The United Nations estimates that people in sub-Saharan Africa spend roughly 40 billion hours per year collecting water, and what they do find is often unsafe to drink. In some parts of Africa, finding potable water can be a six-hour endeavor. Roughly 3.4 million people die every year from water-related disease. The water shortage is a major life-threatening problem that affects as many as 1 billion people on the continent alone, but it's not as though you can just snap your fingers and make water magically appear out of thin air. Or can you? 

African governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed on the urgent need to harness the continent's rapid economic growth, as unrest and other political challenges temper exuberance about the future. At a meeting in Maputo, the IMF, finance ministers and central bank governors declared that a deeper structural transformation is needed so that ordinary citizens can benefit from the boom.

Representatives from some of the world’s largest fashion brands and the leader of one of the world’s biggest union organizations met this week with Cambodian officials and local clothing manufacturers to demand better treatment and improve workplace safety for the country's estimated 600,000 garment workers. 

China's most celebrated sage has become the emblem of the country's soft-power drive and of its people-to-people diplomacy in Africa. Todd Balazovic reports.In Africa, it's Chinese businesspeople who sign multimillion-dollar deals, top politicians who sign major cooperation agreements and people who embody China's most famous thinker who act as cultural ambassadors.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that Tehran plans to give priority to Africa in its foreign policy.Zarif made the remarks during a ceremony held in Tehran at the Institute for Political and International Studies on Saturday night to commemorate African Day, which is an annual celebration of the anniversary of the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963.   
 

Sometimes, you hear about the controversy surrounding something before you actually hear about the thing itself. Such was the case with European Attraction Limited, an art exhibition that opened in Oslo, Norway, last week. 

Two bombs killed 10 people and wounded 70 others Friday, at a market in Kenya’s capital, while hundreds of British tourists were evacuated from the coastal resort of Mombasa after warnings of an impending attack by Islamic extremists.  President Uhuru Kenyatta, appearing at a previously planned news conference soon after the bombings, offered his condolences.  But he dismissed the tourism warnings from the U.S. and Britain that led to the evacuations, saying terrorism is a common problem and not unique to Kenya.

Hours after a Sudanese court sentenced his pregnant wife to death when she refused to recant her Christian faith, her husband told CNN he feels helpless.  "The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is abhorrent and should never be even considered," Manar Idriss, Amnesty International's Sudan researcher, said in a statement.