Four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Africa have been selected to receive a prestigious award by UK-based charity, the STARS Foundation. Bungoma-based NGO, ACE Africa Kenya, Nairobi-based NGO, Childline Kenya, Hargeisa-based Africa Educational Trust and Cape Town-based, Home from Home Trust, will each receive a STARS Impact Award, consisting of $100,000 in unrestricted funding and tailored consultancy support. They will be presented to the charities’ Directors on 2nd December at a ceremony in London.

Israel’s most recent measure in ongoing efforts to deport the country’s growing migrant worker and refugee community is the government’s approval of a detention facility in the Negev desert for migrants and refugees. Israel considers only a small number of the 35,000 Africans, who have entered Israel over the past few years, as refugees. The rest are viewed as illegal economic migrants.

Firoze Manji e Molly Kane

Kathy Jo Wetter

Anne Maina

Khadija Sharife

Pat Mooney

Andréia Lisboa de Souza

Albano Pedro

Work migration is currently a contentious issue across Africa and the world. Developed countries are increasingly suspicious of work migrants who are perceived to be stealing jobs, increasing crime and diluting the national culture. Outright xenophobia, the ugly side of migration, is increasingly becoming an issue in many countries also. On the part of home countries, migration is also often viewed negatively due to the longstanding concern of the ‘brain drain’ of African professionals to developed countries.

Can Africa take the lead in taking advantage of e-books, as it has with the rapid expansion of mobile phones and innovations such as mobile banking applications? It is certainly too early to be sure. But there are some solid reasons to think this might be possible, more quickly than it seemed only a year or two ago. The advantages are clear, if internet access and bandwidth is available. There are literally millions of books now available free at various sites on the web, and the number is still growing rapidly. And Amazon's Kindle store has some 750,000 titles, most available at prices well under their paper counterparts. This issue of AfricaFocus contains links for sources of free books, as well as a sampling of Kindle e-books with Africa-related content.

Kenya and South Africa signed agreements last Friday aimed at improving commercial relations between the two regional economic powerhouses before a planned visit by President Jacob Zuma next year. The deals were sealed during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to east Africa’s biggest economy. He said his trip was to create a better environment for businessmen to trade freely between the two countries.

A widespread farming catastrophe could hit Africa if global temperatures rose by four degrees Celsius or more, according to a study that calls for urgent planning for a much warmer future and investment in technology to avert disaster. In most of southern Africa the growing season could shrink by as much as a fifth, according to scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya, who carried out simulation studies based on existing climate change models.

Uganda has lost more than two million hectares of forest since 1990, mostly converted to farmland by a growing population of smallholders. Carbon finance through the REDD programme is often presented as one way to arrest this destruction, but only if the benefits clearly translate to the grassroots. Almost a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide comes from the destruction of forests – second only to the energy sector. The idea behind REDD – reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – is to give carbon stored in forests a financial value; financing the protection of forests in developing countries like Uganda with money raised from selling carbon stored in those trees to polluters in the developed world.

Southern Africa represents a region of diverse migration patterns including the movement of people within countries, across borders and between different continents. This paper from the International Organisation for Migration and the The Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand focuses on South Africa, and explores the linkages between health and the diverse movements of people within the county and across its borders. One of its findings is that current health-system planning within South Africa does not adequately engage with the health of migrants when they are in urban and transition areas.

According to UN-HABITAT’s State of African Cities 2010, the share of Africans living in cities is set to jump from 40 per cent in 2009 to 60 per cent in 2050. The projections of this report indicate that Lagos, Nigeria, will surpass Cairo to become Africa’s most populous city, while Kinshasha, DR Congo, is expected become the fastest-growing city on the continent and top Cairo’s population within a decade.

Migrants who have crossed borders in search of work and a better life could exceed 400 million, or nearly 7 per cent of the present global population, by 2050, said a report issued on Monday. The report, by the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said movement within countries is also climbing as people move into cities, and has taken the global migrant total to one billion this year.

Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA-Uganda), a network of groups and individuals working to mainstream minority rights in Uganda’s public health policies and laws is concerned about the omission/exclusion of sexual minorities from accessing vital health services in the soon to be launched Health Sector Strategic Plan III.

Ministers and heads of African states refused to pass a draft declaration on climate change at the Africa-EU summit, it is said. Participating ministers refused to pass the draft Joint Africa- EU Declaration on Climate Change because it only showed the EU position rather than the African countries’ stance, Ahmed Abul Gheit said after a ministerial meeting in the Libyan capital of Tripoli last Sunday.

Government officials, representatives of United Nations agencies and members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines will be meeting from 29 November through 3 December to discuss their efforts and plans to implement the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. They are talking about national victim-assistance plans, including how landmine survivors are involved in designing, carrying out and monitoring such work. They are talking about issues that affect women like me.

Tasha Ncube* has no kind words for the police. Early last month, the 31-year-old mother of two was beaten several times by her husband over what she says were small arguments. 'I reported him to the police.' But Ncube did not get the response she expected. 'They said I should go back home and ask relatives to mediate as they were getting many reports from women who withdrew charges after the husband apologised. I was so angry I did not know what to say…' Like many other women, she returned home to continue life with her abusive husband.

Villagers in Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe area in Mashonaland East province have expressed concern over mining activities by a Chinese company, which they accuse of endangering their lives and that of animals along the Mazowe river. The villagers in Zambu under headman Mushambi in Chief Chinhanga’s area complained of water pollution and siltation being caused by disposal of waste by a Mingehang Sino Africa Mining Investment gold milling plant, which is a few metres from the river.

With the 2011 referendum rapidly approaching, there are expectations of a return to Juba of the 1.5 million Southerners still residing in Khartoum or in the diaspora, says this policy brief from the Overseas Development Institute. Extreme vulnerabilities facing many of Juba’s residents and chronic high levels of violence will have to be addressed. The paper argues that a gender perspective is of particular importance in such a process, because it will better inform an understanding of the causes of insecurity and violence and help inform more strategic peacebuilding programmes

Crops are failing in Somalia because of poor rains, a unit of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said, raising the prospect of drought and increased hunger in a country where millions already depend on humanitarian aid. Below average rainfall in Bay, Shabelle, Gedo, Bakool and Hiran regions in southern Somalia has already led to early crop failure with planted seeds not germinating in some areas,' said the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU), managed by the FAO, in a statement.

'After years of being told about the millions of illegal foreigners in the country who are responsible for the high crime rate and who deprive South Africans of jobs and housing, the government has suddenly managed to lose a million Zimbabweans. Where did they go?' asks this article on the Lawyers for Human Rights website. 'With the deadline for the issuing of special permits for Zimbabweans rapidly approaching, and with doubts surrounding government's ability to process all those seeking permits to avoid facing deportation, the government has adopted a new purpose - and a new set of numbers to suit this purpose.'

Trade ministers from the East African Community (EAC) economic bloc plan to continue trade talks with the European Union despite missing a November deadline, a top Kenyan official said. David Nalo, permanent secretary to Kenya’s East African Community Affairs ministry, told Reuters he expected the negotiations to last another year. 'Ministers of Trade in Arusha have agreed to engage with (the European Commission) and complete the negotiations that will lead to the signing of a full EPA,' Nalo said by telephone.