'Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in the South as well in recent years. Now that Southern Sudanese have opted for independence in the 2011 referendum on self-determination, investment activity will likely increase further. This paper presents preliminary data concerning large-scale land acquisitions in two of the Green Belt states of Southern Sudan: Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. It explores the concept land belongs to the community, a statement that has been taken up by communities in their demand for greater involvement in decision-making regarding community lands.'

Nigeria should tear up World Trade Organisation free trade agreements and protect its domestic industries from foreign competition, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria has said. 'We have to tear up WTO agreements and ask ourselves whether we were right to sign up to everything that's there,' Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi told an audience at Chatham House in London.

Escalating fuel prices, climate change and the impact of the global financial crisis are the challenges currently compromising development in Malawi. The Southern African country wants to see a bold plan of action addressing these problems agreed upon at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. In recent months, Malawi has been experiencing a fuel crisis so severe fuel has been rationed at the pump. People have taken to parking their vehicles at service stations overnight to get a place near the head of the queue. The country is facing severe shortages of foreign exchange, leading to strict controls on the export of hard currency and causing problems for businesses that need forex to pay for imports.

Almost everyone on an overcrowded ship carrying about 600 African migrants to Europe is believed to have died when the vessel broke apart within sight of the Libyan capital, the United Nations said. The UN accused the Libyan government of complicity in a rising number of deadly smuggling incidents, many involving workers from sub-Saharan Africa who had moved to Libya to find work before war broke out there in March.

The 4th Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) was held between 18 and 20 March 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As is customary, the Forum was organised ahead of the 17th Ordinary Session of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) also taking place in Ethiopia. Ninety-seven activists from 23 countries (of which 19 were in Africa) attended the Forum, which is a framework for strategic partnership to improve child rights in Africa. The document available through the link provided gives a summary of the meeting.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) election posters, which feature party leader Helen Zille, Cape Town mayoral candidate Patricia de Lille and party spokeswoman Lindiwe Mazibuko, do not necessarily mean that a vote for the party is a vote for women, analysts say. Amanda Gouws, a political analyst from Stellenbosch University, says a vote for the DA, the country’s official opposition, would not be a feminist vote or victory for women. 'The DA is not a feminist party and many of their women members in government are not either. De Lille and Zille do not have a feminist rhetoric - and let’s not forget that she appointed 10 men to her cabinet,' she said.

On the surface, Namibia's education sector would appear to be doing just well, with about 19,000 teachers teaching some 550,000 children in 1,550 schools. About 80 per cent of the country's two million people are literate, and 90 per cent of children of school-going age are enrolled in primary schools. But scratch below the surface and one discovers there is more than meets the eye to these figures. In fact, critics have been insisting on a complete overhaul of the current education system, which they blame for having failed to produce quality graduates that can compete with the rest of Africa.

Uganda is short on data on HIV among the country’s sex workers, but a new study shows that in the capital, Kampala, HIV prevalence among female sex workers could be more than four times the city’s average prevalence. The study, published in April in the Journal of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STI) Association, recruited 1,027 women from the city’s red-light areas, and found 37 per cent to be HIV-positive, while 13 per cent had gonorrhoea and 10 percent had syphilis.

André Mba Obame, Gabon's main opposition leader, has been stripped of parliamentary immunity as government prepares a treason case against him. The Gabonese opposition leader in January created international headlines as he declared himself winner of the elections held 17 months earlier. The failed attempt to gain power and upcoming treason trial against Obame represent a major setback for Gabon's opposition, which has been denied access to power ever since independence.

Inspired by the January revolution, Egyptian workers are occupying a closed factory and demanding that they be compensated. The workers say the factory was profitable, but was privatised, sold at below market rates and stripped of its assets. This video from The Real News Network reports on the plight of the workers.

'The so-called International community pushes the agenda for intervention in certain countries if they are sure of receiving comfortable dividends in return, usually in the forms of natural resources or the protection of western interests,' states this article. 'But if they stand little to gain in political or economic terms, powerful countries will find themselves lacking in “political will”, never mind how grave the catastrophe maybe. To save face, they will pass powerless resolutions while abuses continue and human dignity is disgraced.' The UN will have to live up to its core values calling for the maintenance of peace and security and call an end to selective intervention if this is to change.

