Hopes have risen of fresh investigations into the Anglo-Leasing scandal after the government finally secured a mutual legal assistance agreement with Switzerland. The Anglo-Leasing scandal dates back to 2002 when the Kenyan government sought to get new generation passports with advanced security features. The investigations involved two contracts which started during former President Daniel arap Moi regime, but were inherited when the Narc government, under President Kibaki, took over in 2003.

Namibia, the fourth biggest uranium producer in the world, first floated the idea of acquiring a nuclear power plant of its own four years ago. If it goes forward, the nuclear project represents the culmination of Areva’s more than five years’ efforts in the African country, which have been beset by problems, including cost overruns, reports New Era.

The Health Ministry in Zimbabwe said it has recorded two suspected typhoid deaths, as an outbreak of the disease appeared to worsen. The ministry was awaiting laboratory analysis to confirm if the deaths were the result of the bacterial disease that is spread through contaminated food and water. Since the start of the outbreak in late October, 2,716 cases have been identified, mostly in two crowded townships with limited and run-down sanitation infrastructure near the capital Harare.

Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram said Monday 13 February it killed 12 soldiers in an attack in the northeast town of Maiduguri but security forces denied any of its officers had been killed and said it shot dead sect members. Boko Haram, which wants Islamic law more widely applied, has killed more than 250 people this year in bomb and gun attacks on cities across the north of Africa's most populous nation.

Egyptian women are angry, again, at presidential hopeful Hazem Saleh Abu Ismail’s comments that as president he would require the veil, or higab, on all women in the country. Abu Ismail said that women in the country must 'change creed' and that Islam gives no special personal freedom.A group of young Cairo University students, who are forming a women’s alliance organization on campus, told Bikyamasr.com that 'this forcing of women to do this or that is not Egyptian'.

'In an Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, we express our concern that the director of Human Rights Watch has used his introductory essay in the 2012 Human Rights Watch World Report to urge support for newly elected governments of the Islamic right in the Middle East and North Africa. Our letter points out that he does not need to urge engagement where there is no threat of a boycott; that he mirrors security discourses relating to Muslim contexts where the choice is between 'autocrats' or 'moderate Islamists'; and that he is dismissive of the threats to sexual rights and to religious minorities and silent on the struggles of labor, secularists and others who initiated and sustained the mobilizations and movements against oppressive regimes.'

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.

At a waterlogged gold mine in western Kenya’s Migori District, 14-year-old Jacob*, one of 15,000 children toiling in the region’s pits, scours the water for glistering flakes, a job he says beats going to school on an empty stomach. An estimated 15,000 children are working in gold mines in the districts of Nyatike and Migori in western Kenya’s Nyanza province, either in actual extraction or in ancillary services such as selling food, according to the local Children’s Welfare Office. This number rises significantly at weekends and during school holidays.

Deadly clashes between police and youth in the Northeastern town of Taza suggest that, far from bringing change and stability, Morocco’s new government is simply repeating mistakes of the past, stoking tensions and fuelling a spate of protests against the regime. In an effort to keep its population in check during the Arab Spring, the regime launched a process of reforms last February and brandished what it called ‘the Moroccan exception’, boasting of relative calm during a period of intense regional turmoil.

Moscow has accused the west of stirring up tensions in the Arab world by calling for the overthrow of the Syrian regime. Russia says calls from certain states for the Syrian opposition to avoid dialogue with the government, are only provoking further violence. Author and journalist Webster Tarpley, who's in Damascus, says, it's very simple, western powers are behind the violence in Syria, according to this video and report from RT, the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.

Malawi’s maize-growing central and southern regions have not had good rains, prompting concerns about possible shortages of the staple in the coming months. 'I think it could be one of the worst shortages we have seen in recent times,' said an early warning official who preferred anonymity. 'The rains have never been so erratic. In some parts of Malawi small farmers have gone in for a second round of planting after the crops failed; and the seed they have used is not of good quality so it will not give good yields.'

Sudan's armed forces said on Saturday 11 February they had seized an area held by rebels after a battle lasting two days in the border state of Blue Nile where fighting has been raging for five months. Clashes spread to Blue Nile in September after violence broke out in June in the nearby oil-producing state of South Kordofan between the army and rebels from the SPLM-North, which wants to topple the Khartoum government.

