Food riots, geopolitical tensions, global inflation and increasing hunger among the planet's poorest people are the likely effects of a new surge in world food prices, which have hit an all-time high according to the United Nations. London's Independent newspaper reports that the UN's index of food prices – an international basket comprising wheat, corn, dairy produce, meat and sugar – stands at its highest since the index started in 1990, surpassing even the peaks seen during the 2008 food crisis, which prompted civil disturbances from Mexico to Indonesia.

Egyptian activists are calling on the government to take action to save African asylum-seekers from what they call the 'systematic torture' they are being subjected to by their Bedouin captors in the Sinai peninsula who demand thousands of dollars in ransom. 'The government says it does not have information [on this],' said Magda Botrous, a violence and physical safety specialist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a local NGO. 'But the problem is that the government doesn't try to get the information,' she told IRIN.

This program will provide a unique opportunity to explore shifting security dynamics in the Asia Pacific region and to discuss the future of the US role. Visits to Okinawa and Tokyo will provide insight into the sensitivities surrounding the physical presence of US troops and Japan’s renewed debates about its defense strategy given the perceived threat from North Korea and territorial disagreements with both China and Russia.

For centuries we have watched and we have listened. Listened to the wind; watched the flowering and shedding of leaf and shrub. Listened to birdsong; watched the movement of termite. Listened to the croak of frog, watched the movement of the river. Through listening and watching, we have been able to advise; to suggest the time for preparation and the sowing of seed. Our story of weather-telling is very long. My family has been given a crucial task: we are the guardians of sacred knowledge...

Sudanese activists Ali Agab and Abdel Monim Elgak were forced to flee their homes for defending human rights. Ahead of the referendum on the future of South Sudan, they spoke to Amnesty International about the challenges they face and what keeps them positive about the future.

A human rights team from the joint United Nations-African Union mission verified that one rape occurred when Government paramilitaries and police started shooting in the air at a camp market in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region last month, a UN spokesman has said. Two human rights officers from the mission (UNAMID) were sent to Tawilla camp to verify reports of rapes and other abuses during and after the shooting incident on 25 December.

The international diamond watchdog, the Kimberley Process (KP), has reportedly denied giving Zimbabwe permission to carry on selling diamonds from the controversial Chiadzwa fields. According to the news service for the US based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network (RapNet), a KP representative has refuted the claims made by Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Gift Chimanikire. 'No decision has been made yet,' said a spokesperson for the new KP Chairman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Six anti-slavery activists are in prison in Mauritania in a case rights experts say points to the challenges of ensuring a 2007 law criminalising slavery is more than just words on paper. The six men, members of the Mauritanian anti-slavery group Initiative pour la résurgence du mouvement abolitioniste (IRA), are set to go on trial in the capital, Nouakchott, on 5 January after two postponements. The authorities reportedly said the IRA members attacked security forces; the activists said they were simply demonstrating against slavery.

ESPA is a highly innovative global research programme designed to provide world-class evidence on how ecosystem services can improve the lives of the world's poorest people. ESPA will invest in researchers around the world to create new knowledge, through excellent interdisciplinary research to be conducted in Africa, South Asia, China and the Amazon Basin. The ESPA I-PAC has a crucial role in providing advice to the Directorate and ESPA's funders to ensure that the programme delivers world class science, meeting the most pressing current policy and evidence needs, and through this has the potential to improve the lives of millions of poor people around the world. I-PAC members will be world-leading researchers, opinion formers and development practitioners selected to provide ESPA with the advice it requires to ensure success.

Sponsored by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental & African Studies

Opening remarks by Prof. Stephen Chan, SOAS
Co-chair: Victoria Brittain
Speakers: Richard Gott, António Gumende, High Commissioner Republic of Mozambique, Adotey Bing, Lionel Cliffe, Peter Brayshore, Senait Jones, Extracts from Basil’s Channel 4 African History series, introduced by Mick Csaky.

