Over the last seven years Karuturi Global has acquired rights to 311,700 hectares of land in Gambela and Bako region in Ethiopia for the purpose of agricultural development. But Karuturi’s practices in Ethiopia has also attracted less welcome attention from human rights activists. Investigators from New York-based Human Rights Watch paid a visit to a Karuturi lease area in Gambela in May 2011 where they found that maize, sorghum, and groundnut crops planted by local Anuak farmers had been cleared without consent and residents moved off their land.

On the first anniversary of the dissolution of the State Security Investigation Apparatus, the April 6th Youth Movement (the Democratic Front in Alexandria), issued a statement declaring that they do not see a big difference between the state security apparatus during the regime of Mubarak and the National Security Agency, which is marred by the same shameful practices and the same violations of human rights and suppression of freedoms of activists and revolutionaries and human rights organizations and contributed to the worsening state of security chaos taking place in the country.

In this article, Leonidas Oikonomakis draws parallels between Greece's economic crisis and the statements of the late Thomas Sankara, who was president of Burkina Faso. Sankara knew all too well that he could not stand alone in his resistance to paying foreign debt and so he pleaded with the other African heads of state to follow his example. In protests against austerity measures in Greece, there are echoes of Sankara's statements.

Hundreds of families forced from their homes in the 1990s, as well as former refugees, who are living in informal settlements on the outskirts of Bujumbura, the capital, are seeking a lasting shelter alternative to cramped temporary sites. Families were supposed to have been resettled at the Maramvya area in Bujumbura Rural's Mutimbuzi commune, in 2011, where each household would have been allocated a 270 sqm plot. But there have been challenges to the resettlement, according to officials.

An al-Qaeda splinter group has said it carried out a suicide attack on a paramilitary police base in southern Algeria which left 24 people wounded. 'We inform you that we are behind the explosion that occurred this morning at Tamanrasset,' the group told the AFP news agency on Saturday. The statement, sent just hours after the attack, was signed by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA).

The Arab Spring uprisings last year brought no increase in the number of women in the region's parliaments, a UN report said Friday. At the end of 2011, women accounted for only 10.7 percent of lawmakers in Arab states, barely the same number as before the protests which brought down leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

White jelly forming on the top of boiled water, sickness due to the water, land stained black. This Mail and Guardian reports on the devastating effects of acid mine drainage on the town of Carolina and how the town's residents are suffering because of a polluted water supply.

Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute at the funeral of Odumegwu Ojukwu Thursday as Nigerian leaders paid final respects to the man whose 1967 declaration of Biafran independence sparked a civil war. Forty-five years after he tried to split Nigeria asunder by proclaiming the Republic of Biafra, Ojukwu's coffin was draped in the national colours of white and green at the funeral service in the city of Enugu, attended by thousands.

The Botswana Government has snubbed Swaziland’s People’s United Democratic (Pudemo) calls for Swazi MPs to be barred from participating in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum and Pan-African Parliament. Pudemo, Swaziland’s largest opposition, has heightened its campaign against King Mswati III’s reign. The socialist party has been pushing for political and economic reform in Africa’s last standing monarchy. But Botswana’s minister of Foreign Affairs Phandu Skelemani said the government would not interfere with Swaziland’s sovereignty.

Angola's attorney general has summoned witnesses to testify in a case that implicates some of the top figures in the country's military and security establishment in acts of torture and murder in the diamond fields of north-eastern Angola. The witnesses' hearings will start on 5 March in Luanda. Respondents in the case include General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias "Kopelipa", Minister of State and head of the Military Bureau in the Angolan presidency, as well as a close confidante and business associate of President José Eduardo dos Santos. The case was brought before the attorney general, on 14 November 2011, by Angolan human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais, who has been investigating rights abuses connected with the diamond industry since 2004.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has condemned an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued for his defence minister. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Defence Minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein as part of an investigation into atrocities in Darfur. Hussein is the latest of several senior officials in Sudan to be indicted by the court in The Hague, which is also seeking the arrest of Bashir on charges of orchestrating genocide.

South Africa is sneaking E2.4 billion (US$320 million) to Swaziland to help it shore up its ailing economy so that the undemocratic kingdom does not have to instigate political reforms, a Swazi campaigning group claimed. The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) says the loan money is being channelled into Swaziland disguised as cash from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). This way Swaziland gets the money without reforms by King Mswati.

Every year on 8th March the world celebrates International Women’s Day. This year, celebrate International Women’s Day with the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) and our partner, Alliance Francaise (Ghana).

With nearly 20,000 Malian refugees now in Burkina Faso, according to Burkina Minister of Communications Alain Traore, and up to 800 more crossing the border each day, the government says it urgently needs more help. The most urgent need is for 'shelter, food and medicine' in the country’s northern Sahel Region, said Denis Ouedraogo, coordinator of the National Commission for Refugees.

A group fighting for a greater share of Nigeria's oil wealth in the country's delta region has claimed responsibility for killing four police officers this week. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an email it sent to reporters on Friday that it shot the four police officers who were on a boat patrolling the Nembe river in Bayelsa state.

On 24 February, at the same time as a British government backed meeting on the fate of Somalia was held, another conference conference was held under the sponsorship of the 'Friends of Syria' grouping. 'This initiative grew out of the failure of the US and other imperialist states to get the UN Security Council endorsement for a war against Syria,' says this article from Worker's World, which draws a parallel between the two meetings.

Cosatu is expecting a massive turnout for its national strike on Wednesday, and even hopes organisations outside of its network may spontaneously join in - but the union group has been wary of talking numbers, saying the dual nature of Wednesday's action makes turnout even more unpredictable than is usual in such actions. Based on discussions around labour broking within Nedlac, however, it said it believes unions not aligned with it may join in, as might taxpayer groups concerned about road tolls.

Senegal opposition candidate Macky Sall has won a major boost in his bid to oust President Abdoulaye Wade in a run-off vote, securing the endorsement of the man who came third in the first round. The west African nation's main opposition movement has also called on its supporters and other failed candidates to rally behind Sall, who will challenge the 85-year-old Wade in the second round election on March 18 or 25. Wade, who has been in power for 12 years, garnered 34.8 per cent of the vote in the first round, but fell humiliatingly short of the majority needed to avoid a run-off.

Submissions are invited from researchers, activists, academics, and development practitioners. Young professionals from Africa and the Diaspora are particularly encouraged to submit papers that advance new perspectives and approaches.

At least 77 people in southeastern Africa have been killed and more are still missing as Tropical Cyclone Irina sweeps through the region. The storm struck northern Madagascar more than two weeks ago and has slowly tracked down the west of the country. Torrential rain from the system hit the whole of the island, leading to the deaths of 65 people, weather officials said on Monday. The majority of the deaths occurred in the southeastern district of Ifanadiana. The storm has also affected southern areas of Mozambique and eastern South Africa.