The sad truth is that a significant number of global philanthropic foundations have investments in the fossil fuel industry, including those where donations to environmental causes and climate change is a significant part of their portfolio… As we move from the UN's Sustainable Development Goals...to the Climate Change Summit in Paris...the deep contradictions in global philanthropy must be acknowledged.

There are obviously concerns about the impact on Africa through a decrease in commodity exports (and income) to China. Yet such shifts also signal opportunity and perhaps changes in China's approach towards the continent, to include 'softer' issues - like closer public interaction…The 6th iteration of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held this week in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 This is reflected in China’s active global public diplomacy drive [...] which started in the mid-2000s. This aspect of people-centred relations has also featured as an element in official Focac documentation. China’s current engagement in South Africa has expanded to include the subset cultural diplomacy, a term described by the US State department as the ‘linchpin of public diplomacy’ that reveals the soul of a nation.

A group of orphans and street children have been trained in photography and asked to capture the world around them […] It became known as the Murmushi Photo Project. As well as giving them a practical means by which they might one day make a living, it provides them with a visual voice through which they can document their worlds.

Pope Francis held a private meeting with South Sudan's President Salva Kiir on Friday, pushing for peace in the world's newest nation that has endured nearly two years of civil war, a Vatican spokesman said.

[…] Films are targeted at an international audience, which is already saddled with its own preconceptions of Africa [...] Why tie the film so explicitly to a cause that “needs immediate attention,” if not to profit on the outdated idea of that there is a foreign land that needs saving? Art can certainly dramatize real-life events, but it can’t be the earnest volunteer on the street with a Greenpeace clipboard.

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa says the much-anticipated film Mandela's Gun will be released in the first quarter of 2016. Mthethwa is busy drumming up support for Africa Day next year, where he signed agreements with counterparts in the fields of film cooperation, oral history and cultural exchange programs. He says they will be using cultural diplomacy to forge people-to-people relations.

I've been in the Peace Corps since October 2014, stationed in Ghana's Northern Region. On Thursday, I'll spend the day in northern Ghana with three [Peace Corps] friends […] Living in a village without running water or electricity for the last year has made me realize the vast privileges so many of us take for granted […] And I've also learned that even when you don't have a lot, you can still share what little you have.