27 January 2011, 6 – 9pm
Khalili Theatre, Main Building, SOAS, Thornhaugh St, London WC1H 0XG.

Co-sponsors: Institute of Race Relations, Review of African Political Economy and Action for Southern Africa
RSVP: Nick Davidson, 75 Balfour Road, London N5 2HD
or [email][email protected]

This edition includes the articles:

- The extraversion of protest: conditions, history and use of the ‘international’ in Africa,
Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle
- Internal dynamics, the state, and recourse to external aid: towards a historical sociology of the peasant movement in Senegal since the 1960s
- Peasant struggles in Mali: from defending cotton producers’ interests to becoming part of the Malian power structures by Alexis Roy.

Click on the link provided to access the journal.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos at the end of 2010 gave a state-of-the-nation address to the citizenry in Luanda, a move analysts say was doubtlessly informed by the looming 2012 general election. Dos Santos, who has ruled Angola for 30 years, focused his end-year speech on the polls. Under the terms of the new constitution which was approved early this year, dos Santos will not face a direct presidential election. He will instead be automatically elected from the top of legislative poll lists.

Wikileaks has revealed diplomatic cables complaining of favouritism and suspicion of corruption in the manner Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) went about shopping for jetliners for its ageing fleet four years ago. The newspaper report titled: 'Diplomats Help Push Sales of Jetliners on the Global Market. Tanzania and the Fight to Stop Airbus Sale,' said Boeing executives, at times, were pressed by foreign government officials and airline executives to hire 'agents' or other intermediaries to help deliver a sale.

The future of Zimbabweans without legal documentation in South Africa is uncertain, after a brief window to regularise their stay in the country slammed shut last week. The South African government has said more than 232,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their stay in the country before the December 31st deadline passed last Friday. This means that an estimated million Zim nationals who live in South Africa have missed this opportunity to apply for relevant work or study permits.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has said that the bombing of a church in Alexandria proves that the emergency law imposed on Egypt for 30 years has not provided security and safety to Egyptians. 'This law resulted in nothing but an acute retreat in civil and political freedoms and wasting rights of Muslim and Christian Egyptians.'

In the last six years, there has been a dramatic increase in foreign investment in land deals across Africa and the Malibya deal - a 50-year lease agreed by the Malian and Libyan Presidents - has become totemic of the fear that this new phenomenon of land grabbing will deprive subsistence farmers of their land and their food, reports The Guardian. Mali is one of the countries most affected by the scramble for land, and Segou, the country’s rice basket, is at the eye of the storm, with buyers from Senegal, South Africa, and Asia, as well as domestic companies snapping up leases on thousands of hectares.

South Africa may start deporting more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans in April after they missed a deadline to legalise their residency, Lawyers For Human Rights said. Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their residency before the 31 December deadline, South Africa’s government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A 'conservative' estimate by Johannesburg’s University of The Witwatersrand is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa.

Tunisian lawyers have been making a stand throughout protests in that country - and paying the price for it. The lawyers have been protesting regularly to denounce what happened in Sidi Bouzid and the social situation in Tunisia. This is why the government has decided to ‘punish’ them. Every day, news of the kidnapping, arrest, or assault of lawyers is surfacing on social networking sites, report bloggers via Global Voices.

The second India-Africa Forum Summit takes place in 2011, three years after the inaugural event in New Delhi. Sub-Saharan Africa’s exports to India have almost trebled over the past five years and Indian-African business links – particularly in energy resources, precious metals and uranium – have boomed. This paper from Chatham House assesses the prospects for the 2011 India–Africa Forum.

At the end of 2010 at least 4.5 million people were internally displaced in Darfur, the Greater Khartoum area, South Kordofan and the ten states of Southern Sudan. It is thought that in December 2010 there were between 4.5 and 5.2 million IDPs, in the western region of Darfur (where estimates ranged between 1.9 million and 2.7 million), in and around Khartoum, in the state of South Kordofan and in Southern Sudan. In addition, there were unknown numbers of IDPs in the other northern and eastern states.