ELLEN FUNGISAI CHIPANGO, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Johannesburg RELIANCE on biomass such as fuelwood for energy in rural areas has a strong bearing on Zimbabwe’s environment. Rural communities in Zimbabwe meet 94% of their cooking energy requirements by using traditional fuels, mainly fuelwood, and 20% of urban households use wood as the main cooking fuel. For this reason, unsustainable fuelwood use patterns are driving deforestation. Estimates are that deforestation has been high in the country, peaking at 330,000 hectares of forests destroyed between 2010 and 2014. Policymakers attribute deforestation to human activities such as the clearing of land for…

WESLEY LANGAT PETER  Olankai, who keeps cattle, sheep and goats, has struggled to buy and sell his animals in Kenya's Kajiado County as the coronavirus pandemic closed markets and ushered in movement restrictions and curfews that have eaten away at his income. "Our livelihood is reliant on livestock - we sell these animals to get money to buy food and other family needs, but now we can't," he said earlier this month. Olankai, 46, lives in Kisamis village in remote Maasai territory where there is no road network and connecting with buyers is a challenge. Now at home with his…

LAURIE GOERING NEARLY four decades ago, farmers in the small central Malian village of Dlonguebougou grew their millet crops with little more than hoes, and local mud-hut shops sold just the basics: salt, sugar, tea, cola nuts, kerosene and cigarettes. The vast empty reaches of the Sahel, stretching north into the Sahara Desert, offered endless grazing and land for farm expansion, residents told Camilla Toulmin, a researcher who has chronicled the community since the early 1980s. Today, however, life is changing in Dlonguebougou, as in many other villages across the drylands of West Africa. Some mud homes now sport satellite…