South Africa is to build a R1,6bn pharmaceutical plant to produce the ingredients for antiretroviral medicines, used in the treatment of HIV and Aids, government announced. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said South Africa consumed R25bn-worth of medicines each year, the 'majority' of this imported.

President Robert Mugabe will not sign the draft constitution into the new supreme law of the country as long as it disqualifies him from contesting the next elections, a senior Zanu PF official has declared. Mugabe, who turns 88 next week, has already been endorsed as the Zanu PF Presidential candidate for elections set to take place later this year or in 2013. The Constitution Select Committee (Copac) last week published the first draft of the long awaited new supreme law of the country which has many sections which Zanu PF is strongly opposed to. Section 6.4.2 of the draft disqualifies from standing in Presidential elections, any person who has already held the office for 10 years, meaning that President Robert Mugabe cannot contest the next polls.

The Malawi Law Society (MLS) has said it sees no end in sight to the judiciary strike which has paralysed the country’s justice delivery system for six weeks now. MLS president John-Gift Mwakhwawa said lawyers are yet to be briefed on the outcome of a recent between government and the judiciary. 'What is at stake in not just our right to economic activity, but the suspension of people’s rights. It also compromises the independence and impartiality of the Judiciary if it is literally going to beg for an increment.'

Swaziland’s Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini who was at the centre of controversy last year (2011) when it was revealed he bought Swazi nation land for himself at a price massively below its true value, has a personal fortune of E12 million (US$1.56 million) it has been revealed. Among his assets are E392,000 worth of shares in Swazi Empowerment (Pty) Limited (SEL), a company that in turn has a 19 per cent shareholding with MTN Swaziland, the monopoly mobile phone operator in the kingdom. Details of Dlamini’s fortune are contained in a statement of assets and liabilities that was submitted by the Prime Minister to the Swazi Integrity Commission last week, leaked to the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reports Swazi Media Commentary.

Members of parliament Monday 13 February slammed the preliminary report issued by the fact-finding committee probing the 1 February Port Said football massacre that left 71 dead, describing it as 'vague' and 'insufficient'. Hussein Ibrahim, head of the Freedom and Justice Party's (FJP) parliamentary bloc, demanded that the Homeland Security chief in Port Said and General Intelligence officials be summoned to the People's Assembly (PA) to present their official reports on the clashes.

The Institute of African Studies journal Nokoko, Volume 2, is available. It includes:
- Editorial Note: The Front Lines and the Margins of a Global Anti-Poverty Movement
Toby Moorsom
- Economics of Afro-Pessimism: The Economics of Perception in African Foreign Direct Investment
Victoria Schorr
- Beyond an Epistemology of Bread, Butter, Culture and Power: Mapping the African Feminist Movement
Sinmi Akin-Aina
- Designed Disempowerment and Hegemonic Benevolence: A critical analysis of individual behavior change HIV/AIDS prevention programming in Sub-Saharan Africa
Imara Ajani Rolston
- “Something Ironic Happened on the Way to the Black Revolution”: The Politics and Power of Definition and Identity Construction within the Historiography of the African Diaspora
Leslie Wells
- Indian Hair, the After-Temple-Life: Class, Gender and Race Representations of the African American Woman in the Human Hair Industry
W. R. Nadège Compaoré
- Two Cities: Guangzhou / Lagos
Wendy Thompson Taiwo

Topics linked to migration, such as remittances and brain drains, have attracted increasing attention in discussions of development. But such specific issues should be considered in the wider context of the goal of reducing the grossly unjust levels of inequality between nations. The brain drain of medical personnel, for example, cannot be solved simply by looking at migration flows, but by focusing on how to provide the human and financial resources needed for equitably assuring the right of health to all. The latest AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an excerpt on migration and development from a longer study by the AfricaFocus editor published in 2011 by the Nordic Africa Institute, 'African Migration, Global Inequalities, and Human Rights: Connecting the Dots.'

In November last year CODESERIA held its annual Gender Symposium in Cairo, Egypt on the theme 'Gender and the Media in Africa', opening up a much needed platform on which gender and media scholars could renew reflection on the multi-faceted connection between media and gender in Africa. This special issue of Africa Media Review seeks to continue the dialogue by examining how political and social transformations on the continent resulting from re-democratisation, neo-liberalism and globalisation are implicating the nature of the relationship between media and gender.