starting on August 4 and returning to the United States on August 14. The trip will start at the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum, known mostly as the AGOA Forum, in Nairobi, Kenya, where she will deliver a speech at the ministerial opening ceremony of the forum on August the 5th.