More than 620 million Africans, or 2/3 of the population of the continent, have no access to electricity. Whilst 99 % of North Africa are electrified, only 32 % of the sub-Saharan countries are. In the 48 sub-Saharan countries the total power capacity is...

The Tibetan Plateau spans an area five times the size of Spain and has an average elevation of 4500 metres. After the Antarctic and Arctic, the plateau has the third highest reserve of ice which has led scientists to call it the 'Third Pole', thus ...

On a small patch of grass across the road from London's Houses of Parliament, a bizarre piece of political theatre is played out which encapsulates the complex relationship between politics and journalism. Sound bites are aired, loyalties reaffirmed, ...

No roads, over 200,000 square kilometres of taiga, swamps and permafrost and a mere 16,000 inhabitants living in around 28 villages (or 0.08 per square kilometre). Turukhansk District in the heart of Russia, close to the country's geographic centre and ...

"The Pacific may have the most changeless, ageless aspect of any ocean but the Mediterranean Sea celebrates the continuity of man." (Ernle Bradford, author of 'Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea') The Mediterranean region has many faces. Rich...

The river Congo is navigable for 1,700 kms from Kinshasa to Kisangani. It is the lifeline of a region with few roads or railways and provides a vital source of livelihood for many of the 29 million people living on the banks of the river and its ...

Nick Hannes travelled the length and breadth of the former Soviet Union - all fifteen former republics - to document the reality of post-communist societies in the fragments of the once all-powerful empire. Along the way he uncovered the different ...

Global warming poses a direct threat to the island nation of Tuvalu. If the most pessimistic scientific predictions turn out to be correct, this pocket-sized Polynesian country, its people and its unique culture will be gone in less than a century, made ...

Less than a century ago, Iran had 10 million inhabitants, 5 million of whom were nomadic. Today, the population has risen to over 81 million but only a much smaller number - 1.5 million - still live a nomadic life. The two main tribes are the Bakhtiaris ...

In ancient times the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, modern day Yemen, was known as Arabia Felix, or fortunate, fertile Arabia. The difference to the current situation could not be more stark as starvation stalks the shattered country and a four...

"Dubai has developed into a vast theme park, where you can ski in the desert and swim with dolphins. Forever in search of illusions, we lose sight of reality. What does that do to your imagination? How many more malls, theme parks and hotels does a ...

I've lived away from the UK since the Thatcher Years. Brexit came as shock. I had perhaps the excuse of distance, but it made me question my British identity after so many years away. Home suddenly got much further away, and yet uncomfortably close, ...

Among the many complex issues facing negotiators from the UK and the EU trying to hammer out an agreement that will define the United Kingdom's relationship with the bloc after March 2019 when the UK is due to exit, the border between Northern Ireland ...

The conflict in Colombia had been going on for so long that it had almost become part of the scenery. FARC guerrillas had lost some 260,000 of their fighters and seven million people had been displaced, with tens of thousands more missing. The ...

With gangly yellow-green petals that hang limply from their stem, the ylang ylang flower is not much to look at. But its powerful scent is so sublime that is has become a favourite of the world's perfumers. It forms the basis of many floral perfumes,...

In most cultures around the world, getting married marks a key moment in a person's life. Each culture celebrates the union in its own way, but nowhere, perhaps, is marriage more elaborate or more important than in the tiny island nation of the Comoros. ...

'One day the soldiers came to my home and tortured me in front of my kids. They were asking for my husband who they claimed was a rebel'. Esther Minella recalls. Within three days of this event, her husband had been killed and she was preparing to walk ...

My trip to Guinea Bissau was the last in a series of journeys to different countries around the world that were colonised by Portugal and still retain Portuguese as their lingua franca. Attempting to analyse the cultural mix of African and European ...

Until early 2018, a tall, decrepit concrete tower, known as the President Hotel, loomed over the streets of Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City's Chinatown. Built as an apartment block by millionaire Nguyen Tan Doi in the 1960s in what was then Saigon, the ...

Bangalore, the centre of India's 'Silicon Valley', is running out of water. Researchers warn that the city, along with other fast-growing urban centres such as Beijing, Mexico City, Istanbul, Nairobi, Karachi and Kabul, could fast be approaching 'Day...

Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by global warming with a large and growing population and a lot of low lying land. Like other heavily populated river deltas around the world, the Ganges Delta, which also gathers in the waters of the...

Indonesia, a country of over 14,000 islands where almost one in ten workers is employed in the tourism industry, has every reason to be worried about the exponential growth of plastic waste that is floating in its rivers and into the sea, washing up...

From December to March the frozen waters of what remains of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan's vast western desert play host to a strange ritual; Wooly camels slowly wander through the snowy landscape dragging nets or sleighs laden with fish. They are the ...

This photographic journey across four states in the souther USA is an attempt to capture the enormous impact that cars have had on modern life. America, the home of the mass produced motorcar, is the most striking embodiment of our love affair with ...

On 18 February 2017 US President Donald Trump gave a speech in Melbourne, Florida. While speaking about the importance of keeping America safe his speech digressed into talking about Sweden. 'You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. ...

The Aleutian Islands are a sweeping, 1,900 kilometre long archipelago of volcanic islands that stretch from the Alaskan Peninsula to within 190 kilometres of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Until America's Alaska Purchase in 1867, the island chain was...

The Alaskan town of Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and one of the northernmost communities in the world. Covering the tip of a flat peninsula covered in creeks and hundreds of lakes, the town is ...

Locals sometimes call it the "Switzerland of Africa" due to the rolling, verdant hills and the unlikely presence of European Swiss Brown and black and white Frisian cattle. Yet in every other respect, this remote part of eastern DR Congo, some 2600 ...

The village of Dzoragyugh, which lies around 120 km due east of Yerevan, Armenia's capital, has a history stretching back over 1,000 years. A small ruined church and hermitage on the edge of the village date back to the 9th century and attest to the...

When the guns fell silent in Mosul as the Iraqi government wrested back control of the city from Islamic State militants, the grim task of recovering the bodies of the tens of thousands killed during the intense battle began. The western part of the ...

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains a country in turmoil years after the end of the 1998-2003 civil war and various other localised conflicts since. As rebel groups continue to clash in the eastern provinces, ordinary civilians are still ...

Typhoon Haiyan made landfall on 8 November 2013 and was one of the deadliest typhoons to hit the Philippines, killing over 6,000 people. Haiyan, or Yolanda as it was known in the Philippines, had sustained wind speeds of 190 to 195 mph when it ...

The port of Berbera on the arid northern coast of Somaliland, a de-facto state which unilaterally declared independence from war-torn Somalia in 1991, has recently seen a lot of construction around its harbour area, with prices doubling along the ...

Indigenous Mayan Q'eqchi communities in eastern Guatemala's Polochic Valley have long lived without state presence. Jobs, and sometimes health services, are provided by banana and palm oil companies. Plantations have replaced the region's cattle ...

On the morning of 30 August 2017, according to eyewitnesses, Burmese soldiers carried out the Tula Toli massacre, a mass-killing of Rohingya people, with the support of local Rakhines from the same village. Rohingya villagers, including residents of...

"This farm is close to the demilitarised zone between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and South Korea. However, the current political and military situation does not affect my life and I am not worried", says Kim Jesan, a 78 ...