• Alexandre Manguele, the southeastern country's health minister, announced that the first ARVs produced in Mozambique, in partnership with Brazil, will be ready by July 2012. In doing so, it will be the first African country – rather than private sector supplier – to produce its own stocks of the drug, which can prolong the lives of HIV sufferers by decades.

  • Contributor | Governance

    On the 9 January, Nigerians protested at the headquarters of the Wold Bank in the US. They acted in solidarity with Occupy Nigeria and labour activists in Nigeria who have called a general strikeagainst protesting fuel price hikes demanded by the IMF and World Bank. On New Year's Day, Nigerians awoke to find the price of gasoline and diesel had doubled overnight, as the Nigerian president acceded to the demands of the IMF and World Bank, removing public subsidies from fuel. This video reports on the US protest. 'IMF and World Bank policies have been very successful in transferring money from the rest of us to the one per cent,' says one speaker.

    Tagged under Governance Nigeria

  • This volume published at the end of 2011 is intended to be the first of an annual series, which will aim to provide the reader with regularly-updated qualitative assessments on the changing nature and dynamics of environmental migration throughout the world. Most of the papers constitute the first detailed analyses of the migration flows that were induced by some of the most dramatic events of 2010, paving the way for future scholarly works.

    Tagged under Violence & Peace

  • Two years after Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, international aid donors have delivered only half of the billions of dollars promised for reconstruction, according to UN data. Just $2.38-billion (53 per cent) of the $4.5-billion pledged for recovery programmes in 2010-2011 has been delivered, figures from the UN special envoy for Haiti show.

    Tagged under Global Pan-Africanism

  • Amnesty International (AI) has repeated its call for the Nigeria police force to stop shooting at protesters and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to commit to protecting people, after several deaths and injuries were recorded in street protests. The global rights organisation urged the Nigerian authorities to reform the country's police regulations in line with international standards, to prevent additional loss of life and ensure that the police only use firearms when it is strictly necessary to protect life.

  • Gunmen have killed six people and abducted three others in the latest attack in the north-eastern border region with Somalia, police say. A local police chief told the BBC that Somali militants were to blame for the raid in Wajir district, in which two local officials were seized. There have been several attacks since Nairobi sent troops into Somalia to fight the al-Shabab Islamist group. No-one has claimed responsibility for the latest attack.

  • 'Amr Moussa? He was pro-Mubarak and obedient. ElBaradei. What’s his history? Nothing. The others, what’s their history? Islamic groups, what’s their history? Their history is bad. Islamic leaders, their history is bad. They collaborated with the British and now they collaborate with the Americans and Saudi Arabia. So I have to study who is going to be the president by his character, his history, the program. It’s just individuals running to divide the cake. They want money and authority.' In this interview with prominent feminist Nawal el-Saadawi discusses women's rights in Egypt and makes the case for a female president.

  • Contributor | Resources

    Zimbabwe's minister of education, David Coltart, says he is 'powerless' to stop a strike by the country's civil servants, as teachers press for higher salaries of $540 - more than double their current $250 paycheck - in a fresh sign of trouble that threatens to rattle Zimbabwe's fragile unity government.

    Tagged under Resources Zimbabwe

  • 30 January 2012 is the latest date set for the sentencing of Zoliswa Nkonyana’s murderers, according to blog Writing Rights. Nkonyana was killed because she was lesbian. Activist Zackie Achmat writes in commentary on a reposted news article on the site that the inefficient, ineffective and unjust criminal justice system in Khayelitsha and throughout our country continues to punish Nkonyana’s family and friends with the delay in sentencing the killers. The Social Justice Coalition together with Equal Education, Treatment Action Campaign and Triangle Project have instituted a formal complaint for a Commission of Inquiry into SAPS, the Metro Police and the other agencies.

  • Ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria claimed 16 more victims, with gunmen killing eight in the north and a mob torching an Islamic school in the south, as a fuel strike added to the deadly tension. Amid the sectarian and social turmoil, Nobel literature prize laureate Wole Soyinka, one of the country's most respected voices, warned that the continent's most populous nation was heading toward civil war.

