It has been 18 months at the helm of one of South Africa’s toughest cabinet portfolios and already Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has endured a disgruntled doctors’ strike, a crippling public sector work stoppage, the untimely death of his deputy minister and complex debates on a National Health Insurance initiative, which is really the critical transformation of the health system. However, Motsoaledi is proving to be a survivor and a tactician who is determined to turn the health sector around.

Malaria, and other common African infections, may make women more susceptible to HIV/AIDS than they are in the developed world, according to a study that may help solve the mystery of the vastly different infection rates around the globe. Researchers who compared immune cells in the genital tracts of women in Kenya and the United States, found that Kenyan women had more 'activated' cells, which are more vulnerable to attack by HIV. Cells can become activated as a reaction to infection.

The widening levels of inequality and poverty globally, coupled with sharp increases in the prices of agricultural products have aggravated the challenges of food security. Moreover, the diversion of land for the production of fuels (bio-fuel) in the face of environmental degradation as a result of climate change has aggravated the food crisis The recent debilitating economic slowdown has adversely impacted the situation on the African continent that is faced with a largely unsuccessful approach to agricultural production and food security and thus heavily reliant on imports and aid to meet its food requirements.

The December 31 amnesty deadline for Zimbabweans living in South Africa illegally must be extended, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop) said on Wednesday. The home affairs department recently appealed to Zimbabweans living in South Africa to take up the government's offer to get their documentation in order to 'regularise' their stay in South Africa, beginning last Monday.

Fahamu’s Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the [pdf], a monthly publication that aims to provide a forum for providers of refugee legal aid. With a focus on the global South, it aims to serve the needs of legal aid providers as well as raise awareness of refugee concerns among the wider readership of Pambazuka News.

Research carried out in Gasabo district of the central province of Rwanda with a focus on the lived experience of lesbians living in Kigali has concluded that there is a need for more sensitisation, lobbying and advocacy to better the livelihood and well-being of the LGBTI community. The research was an initiative to recognise the problems faced by lesbians after several attacks and arrests.

Health and Human rights activists have demanded that the next court date set for the trial of Zoliswa Nkonyana’s alleged killers be the last one. According to the activists, including the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Free Gender and the Social Justice Coalition, the trial has been delayed more than 27 times since Nkonyana’s murder four years ago. Nknonyana, who lived in Khayelitsha, was attacked and stabbed to death because she was a lesbian.

Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger military chiefs of staff met at the Tamanrasset joint military command on Sunday 26 September to co-ordinate efforts against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algeria gathering coincided with new developments in the case of seven foreigners, including five French nationals, kidnapped in Niger on 16 September.

Gunmen in Nigeria have hijacked a school bus carrying 15 children and demanded a $130,000 ransom for their release. The kidnapping, which occurred on Monday, is believed to be the first in Abia state in Nigeria's oil-rich south, according to Geofrey Ogbonna, a police spokesman.

In support of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from conflict and disaster areas, Ericsson and Refugees United, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and mobile operator MTN in Uganda, have launched the first project to locate and reconnect refugee and IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) families through the innovative use of mobile phones and internet. The program enables refugees to use mobile phones to register and search for loved ones via an anonymous database.

Friends of the Earth International, the world's largest federation of grassroots environmental organisations, is proud to announce that its chair, Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria [1], will be a recipient of the 2010 'Right Livelihood Award'. [2] The Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' will be delivered in Stockholm on December 6.

Nnimmo Bassey, who is also Executive Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria, was nominated ‘for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally.’

Top officials from three African nations have called for the continent to have a permanent representative on the Security Council, saying it was a travesty that the region that comprises so much of the body’s work does not have a permanent place.

Between 20,000 and 40,000 Nigerian women and girls have been trafficked to Mali, with many of them populating brothels in the West African nation, according to the executive secretary of Nigeria’s Agency for the Prohibition and Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), Simon Chuzi Egede. The number does not include the thousands that have also been trafficked to other African nations, including Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Libya and Morocco, Egele told a press conference in Abuja Wednesday.

As the 2010 peace talks involving leaders from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and the United States–began, Egyptian bloggers were already expressing skepticism about their outcome. The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram saw things differently using Photoshop to place Mubarak front and center in the lineup of heads of state. As a result of Al Ahram's creative reporting, bloggers, both in Egypt and abroad, have taken the opportunity to demonstrate their artistic skills, using Photoshop to further doctor the image.

From May 31 to June 11, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) attended the first-ever review conference of the Rome Statue, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. At the conference, IWPR journalists had the opportunity to hear the concerns of the victims who suffered at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, Uganda’s notorious rebel group. These concerns prompted IWPR-Netherlands to produce a series of special reports to coincide with the conference. The articles in 'ICC Review Conference: Taking Stock on the Ground' give a voice to the victims of the LRA and look at the different aspects of international justice that were discussed during the review conference through the eyes of the people that the court was set up to serve.

The Peace Council, a club at the Kenya Methodist University, helped launch the organisation known as "Sisi ni Amani" (We are Peace) at the Baba Ndogo slum estate in Nairobi, Kenya. Sisi ni Amani organisation is focused on interviewing and peace mapping, a concept where any individual sends a message about any peaceful, violent or volatile activity in their area to a number and analysts are able to gather this information, map it and send it to the relevant authorities for support. The launch involved many youths and children. It also aimed at promoting local talent such as music, dance, poetry and acting in the slum area. Contact: Njoroge Caleb, [email][email protected]

Much of an MDG discussion hosted by Al Jazeera's Inside Story focuses on increasing global food security and eradicating hunger. Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist and author, argues in this article and video that Brazil's programme is amazing because it has been an initiative of government to allow communities to become 'food self reliant' and 'food self secure'.

Five months after Islamist militia took over a hospital and camp hosting thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia's Afgoye corridor, living conditions have deteriorated, with malnutrition, food shortages and shelter emerging as the key concerns. 'I live in the Hawa Abdi area; in my camp alone, there are 550 families [3,300 people] with little or no food, no medical help and almost non-existent shelter,' Hussein Abi, an elder, told IRIN.

In the semi-arid Laikipia district of Kenya’s Rift Valley province, research scientist Sarah Ogalleh Ayeri travels from one village to another, documenting methods used by peasant farmers as they attempt to adapt to changing climatic conditions. She is a research scientist at the Centre for Training and Integrated Research for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Development and her study is titled 'Lessons from Farmers: localised adaptations in agriculture as building blocks to climate change adaptation in Laikipia district'.

African governments have been called upon to show the political will and creativity to make up for the delay in early childhood education and care. According to statistics presented at the opening of the first world conference on childhood education and care, only 15 per cent of children have access to pre-school education in sub-Saharan Africa. However, 'hope to make up for this delay is quite possible,' said Hamidou Boukary, senior specialist at the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), who is taking part in the meeting in Moscow, Russia.