On May 23, 2023, Ambassador Dr. John Nkengasong, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Special Representative for Health Diplomacy, announced the approval of the $112 million (over 6 billion Birr) Country Operational Plan 2023 (COP23) through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program to support Ethiopia’s continued response to end HIV/AIDS in 2030. Ambassador Tracey Jacobson, Charge’ d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, attended the virtual event.
COP23 represents the culmination of the cooperation between PEPFAR and the Ministry of Health to plan and develop programming to support the needs of people living with HIV in Ethiopia. The approval of COP23 by Ambassador Dr. John Nkengasong ensures a continuation of the PEPFAR programming, conducted in Ethiopia in close partnership with the Ministry of Health, which will ensure Ethiopia is on track to achieve the goal of epidemic control by 2030.

African governments must “urgently redouble” efforts to achieve gender equality in agrifood systems, which is critical to improving women’s nutrition, health, and economic empowerment, according to a new report.
The continent has made progress in recent years by adopting a number of frameworks to support gender equality, according to the Malabo Montpellier Panel, but “slow and fragile” advances have been undermined by shocks like Covid-19 and conflicts.
The report, Bridging the Gap: Policy Innovations to Put Women at the Center of Food Systems Transformation in Africa, posits that agrifood systems designed to work equally for women as for men can contribute to more equitable, resilient, and healthier societies. According to the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa, women’s inability to access finance is projected to reduce Africa’s GDP by US$ 316 billion by 2025; this setback, coupled with unequal access to land, finance, information, and decision-making, is curbing women’s agency in Africa’s food system transformation.

Inspired by the country’s highly effective deposit system for beverage containers, the Finnish city is piloting an incentive-based system for recycling textiles. Finns recycle up to 97% of aluminum cans, will a small reward inspire them to sort and recycle their old fabrics?
The average European throws away 11kg of textiles every year*. Around the world, a truckload of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every single second. Separate collection of textile waste is set to be rolled out across the EU by 2025, but to change our bad textile habits, a lot of work is needed. Lahti’s textile deposit hopes to inspire a change in consumer behavior.
“As a pioneer in urban environmentalism, Lahti has set a goal of being a waste free city by 2050. The textile deposit is a great example of an everyday innovation that directly aims to minimize the amount of waste and showcases the potential of discarded textiles as a raw material for industries and design,” says Communications Director Veera Hämäläinen from the City of Lahti.

The Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) and the Mastercard Foundation have announced a historic $45 million partnership named MADIBA (Manufacturing in Africa for Disease Immunization and Building Autonomy), a significant step towards achieving vaccine manufacturing autonomy in Africa. The multi-year project, aimed at developing and building a world-class workforce to support vaccine manufacturing, will establish a Centre of Training Excellence to equip talented young people, particularly young women, with specialized skills in vaccine research, manufacturing, production, and distribution.
Based in Senegal, MADIBA aligns with the “Plan Sénégal Émergent” (Emerging Senegal Plan) to manufacture half of the country’s pharmaceutical products by 2035 as well as the African Union’s ambitious target to fulfill 60 percent of the continent’s vaccine needs by 2040. As a blueprint for future vaccine manufacturing facilities across Africa, MADIBA marks a crucial first step towards vaccine self-sufficiency in Africa.
In February 2023, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched the Regional Capability and Capacity Centre Network (RCCCN), focusing on talent development for manufacturing and research, and selected IPD as its inaugural centre.