  • Since 2005, the US State Department has been using hip-hop as a bridge for foreign cultural diplomacy. Operating under the auspices of then-public diplomacy undersecretary Karen Hughes, the 'Rhythm Road' program began sending 'hip-hop envoys' to, mostly, the Middle East, hoping to promote transnational understanding through music and dance, writes Julianne Escobedo for 'The State Department's actions mirror its efforts during the Cold War, when they dispatched prominent jazz musicians to counter Soviet propaganda about life in America. The Al-Jazeera piece brings up that this program sends Muslim hip-hop artists, in particular, to Muslim-majority countries to discuss their experience in the United States.'

  • This publication seeks to provide a gender analysis of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement from the perspective of the participation of women in peace building and conflict resolution, and how peace agreements facilitate or hinder gender equality in post-conflict situations. The analysis was developed through a series of meetings convened by the Feminist Institute of Southern Africa (FISA) and the publication is a collaboration between FISA and the States in Transition Observatory of Idasa.

  • Six major global companies have been shortlisted by a comittee of experts from Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland for the 2012 Public Eye on Davos-award

    Tagged under Advocacy & Solidarity

  • The articles in Issue 38 of Forced Migration Review cover the positive and the negative aspects of the spread of technologies; the increased accountability, and the increased scope for controlling displaced people; the opening up through the internet of possibilities beyond the traditional confines of life as a displaced person, and the risks and dangers that that brings; and the potential in technological advances for assistance and protection programmes.

  • The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has condemned the repeatedly adjournment of the case of the Moroccan rapper Moaz Belghawat, a member of the February 20 movement, the continuing of his imprisonment and the authorities’ arbitrary rejection to release him even temporarily. Al-Haqed was arrested on charges of assaulting a member of the 'The Royal Youth Movement' called Mohammed El-Dali, and has been languishing in Casablanca’s Akasha prison for more than 100 days.

  • Contributor | Resources

    Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande's 'wonderful problem' came back to haunt him when a woman was killed and 17 people injured in a stampede at the University of Johannesburg. Speaking at a hastily convened press conference following the accident, Nzimande announced that the department would move to a "central application process" to alleviate problems regarding university registrations. This was a far cry from the minister's comments last year when he brushed off criticism of the large queues outside the University of Johannesburg (UJ), calling it a 'wonderful problem'. In a repeat of last year's chaos, hundreds of matriculants queued outside the university once the matric results were released seeking to submit late applications for study.

    Tagged under Resources South Africa

  • Contributor | Governance

    While internationally renowned Senegalese singer Youssou N’dour's entry into the Senegalese political field has made headlines, here's blogger Africa is a Country's view: 'The truth is, most serious analysts don’t give N’dour a chance and in some quarters his candidacy is viewed as a publicity stunt - among other factors, N’dour, who has a large fan audience outside Senegal, has no electoral organisation in place; enters a a crowded opposition field; while the incumbent (Abdoulaye Wade) is an experienced campaigner and controls the electoral machinery.'

    Tagged under Governance Senegal

  • The International Criminal Court says Libya has not responded to a request for information about the health and status of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi before a deadline which expires on Tuesday 10 January. The former Libyan leader's son was captured in southern Libya in November. The ICC, based in in The Hague, has indicted him for crimes against humanity and wants to know officially whether Libya plans to hand him over.

  • Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many women are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government's repression. It is not a place where Egyptian feminists had hoped women would be, back in the heady days of the revolution, when they played an active role, side by side with men, to bring down a dictator. 'Changing the patriarchal culture is not so easy,' said Mozn Hassan, 32, executive director of the seven-year-old group Nazra for Feminist Studies.

  • European banks, pension funds and insurance companies are increasing global hunger and poverty by speculating on food prices and financing land grabs in poorer countries, according to a new report by Friends of the Earth Europe. The report analyses the activities of 29 European banks, pension funds and insurance companies, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays, RBS, Allianz, BNP Paribas, AXA, HSBC, Generali, Allianz, Unicredit and Credit Agricole. It reveals the significant involvement of these financial institutions in food speculation, and the direct or indirect financing of land grabbing.