A recent military curfew imposed on the violence-wracked north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum has not only made life unbearable for residents, but it has also reduced their chances of survival. Hundreds of civilians are living in fear in the town in Yobe State after the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, a sect that wants to impose Sharia law on the country, waged an assault there on 18 October, resulting in the death of more than 30 people. Dr. Bawa Abdullahi Wase, a senior research fellow on ethnicity, inequality and human security, told IPS that in a developing country like Nigeria a large number of people have to go out every day to look for food at markets and other places.

Kenya has been ranked among the countries with the highest defence budgets in Africa, thanks to two decades of a steady increase in military expenditure. It is ranked seventh behind Algeria, South Africa, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco, having surpassed Tunisia last year. The country spent Sh45.8 billion last year down from Sh47.7 billion the previous year but remained by far the highest in East Africa relative to its GDP, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), an independent research organisation. Algeria had the highest spending on defence at Sh736 billion followed by South Africa with Sh434 billion and Angola at Sh309 billion.

Four years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and its devastating fall-out, Transparency International looks at how weak oversight and a lack of transparency contributed to the financial crisis. 'This crisis was not just the result of a few rogue traders placing reckless bets. Corruption, in the form of fraud and a ‘no holds barred’ pursuit of profits, bonuses and growth, infected the whole financial system.' The page also has an interesting timeline of the crisis.

General David Rodriguez has been nominated to be the next commander of AFRICOM. In this blog post on the Centre for Global Development site, Kate Almquist Knopf gives him a briefing on his new role. In one point, she writes: 'Africa is not a hotbed of terrorism, as some articles announcing your nomination claim, but we can help make it one by treating it as such. AQIM; al-Shabaab; Boko Haram; LRA; and the sundry homegrown violent extremist organizations in North Africa pose serious local and regional challenges, but they do not pose serious threats to our homeland. American kinetic responses are just as likely to engender threats to the US as to reduce them.'

Increased agricultural development in Zambia will actually compromise the country’s food security as peasant farmers continue to be driven off their customary land to pave the way for large-scale local and foreign agribusiness, according to the University of Zambia’s dean of the school of agriculture, Dr. Mickey Mwala. 'Smallholder farmers are the people responsible for food security in Zambia. So, evicting them could have a long-term effect on the country’s food security situation, if prolonged and extended,' he told IPS.

Human rights abuses committed by Nigeria's security forces in their fight against Islamist sect Boko Haram are fuelling the very insurgency they are meant to quell, Amnesty International said. The Amnesty report said Nigeria's security forces acted outside the rule of law and their brutal tactics could build support for Boko Haram outside its extremist core.

Between 50 to 90 per cent of logging in key tropical countries of the Amazon basin, central Africa and south east Asia is being carried out by organised crime, thus threatening efforts to combat climate change, deforestation, conserve wildlife and eradicate poverty. This rapid response report estimates that the illegal logging trade is worth between USD 30 to 100 billion annually.

This media guide aims at helping business journalists report on corporate governance and raise public awareness of the impact it has on businesses, shareholders, and the broader community of stakeholders. It will help journalists develop clear and compelling stories that examine how a company is governed. It was produced by IFC’s Global Corporate Governance Forum in partnership with the International Center for Journalists, a an organization that advances quality journalism worldwide.

Fears are growing over an emerging form of intestinal disease in Africa, to which HIV positive people are particularly vulnerable. Medical experts have expressed concerns that health infrastructures across the continent lack the capacity to detect or cope with the dangerous bacterium. The scientists say that invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) thrives in the blood systems of people in Sub-Saharan Africa whose body immunity is weakened by HIV/AIDS.

This report explores the development from privatisation to corporatisation within neoliberal policy on urban water services in developing countries. The findings call for the water justice movement to update and adjust its strategy, in order to counter the neoliberal tactical shift towards corporatisation.

