Africa

In preparation for two major soccer tournaments -- the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2009 Confederations Cup -- South Africa is moving ahead on schedule in constructing major public transit systems in the events' host cities.

Cairo's first new green space in more than 100 years has opened -- on top of a 500-year old garbage dump.

The dam project is being proposed on the Congo river, and could produce more than twice the amount of energy generated by China's Three Gorges Dam, currently the world's largest. If approved the dam could be operating by 2022.

Cairo, Egypt is becoming increasingly noisy.

Impressive growth of visitors from nontraditional places, including China, have now put tourism ahead of gold mining in Namibia.

After delays, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority in Nigeria announces the inauguration next month of its first Bus Rapid Transit corridor.

In Cairo, the problem of street children was once ignored, but is now a growing concern in the public consciousness. Numerous services and aid agencies have developed in recent years to help the city's impoverished children.

A coalition of 21 countries has signed an agreement that will prohibit any development within 100 yards of the Mediterranean coast -- a broad agreement that will affect more than 29,000 miles of coastline.

Libraries for toys are popping up in developing countries all over the world, and especially in Africa, giving poor children a glimpse of a less troubled childhood. Many say the simple libraries are making big changes in the children's development.

This video from Current profiles Lagos, Nigeria, the world's fastest growing megacity.

The European Union and the desert countries of Northern Africa may form a collaborative effort to harvest solar energy in the desert areas. The solar power effort could power about one-sixth of Europe if it goes through.

Western planners and architects have drafted a broad master plan for Kigali, the capital of Rwanda -- one of the least developed nations in the world.

A broad bus rapid transit system in the works in Johannesburg, South Africa, is sparking a wildfire of dense, mixed use development plans for the city.

Cairo has one of the most severe air pollution problems in the world. Now efforts are underway to clean up the source of much of this pollution, the brick manufacturing industry.

Government officials in Rwanda are looking to the high-tech sector as a way to bring the country into economic viability. Rwanda is wiring up in hopes of becoming Africa's tech center.

From a former hotbed of apartheid has risen a bastion of economic hope. A new shopping mall is part of the economic turnaround in the South African township of Soweto.

The Kenyan capital of Nairobi is struggling with crippling car congestion -- a problems some say is so bad the country should consider transferring its capital to another city.

What may be the world's largest sustainable development project is currently being planned in Libya. The project aims to boost the country's ecotourism along its Mediterranean coast and to protect its many archaeological sites.

The rapid rural-to-urban population shift is felt heavily in many African cities, but especially so in the continent's smaller cities, such as the Botswanan capitol of Gaborone.

In the squatter settlements in South African slums, a burgeoning new industry is developing around so-called "poverty tours", where Western tourists are taken off the beaten tour path to see what life is like in impoverished squatter communities.