30 April, Geneva – Better Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability initiative, is to conduct sustainability mapping and assessments in West and Central Africa to enhance its understanding of the needs of smallholder farmers in the region and identify context-specific interventions. Funded by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), these assessments will inform ways in which targeted support can aid the production of more …

The African cloud ecosystem represents untapped potential of nearly $1bn, with only 17% of 6,000 companies, with over 250 employees, fully on the cloud. Despite the growing demand for cloud services, both African startups and global cloud orchestration firms are not capitalising on this opportunity. There is a vast gulf in the rate of cloud adoption between emerging and mature …

Plans to eliminate the blinding disease trachoma from 16 African countries have been boosted with $36.5m (about €34.24) in new funding. Twelve of the countries supported through the Accelerate programme, led by the non-profit Sightsavers, hope to eliminate trachoma by 2027 and three will make significant progress towards this goal in that time.  Trachoma begins as a bacterial infection, with symptoms similar …