Africa is hungry - 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Instead of new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, family farmers in West Africa said they want to use local seeds, avoid spending precious cash on chemicals and most importantly to direct public agricultural research to meet their needs, according to a multi-media publication released on World Food Day.

A number of human rights organisations and Nubian activists have joined lawyer Shehata Mohamed in the lawsuit he filed through the Administrative Court questioning the legality of Saudi mogul Al-Walid Bin Talal’s ownership contract of 100,000 feddans in Toshka, Upper Egypt. They say the contract stipulates that Talal can obtain seeds without the supervision of Egyptian authorities; can hire foreign labour force that would be immediately granted work permits; can cultivate whatever crops he chooses; isn’t bound to a deadline to start cultivating the land; and can export any or all produce to anywhere outside of Egypt.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay has spoken out about intolerance towards sexual minorities in Africa and elsewhere. 'Everyday, in every country, individuals are persecuted, vilified or violently assaulted, and even killed, because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Covert or overt, homophobic violence causes enormous suffering which is often shrouded in a veil of silence and endured in isolation.'

A regional meeting slated for Nairobi this weekend will now be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after the International Criminal Court asked Kenya to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. On Tuesday evening, sources said Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (Igad) summit organisers transferred the meeting to Ethiopia to shield al-Bashir who has an arrest warrant against him from the International Criminal Court.

On October 22, 2010 Zimbabwean blogger Hope noticed a series of fast twitter updates coming from Professor Welshman Ncube, the Zimbabwe Minister of Commerce and Industry and the MDC Secretary General. In a blog post appearing in Sokwanele: This is Zimbabwe titled, 'Professor Welshman Ncube uses Twitter to air his frustrations,' Hope wrote: 'The snippets I saw were intriguing enough to prompt me to visit his twitter feed page to read more. I saw then that he’d been posting for two hours, all his tweets amounting to an online statement.' Read more at Global Voices.

A water well, serving two different ethnic groups in Kenya's Rift Valley province, has done more to bring them together than government and civil society efforts, say locals. 'This well is an interaction point for the two communities, we always have a chance to meet as we fetch water for our households,' Ishmael Langat, a resident of Kirima village in Mau Narok, told IRIN. Langat is a member of the Kalenjin community, which, in early 2008, was involved in violent clashes with members of other ethnic communities following disputed presidential elections.

Joyce Phiri* is only one of many women admitted daily to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), in Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre, for complications of unsafe abortions. Winasi Boma, a supervising nurse at QECH, says the gynaecology ward admits about 20 women each day. Roughly half of these, he says, are there for post-abortion care. Like most of its neighbours in the region, abortion is illegal in Malawi (except to save the life of the mother). Phiri, a 21-year-old mother of two, sought to terminate her pregnancy only after a contraceptive implant failed.

Cultural Diplomacy in Africa: A Forum for Young Leaders (CDA) is a network of young, dynamic individuals from across the world, who share an interest in the African continent. The program is based on the recognition that cultural diplomacy represents an important tool in helping Africa to address the challenges it currently faces. The network conducts ongoing activity aimed at supporting development and strengthening relations between different countries and cultural groups within Africa, and between African and external partners.

Senior officials of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) have in the past two days sought to strike a business-as-usual note in the wake of the resignation on Thursday of Ronald Slye, one of the three foreign commissioners. In an interview with the Sunday Nation on Friday, Patricia Nyaundi, TJRC’s chief executive officer, used the analogy of a football team that has had one of its players leave the pitch due to an injury or by being shown the red card to describe what she felt Prof Slye’s departure meant.

Officials have called on residents of Masindi to take their children to school. This followed a survey that revealed that about 850 pupils of school going age in the remote village of Nyalyanika II are not accessing education. The area councilor, Ms Gladys Matwarwa, said residents had shunned the government’s universal primary and secondary education.

As the number of children known to have been poisoned by lead continues to mount, a UN team has recommended the government help communities clean up the informal gold-mining sector, rather than quash it altogether. Some 400 children have died of lead poisoning over the past six months, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), but many thousands more are suspected to have been poisoned. Official figures will be released only once the US Center for Disease Control has finished its two-month survey.

Carl Blidt, the current foreign minister of Sweden, admitted in 2001 that oil was part of the conflict in Sudan. But he has also been a member of the board of directors of Lundin Petroleum, points out this article on The Current Analyst website. 'Now, as a prominent politician in Sweden he seems to be interested in human rights and justice in Africa,' says the article.

With Zimbabwe’s diamond industry still shrouded in secrecy, the Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) and three Zimbabweans have petitioned South Africa’s New Reclamation Group for access to information that will shed some much-needed light on its controversial mining operations - and prove whether any of its promises to local communities have been fulfilled. In particular, the petitioners are asking for information relating to whether communities that were forced to relocate were consulted and have been given compensation, whether the requisite schools and hospitals have been provided and whether environmental and safety standards are being complied with.

Nearly 300,000 health workers are fanning out across Africa this week to reach 72 million children as part of a United Nations-backed bid to drive polio out of the continent. Vaccinators will go door-to-door in 15 countries to deliver two drops of oral polio vaccine to every child under the age of five in areas considered to be at highest risk of polio, a highly infectious and sometimes fatal disease that spreads from person to person.

Khartoum has committed multiple breaches of an arms embargo over Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region and China has done little to ensure its weaponry is not used there, according to a confidential report seen by Reuters. The latest report by the so-called Panel of Experts, which monitors compliance with a 2005 UN arms embargo for Darfur, is now in the hands of the Security Council's Sudan sanctions committee. It says Khartoum's violations include unauthorised transfer of military hardware and troops to Darfur.

Last week, the daily talk show, Misr El-Naharda (Egypt Today), that is aired on the Egyptian state-run TV channel, Al-Masreya, discussed Facebook and its effect on the Egyptian society, with the discussions tending towards attacking Facebook. After the show, many bloggers started to think that it might have been a move from the government to repel people away from Facebook, in order to block it later on, especially given the recent developments in the Egyptian traditional and social media scene.

Soaring demand in China and political unrest in Madagascar are fuelling illegal logging for hardwoods in the African nation, a report concludes. Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) talked to loggers, government agencies and traders to compile their report. In China, they discovered beds on sale for $1m, made from Madagascan wood.

The Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo (AUC) is offering the following three winter short courses in January 2011:
1. Introduction to Refugee Law (January 9-13, 2011).
2. Migration/Displacement, Development and Gender (January 16-20, 2011).
3. Community Interpretation for Refugee Aid Settings – CCIP Interpreter Training Short Course (January 23-27, 2011).

The main aim of The All Africa Dance Conference and Festival is to bring people together to celebrate the wealth and diversity of African dance. This year's event will showcase a rich and vibrant mix of dance and musical performances by more than 100 dance groups and 500 established artists from all over the world.

Angola has deported nearly 200 Congolese citizens, according to humanitarian reports, prompting fears of a new wave of mass expulsions that saw tens of thousands displaced last year. Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo were allies during the latter's 1998-2003 war, but relations have been strained in recent years due to rows over border demarcation and oil rights.