The Niger River, which runs for 550 kilometres through the southwest part of Niger, has for decades been faced with the phenomenon of siltation of its bed, accelerated by the severe desertification of the catchment areas, according to environmental experts. A programme is focused on slowing this phenomenon, which is seriously compromising socio-economic activity around the river. The measures taken include building berms, stabilising sand dunes, and planting trees.

Amadou Yoro Sy et Dialo Diop

Famara Diédhiou

Farouk James

Bernard Dodji Bokodjin

This UNDP paper explores the scale and composition of illicit financial flows from the 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Illicit financial flows involve the cross-border transfer of the proceeds of corruption, trade in contraband goods, criminal activities and tax evasion. In recent years, considerable interest has arisen over the extent to which such flows may have a detrimental impact on development and governance in both developed and developing countries alike. The study’s indicative results find that illicit financial flows from the LDCs have increased from US$9.7 billion in 1990 to US$26.3 billion in 2008 implying an inflation-adjusted rate of increase of 6.2 per cent per annum.

A 13-year-old lesbian has become the latest victim of 'corrective rape' in South Africa, prompting activists to call for direct retaliatory action. The girl, who is said to be open about her sexuality, was raped in Pretoria, a government spokesman said. Campaigners say so-called corrective rape, in which men rape lesbians to 'cure' them of their sexual orientation, is on the increase in South Africa. Last month, a 24-year-old woman who belonged to a gay and lesbian rights group was stoned to death after an apparent gang rape.

Hundreds of farmers in El-Gezira state in central Sudan staged demonstrations to reject what they described as injustice inflicted upon them by the government in evaluating rental price of land plots they own. The protestors marched in Barakat town and set up tents in front of the headquarters of the El-Gezira agricultural project and threatened an extended sit-in until their demands are met. They chanted slogans including 'No for sale, Yes for rental' and 'Your land is your honour'.

Supporters of genetically modified (GM) crop technology fear that their four-year effort to get a biosafety bill enacted in Nigeria may have been in vain if the country's upper house fails to pass it before its tenure ends at the end of May. The 2007 bill, passed by the country's lower chamber last July, is with the Senate. It is one of more than 400 bills introduced to the National Assembly between 2007 and 2010 that were highlighted by the Nigerian Bar Association last December as needing passage before 29 May. But Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy group, said the urgency to pass the bill may stem from other motives. 'Nigerians are yet to understand and adequately contribute to the bill,' an ERA spokesperson said. 'We suggest it is stopped in its tracks.'

Tax authorities in five African countries are to investigate giant brewer SAB Miller following an ActionAid report which found that the multinational avoided millions of pounds of taxes in Africa every year. The African Tax Administration Forum will coordinate the groundbreaking investigation of the company's transfer pricing strategies in South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius. Martin Hearson, one of the report's authors, said: 'This unprecedented initiative marks a new era in which rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in developing countries will come under much closer scrutiny, both from tax authorities and from campaigners. Tax avoidance by multinationals costs billions in lost revenues, which could transform healthcare and education services for millions of people.'

More than 80 rebels and civilians were killed when insurgents attacked a camp in south Sudan, the army said on Tuesday (10 May), in the latest violence to mar preparations for the region's independence. In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot and wounded four Zambian UN peacekeepers in the contested Abyei region on Tuesday, another north/south flashpoint, the United Nations said. People from Sudan's oil-producing south overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January, promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.

In a move that casts doubts over the legitimacy of Morocco's national press dialogue, the government put prominent opposition journalist Rachid Nini on trial. Nini, whose trial began on Monday (2 May) in Casablanca, was indicted in late April for Al Massae articles 'in which he criticised the administration of law enforcement institutions and accused some public figures of breaking the law', lead prosecutor Abdellah Belghiti said.