Obama’s aim is all too clear: to keep Mubarak in office for as long as possible while fashioning a regime to prop up bourgeois rule and uphold US strategic and economic interests in the region, says this article from the World Socialist Web Site.

South Africa landed a coveted membership with the Brazil, Russia, India and China bloc (BRIC) by marketing itself as a gateway to Africa but analysts doubt whether this development holds real benefits for poor countries on the rest of the continent. Sanusha Naidu, research director of communication network Fahamu’s 'emerging powers in Africa' programme, says: 'What most people fail to realise is that by joining BRIC, South Africa offers a strategic partnership for investors from these countries. These investors do not necessarily have the savvy to do business on the continent, nor do they want to take all the risks associated with it. Linking up with South African capital can provide the commercial spin they are looking for.'

The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, has claimed that the economic and social conditions now exist in Mozambique for the government to renegotiate contracts signed with some of the mega-projects that have come to dominate the economy. Speaking on Friday at the closing session of a meeting of the Bank's Consultative Council in Mozambique, Gove said, 'In investment everybody has to win, otherwise social tensions are created.'

Equatorial Guinea president Teodoro Obiang's appointment as the new chairperson of the African Union focuses attention on areas in his country where African Union principles have been ignored, says a rights group.

Several African leaders have bought lands in Ethiopia to develop agricultural projects or tourism resorts. They are let to bypass a 2007 ban on export of cereals, still in place for other investors. It has earlier been known that former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasansjo and current Djiboutian President Ismael Omar Guelleh privately have bought up large properties in Ethiopia. Also the Egyptian Prime Minister managed to buy large agricultural land tracts in Ethiopia on behalf of his government. However, a US Embassy cable from February last year, released by Wikileaks, indicates that several of these underreported deals operate in the grey zone of Ethiopian legislation.

A deadly spate of sectarian violence in Nigeria's central Plateau State since 24 December 2010, has killed more than 200 people, Human Rights Watch has said. The victims, including children, have been hacked to death, burned alive, 'disappeared', or dragged off buses and murdered in tit-for-tat killings. The Nigerian government should act swiftly to protect civilians of all ethnicities at risk of further attacks or reprisal killings, and allow the United Nations secretary-general's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Francis Deng, to visit the state, Human Rights Watch said.

The World Development Movement has criticised the findings of the Beddington report in the United Kingdom, which promotes the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops as a key solution to global hunger. The focus on GM in the chief scientist's report is a red herring and does not correctly identify the real causes of hunger. The World Development Movement's director, Deborah Doane said: 'The Beddington report does not accurately reflect the real cause of hunger in developing countries. The current record food prices are down to banks and hedge funds betting on food. The hot speculative inflows of money into commodity markets are dramatically pushing up the price of foods like bread, sugar and corn.'

Francois Bozize has been re-elected president of the Central African Republic, according to provisional results released by the electoral commission last Tuesday. The commission said Bozize received 66.08 per cent of the vote in the January 23 poll, the outcome of which has already been rejected by three of the five candidates.

The Government of Liberia, with support from United Nations agencies, will launch a week-long measles vaccination campaign on Wednesday targeting all children in Nimba County, which hosts over 30,000 refugees who fled the political turmoil in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. As of the end of January, five Liberian children between one and five years old had died of measles, two cases had been confirmed by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), and just over 100 suspected cases had been reported.

Police in Uganda should urgently and impartially investigate the killing of the prominent human rights activist David Kato, Human Rights Watch has said. Kato had dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender persons (LGBT) in Uganda, facing threats and risks to his personal safety. The government should ensure that members of Uganda's LGBT community have adequate protection from violence and take prompt action against all threats or hate speech likely to incite violence, discrimination, or hostility toward them, Human Rights Watch said.

Samir Amin

Jean Paul Dias

Sidy Diop

School enrolment has drastically dropped in Turkana County due to famine and insufficient learning materials, reports the Daily Nation. Most children have been forced to drop out of school and migrate with their parents in search of food and water due to the ongoing drought. 'The acute food shortage is impacting negatively on learning in the area. Some children have moved with their parents to areas far away from school in search of food,' said Turkana South district commissioner Joseph Kanyiri.

In a letter to the Ad Hoc Committee for the Protection of Information Bill, Idasa, the African Democracy Centre has questioned the applicability of the controversial legislation to various organs of state. 'It appears that the ad hoc committee’s view is that it is in fact too time-consuming to do an audit of the organs of state which exist. We are of the view that it is crucial that every consideration be given to the scope/applicability of the proposed legislation. Given the extensive number of organs of state, we submit that Parliament needs to be mindful of legislating without fully considering the impact of the draft legislation.'

Sometimes the teachers make it to school but the children do not - when the fighting is too intense for them to venture outdoors. Sometimes teachers make it to school only to find it has been moved - to enable displaced children to continue learning. This is the nature of teaching in war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, considered one of the world's most dangerous cities. In the midst of the chaos and violence, teachers, students and their parents are confronted with a choice of obtaining a semblance of education or giving up altogether.

To allow least developed countries (LDCs) to protect nascent industries, they are not required to cut tariffs for industrial goods and fisheries in the Doha Development Round. However, tariffs cuts will affect them if they are members of customs unions where some of their neighbours are larger developing countries without LDC status. For example, 'Nigeria is not an LDC but the nine LDCs in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may also be bound by the commitments that their more powerful neighbour agrees to in the Doha Round,' explains Aileen Kwa in response to questions from IPS about what lies ahead for LDCs at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during 2011.

The Egyptian government's attacks on journalists and unprecedented blackout of the nation's Internet and mobile phone services have crushed the rights of free expression, assembly and association and should be reversed immediately, say the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and a growing chorus of IFEX members.

International press institutes have come out strongly against Egyptian authorities’ suppression of the media, following the withdrawal of Al Jazeera’s license to broadcast from the North African country. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned on Sunday the information ministry’s move to shutdown Al Jazeera’s bureau in the country. The CPJ described the move as an attempt to 'disrupt media coverage by Al Jazeera and calls on them to reverse the decision immediately'.

Fighting between government and rebel groups in North and South Darfur in western Sudan has displaced tens of thousands of people and hindered access by humanitarian workers to some affected areas, sources said. 'While the international community remains focused on Southern Sudan, the situation in Darfur has sharply deteriorated,' said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). 'We are seeing a return to past patterns of violence, with both government and rebel forces targeting civilians and committing other abuses.'

A dramatic spike in physical science distinctions is expected to cause a flood of last-minute applications for the medical, engineering and commerce faculties when the country's universities open for the new academic year. Statistics released exclusively to the Sunday Times show there was an enormous increase in the number of physical science distinctions - from 999 in 2009 to 5962 last year - in what experts have described as 'very surprising'.

Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who is now facing a popular uprising. A frank briefing note in May 2009 ahead of Mubarak's trip to Washington, leaked by WikiLeaks, reported that the Egyptian president had a dismal opinion of Obama's predecessor, George Bush.