Some 280 kilometres North West from Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou lies Goudebo camp in the Sahel region, home to over 10,000 refugees who fled the conflict over the border in Mali last year.

What can't be emphasised too strongly here is that these are analyses of real deaths and actual weather. They are not simulations or models - and it reflects the great strength of the INDEPTH Network that it is possible to analyse factual information in this way from parts of the world where reliable data are usually in short supply.

There are no proper words to describe the heartbreaking sight of a malnourished child. No image on TV can prepare you for the sheer lightness of their bodies, their minuscule wrists, their over-sized, slightly bulging heads; the breathtaking shock of realising that the cute baby who looks newborn is actually nearly two years old. Malnourishment is not something that enters our world very often. Ours is a place where 60 stone teenagers must be hoisted out of their homes by the local fire service because they no longer fit through their front doors. It's a place where five-year-old girls worry themselves silly about being thinner, aspiring to a 'body ideal' that's estimated to be not physically achievable by 95% of the population.

It was 5pm when it started to rain, the wide grey sky looming lower and lower over the flat red earth; a swirl of mist and red dust rising from nowhere; huge rusty drops hitting the car windows.

I've long thought that the editors of our international media (and the British media is a particular culprit) needs to start noticing Africa. Not just the coups and the food crises and the droughts, but also the positive stories, the African success stories that are putting, for example, Ghana amid the fast growing nations in the world.

Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of Colonel Gaddafi amid reports that a convoy of around 250 trucks traversed the Libyan Desert on Tuesday heading fo...