Africa can help Africa more than all of the other nations and organizations in the world. Although many international organizations have stepped in to assist the continent in recent years and have put in effort in trying to reduce poverty, funding school systems, instituting vaccination programs to combat various illnesses and providing food and clean water to those in blighted areas, Africa can help Africa simply by banding together as one nation to conquer all of the problems facing the continent today.

Niger is the poorest country in the world. The country is located in Western Africa and received its independence from France in the 1960s. The people in the country are referred to as Nigeriens, not to be confused with Nigerians from Nigeria.

Niger was once called the Songhai Empire. When European explorers began entering Africa in the late 18th century, many colonized the different nations. Niger became a French colony in 1922 and the national language of Niger is French. Niger became an independent state in 1960.

WASHINGTON, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - World Bank president Robert Zoellick on Sunday invited China to team up with the 185-nation development lender to fight global poverty and said he would visit Beijing in December.

'China is an important partner in the international econony on growth and development issues and I therefore think it is incumbent on the World Bank to treat China as a partner ... (and) also to be in position to work with China in third countries,' Zoellick said at a news conference following a meeting of Bank policymakers.

WASHINGTON, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - World Bank policymakers meet here Sunday to anchor agriculture at the center of their agenda in a major shift aimed at lifting billions of people out of poverty.

The new Bank president, Robert Zoellick, has pledged to boost the institution's lending to the farm sector after allowing it to decline in 1980s and 1990s.

Zoellick vows the Bank will use an inclusive approach to fight poverty, hunger and disease, and this week unveiled a controversial proposal to allow private-sector business to help finance aid to poor countries.

MANILA, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - Father Pierre Tritz may not be a household name in France but in the Philippines he is as well known as the late Mother Teresa for his work among Manila's army of street children.

His Educational Research and Development Assistance Foundation (ERDA) has become one of the best known non-government organisations (NGOs) in the Philippines educating more than 200,000 poor street children since it was founded in 1974.

DUBAI, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - A shirt belonging to the emir of Dubai was sold for 4.35 million dollars (3.0 million euros) at an auction on Friday to raise funds for a children's education charity, organisers said.

In all, the 12 items donated by prominent political and entertainment figures in the Gulf emirate netted 8.44 million dollars.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates, wore the short when he won the equestrian endurance world cup in Spain in 2000.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 39 million people around the world took part in this week's 24-hour 'Stand Up and Speak Out' anti-poverty campaign, setting a new Guinness world record, the United Nations announced Thursday.

'I am very happy to announce that around 39 million people took part in the Stand Up against poverty campaign,' said Kiyotaka Akasaka, the UN Under Secretary General for Public Information. 'It broke the world Guinness record of last year (23.5 million).'

ATHENS, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Greece's conservative government Wednesday unveiled a poverty-busting plan which is expected to have two billion euros (2.84 billion dollars) in funds by 2011.

The fund will be created with 100 million euros, Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said, adding that 500 million euros will be added from the 2008 budget and the same sum pledged over the next three years.

He said Greece shared with Ireland 'the sad privilege' of having the highest poverty levels among European Union member states.

GENEVA, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Poverty is a key cause of human rights abuses worldwide and states must make every effort to ease inequalities, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday.

'In a world with sufficient resources for all, poverty and the inequalities it breeds are the greatest human rights challenges facing humanity,' UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - Millions of people were set to mobilize around the world beginning late Tuesday for what organizers hope will be the biggest ever drive to demand concrete actions to end global poverty.

The 24-hour "Stand Up and Speak Out" campaign, sponsored by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) alliance and the UN Millennium Campaign, was to kick off at 2100 GMT, to voice outrage that 50,000 people die daily from preventable causes.

BERLIN, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - More than 850 million people worldwide suffer from hunger, with sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia bearing the brunt of the scourge, a German aid organisation reported Friday.

German Agro Action (DWHH) presented its Global Hunger Index 2007 which examined conditions in 115 developing countries, including the mortality rate of children under five, the number of small children who are undernourished and the percentage of hungry children among the population as a whole.

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Wednesday that globalization must be 'inclusive and sustainable' if it is to help combat crushing poverty around the world.

In a speech at the National Press Club, marking his first 100 days in office, Zoellick said the World Bank should seek to foster such goals while guarding environmental protections.

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Wednesday that globalization must be 'inclusive and sustainable' if it is to help combat grinding poverty around the world.

