Times are good for Fey Wei Dong. A genial, middle-aged businessman based in Hangzhou, Fey says he is raking in the equivalent of $225,000 a year from trading in the humblest of commodities: sand.

In the late 1990s, world leaders came together to create the Millennium Development Goals – time-bound, quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty and human health and well-being. Notable among them was to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to water and sanitation.”

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an ambitious framework for reducing poverty and improving the lives of billions of people. They were agreed to last year by governments at the United Nations and cover developing and developed countries alike. But how will governments, NGOs, and other organizations go about actually accomplishing them over the next 15 years? [Video Below]

Citing security concerns, the government of Kenya recently announced their intent to close the world’s largest refugee complex, Dadaab, after almost 25 years. [Video Below]

In principle, development organizations and donors have known that gender dynamics affect the success or failure of their efforts for some time. In practice, overturning cultural mores while at the same time improving health outcomes, incomes, or food security can be difficult. [Video Below]

Drought in Ethiopia, exacerbated by El Niño, has put more than 10 million people in a position of being unsure how long they will have food and where it will come from next. Inevitably, the drought has been compared to the infamous drought of 1983-1984 that led to the worst famine in the country’s history, making millions destitute, and contributing to the deaths of 400,000. But Ethiopia is in a very different place today than it was in 1983.

A four-part video series produced by the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism gives an update on the beleaguered communities of Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake that supplies vital ecosystem services and livelihoods to 300,000 people in northwestern Kenya. The lake is fed entirely by the Omo River, flowing south from Ethiopia, but a newly completed upstream dam has raised questions about the future.