Ghana and Qatar’s announcement that they will jointly farm 50,000 hectares of land is the latest in a sweeping, but controversial, trend rolling across Africa. Cash-rich countries are securing land in poorer states, which they hope will provide them with food security. But critics warn that in the rush to secure food for themselves, investors and African governments risk alienating large sectors of the populations, for whom land ownership is an ongoing, emotional issue.

Government, donors and Members of Parliament have been challenged to make decisions that will enable Tanzanians achieve better results from their tax and donor money. In a new policy brief, Uwazi at Twaweza presses for a more transparent budget process; implementation of the recommendations of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG), and a focus on learning in primary schools. The brief titled, 'Achieving Results: Four Challenges to Government, Donors and MPs', says effective management of public resources remains elusive because the budget process is opaque, and citizens and oversight bodies lack a substantive voice in it. It notes further that efforts to improve primary education have disproportionately focused on increasing enrolment, failing to ensure that children actually learn while in school.

Egypt was offered nuclear weapons, material and expertise on the black market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a senior Egyptian diplomat. President Hosni Mubarak turned down the offer, but the incident raises new questions over what nuclear sales were made by the other states or groups in the chaos of the early 1990s in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Maged Abdelaziz, the country’s ambassador to the UN, made the revelation to America’s top negotiator on nuclear arms control, Rose Gottemoeller, in a conversation reported in a leaked US cable in May last year.

Guest editor David Anderson Hooker, Director of Research and Training for Coming to the Table: Taking America (USA) Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, invite submissions for the first issue of its fifth volume, entitled ‘500 Years Later: Reverberations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.’

The journal Humanity now has a blog that will feature debates about the big and small issues of human rights, humanitarianism and development. Current posts include:
- Human rights as a form of idealism
- The World Bank blog site
- The velvet glove of humanitarian biomedicine.

Algeria's National Consultative Committee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (CNCPPDH) held a conference in Algiers on 9 December on ways to implement civil rights legislation and enhance the role of women in politics. One hundred and fifty delegates, including ministers, UN agency representatives in Algiers, the two houses of parliament, members of diplomatic bodies in Algiers, along with representatives from the judicial police and national police force, took part in the conference, held to mark the 62nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the arrest on 16 December of Mohamed Daramy, a radio presenter and Ibrahim Farmer, technician for KISS FM Radio in Bo, southern Sierra Leone by Police Assistant Inspector General (AIG) David Sesay who was acting on the order of Minister of Agriculture Dr Sam Sesay. According to the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), an IFJ Affiliate, on 16 December 2010, Mohamed Daramy and Ibrahim Farmer were arrested and detained overnight in a police cell, following an incident that saw the debate sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture discontinued for a pre-arranged radio programme paid for by the mobile phone company, Africell.

The Ecowas Court of Justice in Abuja has declared the arrest and detention of Musa Saidykhan, a Gambian journalist, illegal and unconstitutional 'as it contravenes the Plaintiff’s human right to personal liberty as guaranteed by Article 6 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights'. The Court also awarded the Plaintiff $200,000 as damages for the violations of his human rights by the Gambian authorities.

South African bureaucracy - and the vast numbers of Zimbabweans applying for a special permit to remain in the country - could delay the deportation of citizens from the neighbouring state for months. Home Affairs Minister Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma reportedly told a meeting with the Zimbabwean Stakeholder Forum on 14 December in Pretoria that 'They [Home Affairs] have close on 40,000 applications still outstanding as we speak. So, clearly, they will not be able to finish that backlog before the end of the month.' The deportation of undocumented Zimbabwean nationals would only begin once all applications were processed, the minister said.

According to Vision 2030, which is a government strategic plan on how to boost growth and development in Kenya, there are an estimated five million out of an estimated eight million households who depend directly on agriculture, despite the fact that agriculture continues to be one of the most under-budgeted ministries. Researchers have intensified research on crops that can grow in most parts of the country and which can be used to alleviate food insecurity. This has led many Kenyans to accommodate traditional vegetables that were earlier dismissed as the 'poor man’s crop'.

Nigeria has dropped charges against former US Vice-President Dick Cheney over a 1990s bribery scandal, anti-corruption officials say. The case focused on bribes paid by engineering firm KBR while it was a subsidiary of Halliburton, a firm headed by Mr Cheney at the time. Nigerian officials said Halliburton agreed an out-of-court deal worth $250m (£160m). The firm has not commented.

The world's biggest corporations are rushing to grab and convert living plant matter - called 'biomass' - into fuel, chemicals, and other profitable products. This new 'biomass economy' represents a trillion dollar industry but it will not feed the people or stop climate change. In order to shed light on this new economy, farm leaders from the global South participated in a public forum to share their reality and propose alternatives. This page presents a series of videos from the forum.

Africans are coupling their already extensive use of cell phones with a more recent and massive interest in social media — Internet-based tools and platforms that allow people to interact with each other much more than in the past. In the process, Africans are leading what may be the next global trend: a major shift to mobile Internet use, with social media as its main drivers.

Judges in one of the world's most controversial war crimes trials have been deliberately slowing down proceedings, senior US officials believe, causing significant delays to proceedings. Secret cables reveal US doubts about the trial in The Hague of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, amid allegations that one of the judges has manipulated proceedings so that she can personally give the verdict in the case.

Ugandan President Museveni fears that Prime Minister Raila Odinga has thrown his weight behind his opponents. A leaked cable from the US embassy in Kampala says the Museveni government suspected Mr Odinga was working with the opposition because Mr Museveni supported President Kibaki during the election dispute in 2007/8. The Orange Democratic Movement party, which Mr Odinga leads, accused Uganda of sending soldiers to help quell anti-government protests in parts of Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces in January 2008.

Online activists have attacked and at least momentarily disabled several Tunisian government websites in the latest act of protest against the country's embattled leadership. As of Monday afternoon, local time, at least eight websites had been affected, including those for the president, prime minister, ministry of industry, ministry of foreign affairs, and the stock exchange. The attack, which began on Sunday night, coincided with a national strike, planned to take place on Monday, that organisers said would be the biggest popular event of its size since Zine El Abidine Ben Ali assumed the presidency.

Beatrice Namuzibira’s class of 90 pupils is not even considered a large one, compared to classes in other schools. Universal primary education has filled classrooms beyond capacity across Uganda, putting a strain on teachers. But her teaching - and her home life - have received fresh inspiration, thanks to innovative online modules for teachers offered by the Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa project (TESSA), a network created to support effective teaching in every subject area.

Thirty-four per cent of Moroccans admit to having paid a bribe in the past 12 months, according to a recent study by Transparency International. For its 2010 Global Corruption Barometer, released on 9 December, the Berlin-based organisation interviewed more than 91,500 people in 86 countries and territories. Nearly one thousand heads of household, including 483 women, participated in the survey.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasised his warning against attacks on the United Nations peacekeeping force in Côte d'Ivoire or attempts to obstruct their work, saying there will consequences for those responsible, as the UN human rights arm reported 'massive violations'. In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressed deep concern over the growing evidence of massive violations of human rights taking place in Côte d'Ivoire since 16 December, and reiterated her determination to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions.

For Geneviève Zongo, every 13 December revives excruciating memories of the loss of her husband Norbert Zongo, editor of the weekly L'Indépendant. He was assassinated in 1998 while investigating the murder of a driver working at Burkina Faso's presidential palace. More painful still is that the killers who ambushed Zongo's car, riddling it with bullets and torching it, have never been brought to justice.