In a speech at the National Press Club, marking his first 100 days in office, Zoellick said the World Bank should seek to foster such goals while guarding environmental protections.

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Income inequality has increased in most countries during the past two decades as incomes have jumped amid a more recent spurt in world growth, according to an IMF report Wednesday.

The International Monetary Fund made the comments in portions released from its global economic outlook ahead of the IMF and the World Bank autumn meetings scheduled for October 20-21.

'Over the past two decades, income inequality has risen in most regions and countries,' the report found.

MANILA, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Asia is on track to halve extreme poverty by 2015, reflecting the impact of the region's dynamic economy on the lives of its nearly four billion people, according to a joint report released Monday.

The report by the Asian Development Bank and the UN Development Programme said Asia was also set to achieve goals in primary education coverage, gender parity and fighting the deadly AIDS virus.

The findings were set out in an update on the region's progress towards achieving the millennium development goals.

BLANTYRE, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations, said on Monday, that despite recent efforts to grow the economy, it would be unable to meet the UN target date of halving poverty by 2015.

A welfare monitoring survey conducted by the ministry of economic planning and development indicated that poverty dropped to 45 percent in Malawi in 2006, from 53.9 percent in 1998, Ben Botolo, a director in the ministry of economic planning and development, told AFP.

But despite this drop, 'poverty levels still remain very high'.

BLANTYRE, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations, said Monday that despite recent efforts to grow the economy, it will be unable to meet a United Nations set target date of halving poverty by 2015.

'Poverty levels still remain very high' and Malawi will not meet the UN Millenium Development Goals (MDG) target of 'halving the proportion of people living below the poverty line by 2015,' Ben Botolo, a director in the ministry of economic planning and development, told AFP.

YANGON, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - By day the tiny boys wait on the tables of Myanmar's tea shops, a national institution where people go to gossip and pass the time of day. By night the tables and stool become their makeshift beds.

Myanmar's army of child waiters, recruited from the dirt-poor villages, are a symptom of the poverty that has resulted from four decades of economic mismanagement by its military rulers.

'It's easy to find children in places where families desperately need money,' said one teashop owner in the suburbs of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city.

MAE SOT, Thailand, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - The rows of children transfixed by cartoons in a wooden shelter near the Thai-Myanmar border are probably too young to understand why they are all now wearing matching rust-red clothes.

On the wall is a map of their homeland Myanmar, where the ruling junta this week cracked down on anti-government protests and killed at least three Buddhist monks, whose deep red robes the kids are unconsciously honouring.

JIEGAO, China, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - The spaces behind the rusty garage doors are meant for storage but they instead house dozens of young women from Myanmar like Thin Thin Thay, refugees of the bitter poverty afflicting their home country.

In the late afternoon, Thin Thin Thay's big brown eyes peer out from the half open garage door onto the street in Jiegao, a Chinese town bordering Myanmar where prostitution has followed on the back of flourishing trade.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - The World Bank on Thursday pledged a record 3.5 billion dollars to aid the world's poorest countries as it cut the interest rate on loans to big developing countries.

The roughly quarter-point lowering of loan rates was a concession by the World Bank as it stepped up efforts to get some of its bigger borrowers such as China and Brazil to contribute themselves to poverty-fighting programs around the world.

GENEVA, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Africa should dig deeper into its pockets to generate growth and halt the flight of capital which represents a sum almost double the continent's total debt, a United Nations report said Wednesday.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said Africa should make greater use of its resources by bringing the large 'informal' sector worth an estimated 45 percent of Gross Domestic Product into the economic mainstream.

GENEVA, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - African nations should dig deeper into their own pockets to generate economic growth, and halt capital flight that has cost them the equivalent of nearly twice their debt burden, the UN trade and development agency said Wednesday.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in a report that Africa should make greater use of its domestic resources by bringing a large 'informal' sector worth an estimated 45 percent of gross domestic product into the economic mainstream.

WASHINGTON, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - For the first time in almost a decade the World Bank is set to make meaningful cuts in the interest rates it charges China, Brazil, Mexico and other big developing countries, The Wall Street Journal Europe reports Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are developing a joint strategy to aid low-income countries that will define their separate roles, a top IMF official said Monday.

John Lipsky, IMF first deputy managing director, said the Fund's role in low-income countries, which has drawn controversy in recent years, will be formalized in a Joint Bank-Fund Management Action Plan that will be unveiled ahead of the two institutions' annual meetings next month.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - Fifty years after the launch of the first man-made satellite, the global space industry gathers in India next week to find ways to benefit humanity -- and make money in the process.

