A new report by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) points out that millions of hectares of farmland in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America have been leased to foreign countries, sovereign wealth funds, and private corporations over the past four years with little or no explicit legal agreement on how water can and will be used on the acquired properties. With 70 per cent of global water withdrawals used in agriculture, the rapid increase in cultivated farmland will require significant quantities of water to sustain production.

According to a report by the UN Country Team in Swaziland, released on 16 March, a fiscal crisis which started early in 2011 has put an additional strain on poor households like Thwala’s and worsened poverty in a country which already had high rates of unemployment and food insecurity and the highest HIV rate in the world. The report, based on a November 2011 survey of 1,334 households, found that poor households have had to adopt extreme measures to cope with reduced incomes resulting from job losses and wage cuts, as well as higher food and fuel prices and reduced access to social services.

Almost a year after the West African nation was shaken by six months of violence and terror when former president Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara who won the November 2010 presidential elections, Ivorian children are still trying to recover from the psychological and social trauma the unrest caused them. 'Children were major victims of the post-electoral violence. Many heard gunfire and shelling, saw people running, saw adults afraid and witnessed brutalities, fighting and killings,' says Désiré Koukoui, the director of the International Catholic Children’s Office (BICE) in Abidjan, an organisation protecting children’s rights.

With the popularity of social media platforms continuing to grow, users should brace themselves for more and more players in the market. Google last week raised its stakes in the battle for South African social media users with the launch of its Google+ platform in Zulu and Afrikaans. In the same week, Yookos, an 'Africa-specific' social media network, announced its entry into the space, claiming 6-million users across the continent.

Libya's investment authority says it is suing Zambia's government for seizing its controlling share in a mobile phone network. A Libyan telecommunications enterprise that owns 75 per cent of the Zamtel network says the seizure last year by the government of newly elected President Michael Sata was 'illegal and unconstitutional'. The investment authority said in a statement that the network filed demands at the Zambia High Court for $480-million worth of compensation in asset value along with unspecified additional payouts for operating losses should the business not be handed back.

The shocking video Afrikaner Blood by Elles van Gelder and Ilvy Njiokiktjien from the Netherlands has just won first prize in the World Press Photo multimedia category. This slideshow comprises photographs of young white South African teenagers who attend a holiday camp set up by a right-wing racist group.

To mark the occasion of the restitution by the Berlin Charité Hospital of the first 20 mortal remains of Namibian victims of the German genocide, the German NGO Coalition presented the Namibian delegation with a Book of Condolences, in which people from all over the world commemorated the dead. The book is still online and open for condolence messages. In the following, we have put together a representative selection of these messages.

'While the idea of this campaign against the LRA leader Joseph Kony is welcome, the steam it has created overshadows the real concerns of the sufferers and survivors of this conflict in Uganda. Many former child soldiers and former abductees, women and girls are now struggling with so many challenges such as reproductive health problems, post traumatic stress disorders, food insecurity and livelihood support among others.'

Saudi Arabia and China are buying up significant parcels of agricultural land in South Sudan. So is Egypt. Egypt’s Citadel Capital is buying land in South Sudan, with designs on agricultural production to help feed Egypt’s growing population.

Prostitutes in sub-Saharan Africa have one of the highest rates of HIV infections in the world, an international study has established. The research findings also recommend that prostitution should be legalised to make working conditions for sex workers more tolerable and reduce their rate of HIV infections. The study was funded by the World Bank and the UN and carried out by the US based John Hopkins School of Public Health.

Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, which counts at least five million people, has only one clinic that offers family planning services free of charge. It is located within the premises of the public hospital in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s largest suburbs, which lies about 15 kilometres south-west of Abobo and is run by the non-governmental health organisation Ivorian Association for Family Well- Being (AIBEF). Here, staff counsel about 80 patients a day on issues relating to sexual and reproductive rights, including contraception, safe sex, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, and maternal and infant health.

Anti-government protesters torched a police station in Malawi's capital on Monday 19 March, raising tension in the destitute country that was last year rocked by the police killing of 20 people in similar protests. The latest outbreak of violence followed the weekend arrest of the chairman of the government's Human Rights Commission. The commission had sharply criticised the administration of President Bingu wa Mutharika for the July 2011 crackdown, accusing his government of using unjustifiable violence and arrests to intimidate its critics.

Three Zambian students were severely beaten in Saint Petersburg Russia on the night of 18 March, leaving one of the students in a coma. Police are studying records of CCTV cameras to establish the circumstances of the incident which many believe was a racist attack. Racist assaults are frequently committed by skinhead gangs, which have grown in number in recent years in Russia and specifically Saint-Petersburg.

Hundreds of residents of Ratanda, Heidelberg gathered on the streets on Tuesday 20 March to continue their protest over power cuts and the cost of electricity, Gauteng police said. On Monday, violent service delivery protests in Ratanda were met with police water cannons, stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. In the Western Cape, meanwhile, residents in Grabouw protested over school infrastructure.

The Canadian government has not addressed the issue of persistent poverty among indigenous peoples, nor implemented the right to free, prior and informed consent, before undertaking projects that affect them or their lands. This was among the conclusions, reached last week, by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD also expressed concern over the impact of Canadian corporations, particularly mining companies, on the lands of indigenous peoples in other countries.

All public service unions in Swaziland are threatening strike action for a 4.5 per cent pay increase. This comes at a time when the Swazi Government is trying to reduce its public sector salary bill by 10 per cent to try to save the kingdom’s economy from meltdown.

Students at the American University in Cairo have created a biographical history of the Egyptian revolution. Many of the personalities profiled are not widely known in the Western press, but have been important in the evolution of events in Egypt.

We, members of the Feminist Activist Coalition, comprising of over 40 civil society organisations promoting gender equity, social justice, human rights and the transformative feminist movement are outraged over the arrest of 16 activists on 9 February 2012 in Dar es Salaam and their subsequent indictment, purportedly for holding an unlawful assembly.

During part I of this two-part special from SOAS radio, presenter Robtel Pailey deconstructs and dissects the conventional story told about Somalia with studio guests: Quman Jibril, a Somali independent research consultant who has a special interest in international refugee protection and advocacy; Mary Harper, BBC Africa Editor and author of the new book, Getting Somalia Wrong? published by Zed Books; and Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, a Somali researcher currently pursuing a Masters degree at the London Metropolitan University.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Environmental Politics Institute is an interdisciplinary forum which brings together African scholars undertaking innovative research on topics related to the broad theme of environmental politics. The aim of the Institute is to promote and sustain the development of coherent social sciences engagement with environmental issues in Africa. The Institute will promote research and debates on issues related to environmental politics especially as they relate to democratic decision making in climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and programs on the continent. The Institute will be launched in 2012 and subsequently held annually in Dakar, Senegal.