'Thursday June 23 was indeed a historic day in the life of the Nation that we the youth of Senegal will never forget,' says this article on the afro-optimism blog. 'The Nation came out, in all of its glory and fury, men and women, youth and old, poor and rich, swift politicians and lay common men/women, and took to the streets together as one to contest a law proposal orchestrated by the Presidency that was to change the rules of the electoral game to enable an easy reelection for Abdoulaye Wade for a third seven-year term in the upcoming February 2012 election.'

Nationalisation is an attempt by the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) to save black economic empowerment (BEE) 'elements in crisis', and will not help the poor, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande said. At the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) central committee meeting, he warned against the call for nationalisation by elements in the ANCYL, 'whose intention is to save these BEE elements in crisis, and not to address the interests of the workers and the poor in the country'. Putting privately owned assets in the hands of the state is not 'inherently progressive' as it depends on which class interests are being advanced.

Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve will receive a crucial new water supply next month after winning a lengthy court battle, the diamond firm mining the area said. Botswana's highest court ruled in January in favour of the Bushmen who had fought for years for the right to re-open a crucial water well that supplied their village.

Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika said Saturday he would not take International Monetary Fund (IMF) advice to devalue the local currency because he was protecting the poor. Both the business community and the IMF were 'pressuring the government' to devalue to Kwacha to K180 to a dollar, he said. 'If we do that, prices of essential products and services will go up including transport. Who will win?' asked Mutharika. The president was speaking after the IMF said its programme in Malawi had stalled over policy disagreements.

The Right2Know campaign has welcomed the ANC's concessions on the Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill). 'It is a first, but important step, which may signal a willingness by democrats within Parliament and government to push back against an apparent grab for power by securocrats within the state. This would have been impossible without the voice of ordinary South Africans who have led the struggle for the Right2Know campaign over the past year.'

Ghana has a free education system, yet over a million of Ghana’s children do not attend school, says this article from Ghana's The Mail. 'Ghana’s government has a duty to create an environment that facilitates education. It should provide not only the education itself, but the means to get materials such as books and pens if a family cannot afford it.'

An estimated 10 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, with child malnutrition rates in some areas twice the emergency threshold amid high food prices that have left families desperate, the United Nations reported. In some areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, drought conditions are the worst in 60 years, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update.

Clashes between Egyptian security forces and more than 5,000 protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, have left more than 590 injured, according to witnesses and medical officials. Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's former president, was sealed off early on Wednesday (29 June) as lines of security forces in riot gear strived to regain control from demonstrators. Witnesses said the clashes started on Tuesday when police tried to clear a sit-in at the state-TV building, which included families of those killed during the country's revolution earlier this year, known as the 'martyrs', according to the Daily News, an Egyptian news website.

A new report from Unicef notes that global income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is 64 per cent higher than it was 200 years ago. The report notes that the poorest 20 per cent of the world's population holds two per cent of its income. At the rate of change posted in the past 20 years, it will take more than 250 years for the bottom 20 per cent to go from two per cent to 10 per cent.

The UN has, for the first time, taken a major step towards defining the relationship between the internet and human rights. At a recent event there were more than 50 attendees and the event culminated in over 40 countries signing on to a joint statement commending the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression’s report, which had been featured at the event. This article from the Association for Progressive Communications includes an interview with Joy Liddicoat, head of APC’s Connect your rights! campaign, to get a better understanding of what this means for internet rights.

Algeria has witnessed unprecedented unrest in the past few months. Since the beginning of this year, law enforcement officers have carried out no fewer than 2,777 riot control operations. A record was set in March, when more than 70 rallies and sit-ins were staged. In response, the government has issued calls for dialogue, bowed to demands for pay hikes and promised greater political freedom.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry has announced a project to build a common digital platform which will help streamline the identification of protected musical works across 11 West African countries, helping creators from these countries get paid for their work through a simplified and standardised rights registration system. US firm Google will be WIPO’s technology partner in developing this new web-based system, which builds upon WIPOCOS (WIPO Software for Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights).

Sierra Leone`s main opposition party has said it will not accept the outcome of the 2012 general election. Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) said there are indications that the process would be flawed if the current head of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Ms Christiana Thorpe, presides over the polls. The SLPP, who lost power to the ruling All People`s Congress (APC) party in 2007, continues to blame Ms Thorpe for their defeat. The electoral body had rejected 477 votes cast in some polling stations in the eastern region of the country, an area considered to be SLPP stronghold.

Research from social and digital media research firm Mediabadger on the role of Muslim women in social media concludes that: 'Muslim women are a multi-dimensional part of societies all over the world and this is no exception in social media. They enjoy a rich, complex and overall positive presence online. They are very engaged and have adopted social technologies as rapidly as any societal group. The roles of Muslim women in Islamic and Western societies are changing drastically, perhaps more than any other online demographic we have researched to date. With the changes in Egypt, Muslim women there are working to better define their role and emancipation.'

Following a series of shipwrecks and deaths, as well as reports in the Guardian newspaper about the failure to rescue migrants in boats or dinghies that are adrift by ships and patrols deployed in the Mediterranean by NATO and the EU to stop migrants reaching Europe, Migreurop has issued a press release to mark the fact that over 1,000 people have died in this context since January 2011. It argues that the failure to assist migrants who are in distress at sea is in violation of the 1951 Geneva Convention and international maritime law.

Women in Africa may be the backbone of the continent’s agricultural production, but they are not profiting as much as they should from agroforestry - the growing of trees on agricultural land, according to a study by the World Agroforestry Centre. It recommends women increase their income by moving into producing high end items like soap and wine from the same products they currently sell as raw materials.

Civil society groups from more than 25 countries in Africa issued a report on 27 June urging African member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to show support for the court at the upcoming African Union (AU) summit meeting. The report, 'Observations and Recommendations on the ICC', is endorsed by 125 African organisations and international groups with a presence in Africa. The 17th AU summit will hold its assembly of heads of state from 30 June to 1 July 2011, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Meetings of ministry-level officials in advance of the heads of state discussions began on 23 June.

On 16 June the government of Chad signed an action plan to end recruitment and use of children in its national army and security forces. The new action plan is an agreement between the Chadian Government and the United Nations to end recruitment and use of child soldiers. The action plan spells out concrete steps, which when taken, will result in Chad being removed from the Secretary-General’s list of parties who recruit and use children.

On 15 June, the whistleblower web site WikiLeaks began releasing US diplomatic cables from the period immediately following the devastating Haitian earthquake of January 2010. The cables, from among the 251,287 in WikiLeaks’ possession, provide important information on the machinations of US politicians, on their tight control over Haitian government functions, and about their drive to reopen Haiti to capitalist exploitation. WikiLeaks has reached an agreement with Haiti Liberté, a weekly paper and web site published by Haitian immigrants in the US, under which the paper has first access to the Haitian cables and also helps to post them on the WikiLeaks web site.

The agriculture ministers of major economies, rich as well as emerging, meeting for the first time as the world verges on another food crisis in only four years, have disappointed. Their decisions, summed up in a 24-page Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture, lacked the teeth to bite the neck of the crisis, according to food experts and NGOs. Shenggen Fan, director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRPRI), a US-based think-tank, who was in Paris for the meeting, said the G20 did not identify the 'most pressing priorities', nor provide details on how to deal with them to help everyone move beyond 'words and rhetoric to action and implementation'.