Southern+Africa

= = By: Corinne Hardcastle

**Countries in Southern Africa : Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, and Swaziland.** **Click here for map of countries :** ** Click here for graph of population : ** - - September 15, 2009 - - **  Did you ever think that satellite imaging could help with human rights? The picture about is from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The one on the left was taken June 2002 and the one on the right was taken April 6, 2006. Why the change in those four short years? Porta Farm (where these pictures were captured) which is located just west of Zimbabwe's capital, had over 850 homes and other buildings. That is estimated to be around 6,000 to 10,000 people. Every single person was relocated due to a campaign against political opponents. The houses and buildings were destroyed. The right picture it was Porta Farm looks like now, leveled and forgotten. We now know that satellite imaging can help us with a lot more that we thought. **



- - September 30, 2009 -
 * Last week in Cape Town, South Africa hundreds of students marched the streets in hopes of only two things. Libraries, and Librarians. It was their simple demand. [|Click here] for the whole story. **

__ Cape Town is located __ at the bottom left of South Africa.

- - October 15, 2009 - -
 * Botswana right now has about 24% unemployment. However, they are a rather wealthy country. They also have the biggest gap between rich and poor. They have a very important resource they provide to the world and that is diamonds. They produce more diamonds than any other country in the world. Unfortunately, many people from Botswana feel that they have no benefit of the diamonds. The economy has made the diamond sales decrease by almost half, which is making people loose their jobs. It is expected that the diamonds there will run out in the next 20 years, so maybe it is a good idea to slow down the sells. Some other struggles with Botswana is approximately 40% of the population infected with AIDS. Also, about 47% of the population goes off of one dollar a day. That isn't enough to support yourself, let alone a family if you have one.**[[image:ALeqM5ju9bfm8EAaOXtRbo2JcQ4WEeveLA.jpg width="390" height="263"]][[image:botswana_map.jpg width="344" height="266"]]

This is a worker checking for the polish of the diamond.