Young South African women who engage in sex or have relationships partially motivated by economic gain are more likely to become infected with HIV, Rachel Jewkes and colleagues report in the Journal of AIDS & Clinical Research. These data add to previous findings from this cohort showing that women who had a violent partner or who were relatively powerless in a relationship were more likely subsequently to acquire HIV.

Four years ago Africa greeted Barack Obama's election with rapture, predicting America's first black president would smother the continent with attention. But instead of warm hand-holding, Africa got hard-headed, security-first policies. 'Obama to my mind is more engaged in Africa, but the nature of how the United States is engaging has changed. It is mostly security related,' said Jason Warner, a Harvard-based expert on African security. According to Mr Warner, President Obama has helped 'normalise' Africa policy. 'There is no other region in the world that the US engages on simply humanitarian grounds.'

The quality of South Africa's maths and science education has been ranked last in a survey of 62 countries by the World Economic Forum. The report ranked South Africa 54th when it came to gross tertiary enrolment - behind India, but ahead of Morocco, Ghana, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, and Tanzania. The country placed 28th overall, and was the top-ranked sub-Saharan African country.

Negotiators from 46 Least Developed Countries (LDC) met in Nairobi recently to develop a common position to be presented at the November climate talks in Doha. The technical experts said that developing nations will agree on shared goals which include establishment of a new climate treaty, financing and technologies required to accelerate green transition. 'We all have a responsibility in some way to address climate change in order to achieve sustainable development. Africa, small island developing states, and least developing countries, continue to suffer most from the effects of climate change,' Kenya's Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Ali Mohammed said.

People displaced by a territorial dispute between Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon are asking for help. The source of the dispute is the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula, which the International Court of Justice ruled belonged to Cameroon in 2002. But thousands are refusing to accept the decision, and are asking for the government to intervene.

As the euphoria of last spring has receded, new political forces have emerged and old ones beaten back. Little has changed for refugees in the region, states this article. 'The battle between repressive regimes, regional rebel groups, and urban opposition movements continues to displace and exile thousands in Sudan and the Horn of Africa. Countries like Egypt or Libya, themselves engaged in conflicts over national and religious identities, tribal or class power structures, economic resources and long-held privileges - are of their own accord unlikely to champion the cause of refugees any time soon. Rather, despite the European Court for Human Rights’ ruling earlier this year against the expulsion by sea of 24 migrants by the Italian navy back to Libya, Italy has been busy drafting new anti-immigrant agreements with the newly elected Libyan government.'

Efforts to tackle the silent emergency of acute and chronic malnutrition in Africa will receive additional traction this week when the African Union and partners join forces in Addis Ababa to celebrate the Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security. The high-level event on 31 October which will be opened by the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. More than 30 percent of all children under five in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from stunted growth due to chronic malnutrition.

Police and soldiers have deployed in large numbers in the Tunisian capital after deadly clashes with radical Islamists during the night, according to the interior ministry. The deployment came a day after Tunisia's state news agency said one protester was killed and three security officers injured in clashes near Tunis. Wielding sharp tools and swords, the protesters went on the attack in the Tunis suburb of Manouba after police arrested a Salafist suspected of assaulting the head of the suburb's public-security brigade, Khaled Tarrouche, interior ministry spokesman, said.

All AU member states (with the exception of newcomer South Sudan) have become state party to the African Charter, and 26 of them have accepted the Women’s Protocol. The question should be posed as to what extent the promises of the Charter and Women’s Protocol have been realised. What has the impact of these instruments been on the practice of state parties? This publication, 'The impact of the African Charter and Women’s Protocol in selected African states', aims to start addressing this question.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the highest rate of malnutrition in central and west Africa, affecting 43 percent of children under five, UNICEF said. In central Africa, 'some countries have a rate of chronic malnutrition which is still alarming,' Marianne Flach, the representative of the UN children's agency in Congo, said at the opening of a regional workshop on reducing malnutrition. At least 75 experts from different countries in central Africa came to take part in the workshop, which will continue until Thursday in a northern suburb of Brazzaville.