Missions to the moon and Mars, the completion of an international space station and efforts to ward off earth-threatening asteroids and natural disasters through space technology will top the agenda.

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - The Palestinian economy remains crippled seven years after the outbreak of the intifada and needs 1.62 billion dollars in annual foreign aid to close the deficit, the World Bank said in a report obtained by AFP on Tuesday.

'Per capita GDP (gross domestic product) in the Palestinian territories now stands at 1,129 dollars (814 euros), about a third less than its level in 1999,' according to the report to be presented to an international donor organisation at a meeting later this month in New York.

KORAPUT, India, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - Doctors in India say they have not received enough equipment or government support to battle an outbreak of cholera in the impoverished east of the country.

Although graduates of India's heavily subsidised state-run medical schools are required to spend a few years at government hospitals -- including those in the remote and hilly tribal districts of Orissa state -- facilities are sparse.

GENEVA, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - Developing countries are enjoying their brightest economic spell since the early 1970s, but must join forces to guard against shifts in the global economy and financial turmoil, the UN's trade and development agency said on Wednesday.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development's annual report warned about the destabilising effect of speculative financial markets, and called for World Trade Organisation-style global arrangement to oversee exchange rates.

WASHINGTON, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - The World Bank on Wednesday announced an initiative to provide modern lighting to an estimated 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to electricity.

The 'Lighting Africa' program aims to develop new products for lighting powered by renewable or mechanical sources for people not connected to the electricity grid.

'Modern lighting will mean improved air quality and safety for millions of people in Africa,' said S. Vijay Iyer, World Bank energy sector manager for Africa.

DANOGRAM, India, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - An Indian woman whose claimed miracle cure from cancer led to Mother Teresa being thrust toward sainthood has accused Catholic nuns of abandoning her to a life of misery.

The angry comments came as the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by the Albanian-born nun in the eastern Indian metropolis of Kolkata in 1950, marked Wednesday the 10th anniversary of Mother Teresa's death.

DUBLIN, Sept 4, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 290,000 people, 10 percent of them children, are living in 'consistent poverty' in Ireland, a state advisory agency said Tuesday, despite the country's Celtic Tiger economic boom.

Combat Poverty defined consistent poverty as existing on a low income and deprived of one or more basic necessities such as adequate food, clothes or heating.

JERUSALEM, Sept 4, 2007 (AFP) - The number of Israeli children living below the poverty line increased slightly in 2006 while the number of poor people overall remained steady at nearly 25 percent of the population, a government report said on Tuesday.

Some 35.8 percent of Israeli children were regarded as poor in 2006, compared with 35.2 percent the previous year, said the report by the National Insurance Institute, which oversees social security issues in Israel.

SYDNEY, Aug 30, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 10 percent of Australians are living in poverty despite a booming economy, a major new study published Thursday said, but its findings were disputed by Prime Minister John Howard.

The report by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) found that Australia lagged behind most other Western countries, and said authorities at federal and state level should do more to spread economic prosperity.

WASHINGTON, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - More than one in ten Americans, or 36.5 million people, live in poverty in the United States, with children and blacks the worst hit, an annual report by the US Census Bureau showed Tuesday.

According to the report, around 12.8 million children under the age of 18, or around one-third of the poor, existed in 2006 on incomes below the threshold used by the Census Bureau to determine who lives in poverty.

GENEVA, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - Three quarters of the world's small arms are held by civilians, with rapid and unchecked urbanisation a key driver behind their proliferation, a Swiss academic study said on Tuesday.

Of the 875 million small arms in circulation, some 650 million or 75 percent are held by civilians, according to the study by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

The United States tops the list with 270 million small arms, which translates into roughly 90 firearms per every 100 people, the study said.

YANGON, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - Thirty years ago, Sweden thought she was heading into the good life as the wife of a successful civil servant in Burma.

Her husband's membership in the ruling Burmese socialist party seemed to guarantee them and their seven children a bright future.

They owned a duplex in suburban Yangon, and when her husband took early retirement in 1983 because of a hearing problem, his pension of 1,100 kyats a month seemed enough to keep them going.

'Fried eggs were just a side dish at that time,' said her husband Win.

LONDON, Aug 22, 2007 (AFP) - 'Hello, sit