Social Development

Repurposed shipping containers and green building methods have provided the space to set up a caring and nurturing environment for 80 orphaned and abandoned children. There is also opportunity for dignity through the home's environmental concerns.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan announced inflation-related increases in old age, disability, child support and foster care grants on Wednesday. South Africa's social assistance system, one of the largest in Africa, is the government's most direct means of combating poverty.

A very real, critical – but overlooked – problem led one KwaZulu-Natal mother to design an award-winning out of the box solution. Project Dignity supplies Subz packs to rural and poor schoolgirls across the country, along with an innovative education solution. The project is so successful, it is being expanded to other African countries.

Watch the video stream of South African President Jacob Zuma's 2014 State of the Nation Address at the opening of parliament in Cape Town on Thursday 13 February.

Africa produces the least amount of greenhouse gases, yet will bear the brunt of global climate change. At the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group summit in Johannesburg this week, mayor Parks Tau welcomed three new African megacities to the network, bringing the total to seven out of 66 world cities.

Crowd-funding, an anarchical response to old capitalist, risk-averse big business, has taken off on rich countries like the US and UK. Now a Cape Town-based project called Thundafund has adapted the online crowd-funding model to successfully launch small South African start-ups.

At the World Economic Forum's 2014 meeting in the Swiss town of Davos, Brand South Africa's high-powered delegation will spread the word to the world's elite that South Africa is a globally competitive nation, open for business. And now is the time to invest.

Sixteen years. In that time South Africa will be a very different country, if the goals of Vision 2030, as set out in the National Development Plan, are met. The aim, among others, is to eliminate poverty and create 11-million jobs by the year 2030.

Timred Jabaza has been waiting 22 years for a decent home - his long wait finally came to an end on Friday when President Jacob Zuma handed him the key to his new, fully furnished two-bedroom house.

Scientists have for the first time produced the most detailed maps yet which show that Africa has vast reserves of groundwater hidden under the surface in aquifers.
• SA’s drinking water is top class