The government is backing solar energy to help solve the continuing problem of power shortages.

In a developing country like Rwanda building a market for electric cars has proved challenging.

Two Nigerian athletes are convicted in the United States for transferring significant sums of money to the West African country as part of a complex fraud scheme.

We hear about a new plan to drive economies and improve lives across Africa – the Open Internet project between the continent and the EU. A report “The Open Internet as Cornerstone of Digitalisation” is funded by the EU and points out in detail what needs to done to secure easy, reliable and cheap online access without which development will simply stall. We speak to two of the report’s authors – one from the EU and the other from Africa.

Monitoring Mangroves in the Pakistan Indus Delta Mangrove forests are hugely impacted by climate change and monitoring them from space with satellites doesn’t deliver enough data to know fully how they are being impacted by rising temperatures and sea levels. Now a pilot project in the Indus River Delta, just south of Karachi in Pakistan, has used drones to image the mangroves allowing the researchers to study one of the world’s largest forests. The project’s director Obaid Rehman is on the show to tell us about their work and also how these mangrove forests can be used for carbon capture. He says their work should lead to more plantations of the forest too.

The talk at Web Summit 2022 Technology gatherings are back in full swing and Web Summit in Portugal is one of the biggest. This year’s conference was at full capacity and tech reporter Jane Wakefield joined the queues to see what was preoccupying the tech industry as 2022 draws to an end – and the big thing appears to be the Metaverse.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

Studio Manager: Tim Heffer Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Image: Getty Images)

Researchers Bongani Kona and Catherine Boulle have spent the last year piecing together the story of one woman’s decades-long search to find the remains of her father, a South African political activist who died in 1966. In between visiting old prisons and sifting through archival collections, Bongani begins dreaming about the ghost of his own father, a man he's never met.

The quest to uncover the meaning behind these recurring dreams leads to Julia, a spirit medium and healer, who practices one of the oldest forms of divination on the planet – “throwing the bones”. In consultation with ancestral and spirit worlds, Julia deciphers “energy fields within one’s psyche, spirit and soul body.” This is all to bring solace to troubled souls and minds; to “these soft houses in which we live”, as Kei Miller writes, “and in which we move and from which we can never migrate, except by dying.” Khangela, in isiXhosa, is to look, or to search.

Khangela forms part of our recurring series of miniature audio-works for Radio 3's home for adventurous radio-making - Between the Ears. In this series, five audio-makers from around the world were invited to choose a card from the tarot deck as a creative prompt for their idea. The card at the heart of Khangela is The High Priestess.

Bongani Kona is a writer, and a lecturer in the department of history at the University of the Western Cape. Catherine Boulle is an audio maker and writer, currently based at the University of Cape Town. Together, Catherine and Bongani won the 2021 Whickers Radio & Audio Funding Award for their documentary about South Africa's Missing Persons Task Team, and the case of James Booi.

Produced by Bongani Kona and Catherine Boulle A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

Every World Cup has a team that captures the heart of the world, but maybe none has ever been as popular as the Cameroon side of 1990. When the Green Lions defeated reigning world champions Argentina in the opening game, it was arguably the biggest upset in World Cup history. Barely afforded a hope upon qualification, the Cameroon team provided joy at Italia 90, both on and off the pitch.

Green Lions tells the story of a team of amateurs who became heroes. Young men, and one veteran, who dared to dream, achieved the impossible and inspired a generation around the globe.

The US president also defends his country's climate leadership at the UN summit COP27.

The FBI says ex-social media star Hushpuppi is one of the world's most high-profile money launderers.

A group of African Americans wants to stop the return of some Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

Uganda insists on exploiting its fossil-fuel riches, despite Europe's environmental concerns.

Global sales of contemporary and modern African art have reached record highs.

In 2020 more than 40% of the world’s population was not using the internet, with many more women being unable to get online. Now a new global study into digital access in 90 countries shows that although women were disproportionately impacted by the Covid pandemic, it seems to have got more of them online in South East Asia and Africa. In these two parts of the world, the study shows progress in terms of bridging the gap between men and women and access to tech and the internet. While, historically, 90% of transactions in India were done by cash, the researchers say the pandemic forced more people to turn to digital payments for everyday items including food and other goods. In many parts of South East Asia, including India, many women are doing most of the shopping. The combination paved the way for progress and highlights a unique instance where the pandemic benefited women in these regions. Additionally, now equipped with their own digital wallets, women are afforded more agency over their finances. The progress in gender parity was seen in sub-Saharan Africa (8% improvement from 2019-2021), the Middle East and North Africa (6%), and South Asia (3%). We speak to Tufts University researchers who carried out the work, the dean of Global Business, Bhaskar Chakravorti, and research manager Christina Filipovic.

War Games: Real Conflicts/Virtual Worlds/Extreme Environments Gareth and Ghislaine visit the Imperial War Museum in London to see the UK’s first-ever exhibition to explore video games and what they can tell us about conflict. Developing technology has introduced new ways of telling and experiencing war stories; toy soldiers and board games, cinema screenings of World War One, radio broadcasts from the frontlines of WWII, and TV images of the Cold War have given way to first-person shooter games on iconic consoles like the Atari 2600 and the Super Nintendo to internet driven team battles with the latest graphics and audio immersion. But is gaming tech the right place to explore conflict and how much is this entertainment industry driving tech development elsewhere?

Presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Photo: Rural woman talking on a mobile phone and using a laptop, India. Credit: Exotica.im/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Fatou Njie has trained, around 80 female students how to install solar panels in her community in Gambia.

Meaza Ashenafi says she is building an objective court that will effectively deal with these crimes.

Sir Mo Farah reveals the shocking truth about his childhood, the journey he made from Somaliland to the UK as a young boy, and the subsequent years that led to him winning two gold medals at the London 2012 Olympics.

The south-east region of Nigeria declared itself to be the independent state of Biafra. In response, Nigerian forces invaded the state on 6 July 1967, beginning the Nigerian civil war. More than a million people died before the fighting stopped. We bring you one child’s story of getting caught up in the frontline. In 2021 Paul Waters spoke to Patricia Ngozi Ebigwe, now better known as TV and music star Patti Boulaye, who was 13 years old when she had to try to escape the conflict.

(Photo: The 13-year-old Patricia Ngozi Ebigwe, courtesy of Patti Boulaye)