A one-day high-level dialogue on international migration took place 17 October at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The dialogue was attended by senior African policy-makers and academics to discuss collaboration to ensure that migration is beneficial to economic growth and regional integration on the continent. In her opening remarks to the meeting, the director of ECA’s African Centre for Gender and Social Development, Ms Thokozile Ruzvidzo, pointed out that many studies have confirmed that migration is beneficial to both the countries from which the migrants originate and the countries of destination.

Gambia's opposition will go into the 14 November presidential election as fractured parties after talks to field a single candidate to unseat incumbent Yahya Jammeh failed. President Jammeh, the favourite, has been in power since 1994 when he took power in a coup before holding a civilian election two years later. He has won three subsequent elections since then and will be seeking a fourth five-year term.

Negative developments in the global economy could exert pressure on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) sovereigns over the coming months, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said. This is although SSA economies have been expanding since the global economic downturn of 2008-09, S&P’s said in a new report ‘Renewed External Pressures Could Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa Sovereign Ratings Outlook’. For the region as a whole, a drop in global risk appetite could also erode the confidence that foreign investors have shown in SSA markets since 2009.

Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against the government in the North African kingdom's biggest city, threatening to boycott the upcoming elections. The weekly demonstration by the pro-democracy February 20 movement on Sunday 16 October attracted around 10,000 people in Casablanca, making it the largest demonstration in months.

Fighters from Al-Shabab will attack Kenya unless it withdraws its troops from Somalia, a spokesman for the group has warned. Analysts say the group will try to follow through on its threat. Hundreds of Kenyan troops entered Somalia on Sunday, backed by helicopters and tanks; officials in Somalia also said that jets had bombed al-Shabab camps, though Nairobi would not confirm the jets were theirs.

A new vaccine against malaria will help reduce African children's risk of acquiring the disease by about half, according to the first results of an ongoing phase III trial. The vaccine has been developed by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in Belgium. Known as RTS, the vaccine is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite, rather than bacteria or viruses.

On 18 October, UNHCR released the companion to its annual Global Trends publication. The report, 'Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries: Statistical Overview of Asylum Applications Lodged in Europe and Selected non-European Countries', finds that industrialised countries experienced 'a 17 per cent increase in asylum applications in the first half of this year, with most claimants coming from countries with long-standing displacement situations'.

The US has denied that its renewed interest in Uganda is a strategy to get hold of the newly found oil in the country. The US government has announced that it will deploy troops to help Uganda fight the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who are currently in the Central African Republic. Critics have said that the only reason that America seems to be coming up strongly to offer troops to help in fighting Kony when they did not when he was killing people here was because of the oil.

Genetically modified (GM) food aid bound for Africa has long been a bone of contention among governments, scientists, activists, consumers and aid workers. On 18 August a drought-affected Kenyan government fired the head of its National Biosafety Authority for expediting the process to import milled food aid which might have contained genetically modified organisms (GMO). In the weeks preceding and after the incident, public debate on the issue was distorted by extreme positions either for or against GM food, say this IRIN report.

Top officials of the Dutch government at the weekend kept on the front burner efforts to bring lasting stability to the Niger Delta. The position of the government was articulated by Dutch parliamentarians and a representative of the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in charge of the Horn of Africa, East and West Africa. A Dutch parliamentarian, Sharon Gesthuizen, specifically tasked Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to clean up oil spill in all contaminated sites in the Niger Delta. Shell admitted that oil spill in the Niger Delta was wrong and it would do its best to remediate areas affected.

On 28 September, French authorities seized 11 luxury cars belonging to the family of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema as part of an ongoing corruption investigation, reports 'The seizures are part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the “ill-gotten gains” of African leaders Dennis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. A judicial inquiry began after the NGOs Transparency International France, Sherpa, and the Arab Commission for Human Rights filed a complaint in 2007. In 2009, France’s Supreme Court ruled to admit the case, a landmark decision in the anti-corruption battle.'

On the occasion of the 37th session of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) where a delegation of farmers from La Via Campesina will be present along with other actors from civil society to follow the discussions and participate in the debates, La Via Campesina has reiterated its demands for solutions based on the principles of food sovereignty. Important issues such as land tenure, price volatility, gender issues and nutrition as well as agricultural investments are on the agenda.

Two former rebel groups behind fighting in Central African Republic that claimed over 50 lives last month have signed a truce, government mediators said. The fighting was over control of a diamond mine near the town of Bria 600 km (360 miles) from the capital Bangui and risked escalating into a broader tribal conflict with reports of fighters going house-to-house hunting ethnic rivals.

Swaziland’s parliamentarians are questioning the purpose of a social safety net covering children, the elderly and the disabled. One dismissed it as little more than a public relations exercise, but in the teetering economy the recipients often depend on these small grants and pensions for survival. Donor-dependent Swaziland has been plunged into a financial crisis since receipts from the Southern Africa Customs Union dried up in the wake of the global 2008 slowdown, but finance minister Majozi Sithole recently conceded that government corruption cost the country nearly twice the annual amount budgeted for social services.

The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has observed that refuse collection in informal settlements is often irregular and of very poor quality. Refuse is often left rotting for days or weeks, contributing to the spread of disease. All refuse collection for informal settlements in the City of Cape Town is outsourced to private contractors, which in our view limits accountability and recourse. In addition, the provision and maintenance of sanitation services, which are also outsourced, are either non-existent or of a poor quality. Since 19 September 2011, Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) (a partner organisation of the SJC) has requested the Supply Chain Management (SCM) office in the City of Cape Town to provide the public with access to the Service Delivery Agreements (SDAs) that govern the provision and maintenance of sanitation services, as well as the provision of community-based refused collection services, in informal settlements. Despite sending several emails and letters, making several phone calls, and threatening legal action, we are yet to see the SDAs which by law should in any event be immediately available to the public.

17 October marked the 50th anniversary of the 'French-Algerian Massacre', when at least 200 Algerians living in Paris were killed by French police and another 11,000 or so were arrested while protesting for Algerian independence from France, says blog Africa is a Country in this post. This post remembers the date in the context of modern-day immigration to France.

South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) gave the green light to the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup attempt, along with the intelligence agencies of America, Britain, China and Spain, mercenary Simon Mann has claimed. Mann told London’s Daily Mail on Saturday night: 'I believe Britain and America had full visibility on what we were doing. The South Africans passed on intelligence to the UK and the USA, who had vested interests.'

Zambia’s former president Rupiah Banda has spoken out for the first time since leaving office three weeks ago, denying links to a gold scam and purchase of luxury vehicles.

The whereabouts of 25 lobbyists who were arrested on Saturday 15 October in Angola’s capital Luanda remains unknown. The 25 were seized while protesting against rights violations, poverty and the 32-year rule of President José Eduardo dos Santos. One of the organisers of the demonstration, Mr Carbono Casimiro, told the local Ecclesia Radio that police descended on peaceful protestors and journalists with unnecessary force before seizing them at the Independence Square, while accusing them of several political crimes.

The Oakland Institute has launched a campaign against Iowa-based investor Bruce Rastetter and fellow investors in the industrial agricultural corporation AgriSol Energy’s attempt to acquire 325,000 hectares of land in Tanzania that is home to 162,000 people. According to the institute the proposed site is inhabited by former refugees from neighbouring Burundi.