Kenya's foreign minister has stepped aside amid a growing scandal involving the alleged misuse of his ministry's funds for several land deals abroad. Moses Wetangula, who maintains his innocence, made his announcement as MPs were set to vote on his suspension. A parliamentary report recommended his removal until claims over deals for new embassies were fully investigated.

Efforts by the political left to shape the debate on a new growth path were dealt a heavy blow when cabinet’s big guns stopped far short this week of backing radical interventions in the economy. Just more than a month after Cosatu called for radical interventions – including having 'ownership' over the
balance sheets of the central bank by a new state bank, tightened exchange controls and redistribution of income in key employment sectors – the government has turned a deaf ear.

Since the inception of the Internet Governance Forum, the Council of Europe (CoE), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have been working on a joint initiative on public participation in internet governance. The aim of the CoE/UNECE/APC project is to consider whether there is scope for developing a code of good practice on information, participation and transparency in Internet governance. A code of good practice is now available.

Gus Pickard, a rural development consultant operating in the Western Cape, has a strange problem, writes Karin Kleinbooi on the blog Another Countryside. He has been contacted by a farming family living on land near Elim: they desperately need help because they may lose their land - to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. 'The family has been farming on the land for many years. Despite setbacks they have survived; but they have also accumulated significant debt — not enough to render them insolvent, but enough to put them under pressure. Seeking a way out of their conundrum, they applied for land reform funds. Their application was successful — but nothing happened, until after a long silence, the Department contacted them and told that instead of getting money, the Department would buy the farm back from them for the amount of money needed to settle the debt. '

While people die of cholera in Haiti, the poverty industry is profiting from the hardship, says this letter and commentary.

The Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (COHRE) has announced the launch of a new website. The new COHRE website covers many sectors and regions across the housing rights discipline, and describes the work of the organisation in its focus countries and eight topic areas - now arranged into sector-specific pages - including forced evictions, security of tenure, access to land, water and sanitation, women and housing rights, litigation, restitution and return, and mega events.

A popular Angolan radio commentator, whose satirical broadcasts have been critical of the government, was injured in a stabbing this morning in the capital city of Luanda, according to local journalists and news reports. António Manuel Manuel Da Silva, better known as "Jójó," was walking home around 3am when he was stabbed by an attacker who confronted him about his program on private Radio Despertar, according to the station's director, Alexandre Neto, who spoke with eyewitnesses.

The aim of this book is to encourage and stimulate a more informed debate on reforming the global finance. It examines recent developments and problems afflicting the global financial system. From a developing country perspective, it enunciates guiding principles and offers concrete policy measures to create a more stable, equitable and sustainable global financial system.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) condemns the 15-year prison sentence issued in absentia by the Cairo Criminal Court against Allam Abdel Ghaffar, a journalist at 'Youm7' newspaper. Allam reported on the frequent power outages at the Holding Company for Biological Products & Vaccines (VACSERA), which led to the spoiling of imported biological products.

In recent years, primary school enrollment has increased across East Africa, but are our children really learning? Uwezo aims to answer that question by assessing the basic math and reading skills of more than a quarter million children in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Uwezo Uganda has released the first ever large scale citizen led national assessment of learning. A total of 1,620 volunteers visited 16,200 households in 27 districts. The results show that 15 per cent of children sampled in P7 could not solve class two level numeracy tasks. There was considerable regional and district variation in the competency level of the children.

A large shipment of weapons has been seized by Nigeria's State Security Service at the port in Lagos city. The secret police say they intercepted 13 containers, some of which had rocket launchers and grenades and other explosives hidden under tiles. Experts identified the artillery rockets as Norinco rockets - a type used by the Taliban in Afghanistan - suitable for high-intensity warfare.

South Africa is set to unveil plans this week for a huge solar power plant that it claims would be the largest in the world. UK newspaper The Guardian reported on Monday that the project is expected to cost up to US$28.5 billion.

Association Dynamique Plurielle in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, is working with 250 female first to third year high school students from Savorgnon de Brazzaville High School to fight against sexual harassment in schools. During the project, students will also send alerts about sexual harassment cases via SMS by the students; and a 'listening cell of the organisation at the high school will actively respond. Educational information about the laws will be sent to 250 students; and trivia questions via SMS and MMS will be sent out to participants.

The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), just announced by the South African government, can be praised for being a hard win in a context that offers few building blocks to make bolder decisions, writes researcher and policy analyst Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen on the South African Civil Society Information Service website. 'However, time is not on the side of the poor and more broadly, the country. A conscious attempt to finalise economic policy that has the best prospect to break unemployment is needed, and such policy should be integrated within government’s policy and budget by the next MTBPS in 2011.'

Tanzania is facing a new debt crisis as budget crunches in rich countries are bringing cuts in aid spending, forcing the government to seek loans to meet budget deficits. During the year ending July 2010, the national debt stock soared by more than $1.185 billion to a staggering $10.1 billion, according to Bank of Tanzania figures.

Nairobi Mayor Geophrey Majiwa was on Monday arrested by anti-corruption agents over the controversial purchase of a piece of land for use as a cemetery. Officials from the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (Kacc) went to the mayor's residence in Nairobi's South 'C' at 7am while accompanied by police officers and took him away to the their headquarters where he is currently being held.

Delayed test results often mean HIV patients in Mozambique fail to get timely treatment, but new technology is reducing the need to send tests to far away laboratories, and speeding up test results and HIV treatment. Mozambique’s Ministry of Health has increasingly begun experimenting with new technology to make diagnosing and monitoring HIV patients quicker and easier. After a successful 2009 pilot the country has nationally rolled out SMS or text message printers, which transmit the results of infant HIV tests electronically from two central reference laboratories in Maputo and the northern provincial capital, Nampula, to more than 275 health centres.

Somalis from south-central Somalia and those in the diaspora have taken advantage of the stable environment in the self-declared republic of Somaliland to put their children through school there, boosting enrolment in private and public education institutions in the region, officials said. 'About 10 percent of 200,000 primary-school children are from south-central Somalia,' Ali Mohamed Ali, the director-general of Somaliland's Education Ministry, told IRIN.

Cameroon is one of many African countries being targeted by foreign investors for agricultural lands. As of late, a French investor has taken a huge swath of land for sugar cane and the Malaysian company Sime Darby is in the process of negotiating for 300,000 ha in the southern part of the country for palm oil plantations. Chinese investors are also keen on acquiring farmland in Cameroon. In September 2010, GRAIN visited the Upper Sanaga region, in the centre of the country, to take a closer look at the project of one such Chinese company.

Uganda is the leading country in gender equality in East Africa, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report 2010. The report released this week ranked Uganda at 33rd position out of 134 countries surveyed worldwide. Tanzania was the second in the EA region at number 66, while Kenya was the least performer at number 96. The report showed that Tanzania has been recording a steep drop since 2006 when the country ranked 24th out of 115 countries.