A vigil outside the Zimbabwean embassy in London will take place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The vigil will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. Visit the website to read stories and see pictures from the vigil.

Rwanda and Syria joined a list of the 10 most repressive countries toward journalists, while Northern European countries continue to lead the world in respecting free expression, according to the just released annual ranking of press freedom by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). RSF said press freedom in the 10 countries - rounded out by North Korea, Burma, China, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Eritrea - continues to deteriorate. 'It is getting harder to say which is worse than the other,' RSF said.

AWID is currently seeking an activist/researcher with a strong background in economics and development to work with our Influencing Development Actors and Practices for Women’s Rights (IDeA) strategic initiative. IDeA is engaged in an exciting action-research agenda that is attempting to connect theoretical debates on development and the need for alternative models with concrete experiences, lessons learned and analysis from a women’s rights perspective.

Routledge, in collaboration with editors and society partners, have selected research articles which engage with the UN World Development Information Day themes of: Sustainable Development, Human Settlements and Energy; Advancement of Women; Population and Migration; Governance and Institution Building; Macroeconomics and Finance; Social Development. These articles are available free online until 31 December 2010. All articles have been drawn from leading journal titles within Development Studies, Gender Studies, African Studies, Asian Studies, Middle East Studies, European Studies, Politics & International Relations and Demography.

For full bibliographic listings of articles and issues you have access to please visit:

The eighth edition of Sauti za Busara music festival takes place in Stone Town, Zanzibar 9 – 13 February 2011. Five nights of 100 per cent live African music under African skies. Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) is an international festival showcasing and celebrating the wealth and diversity of music from East Africa and beyond. For more information on the line-up and to sign up for a newsletter visit

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.

The official death toll from the cholera epidemic that has hit Cameroon since April is now 559 deaths out of 8,528 cases, according to the Minister of Health, Andre Mama Fouda. The region of the Far North has the highest toll of 542 deaths from 8,227 cases.

Government has released a list of 149 convicted criminals who have been recommended for political pardons – including perpetrators of some of the most heinous apartheid crimes committed in South Africa. Earlier this year, a coalition of NGOs that included the IJR, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Khulumani Support Group, International Centre for Transitional Justice, South African History Archives Trust, Human Rights Media Centre, and the Freedom of Expression Institute launched a successful constitutional court case challenging the lack of victim participation in the special dispensation allowing for political pardons, says this article on the SA Reconciliation Barometer Blog.

As the floodwaters begin to recede in parts of Benin, the new threat is an outbreak of infectious diseases, particularly cholera and malaria. The worst flooding in nearly half a century in the country of some nine million people has cut many communities off from health centres, 'paralysing access to health care in a situation that lends itself to a potential outbreak of waterborne disease,' the NGO CARE in Benin said in a communiqué.

After spending ten days in detention the two prominent Women’s Human Rights Defenders were granted bail on Wednesday 20 October 2010 after a hearing in a crowded courtroom at the Banjul Magistrates Court. The bail was over US$50,000 each, and a surety with a landed property. Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang-Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) were arrested on 11 October 2010 by Gambian security personnel.

Ethiopians from various cities in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia held a conference on Saturday to discuss and coordinate plans for the upcoming 5th anniversary of the Ethiopian election massacre. The participants discussed and updated each other about the various events that are being organised throughout the month of November in remembrance of the those fellow Ethiopians who were gunned down by the Meles regime while peacefully protesting the election fraud and demanding respect of their vote.

Cheche, a radical, socialist student magazine at the University of Dar es Salaam, first came out in 1969. The former editors and associates of Cheche revive that salutory episode of student activism in this book with fast-flowing, humor-spiced stories, and astute socio-economic analyses.

Seven football fans died at the Nyayo National Stadium Saturday when a stampede broke out during an entertaining Kenyan Premier League soccer match between popular clubs, AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia. Among those who died during the tragedy after heavy rains pounded Nairobi and its environs, was a young woman. At least 66 others were treated and discharged at the Kenyatta National Hospital. Most of the victims broke or dislocated their limbs, ribs, legs and hands.

Opposition politician Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza, who was banned to contest in the recent presidential elections in Rwanda, has urged the country’s development partners to build institutional capacity, not President Kagame’s political capacity for continued stay in power. In a wide-ranging policy paper titled: 'Development partners need to support lasting solution', dated 20 September 2010 and accessed by the Newsline, the fiery politician notes that whereas aid and political conditions attached to it had obliged some dictatorships to open up the political space and level the playing field, in the case of Rwanda, it has allowed the regime in power to put in place a controlled ‘democratisation’ process with no opposition or elections with no competitors.

Civil society and local officials in Somalia's Afgoye Corridor - home to an estimated 400,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) - are worried about the deteriorating situation, especially for women and children. 'The situation...is worse today than a year ago; there are more of them [IDPs], the needs are greater and there is no help in terms of aid agencies,' said Amina Aden Mahamed, a doctor and director of Hawo Abdi Foundation, one of the most active groups helping IDPs in the camps outside the capital, Mogadishu.