Flooding across Nigeria has killed at least 148 people and displaced more than 64 000, the Red Cross said Tuesday 2 October. The organisation is also warning of an increased risk that water-borne diseases like cholera could spread.

Recent allegations of the misuse of a grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria could jeopardize Uganda’s malaria funding and hurt efforts to fight the disease, which is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity. Evidence of the mismanagement of a US$51 million malaria grant to Uganda from the Global Fund resulted in the July arrest of three Ministry of Health employees and prompted a police investigation into the matter. In September, the organization called for the refund of any ineligible expenses under the grant and the strengthening of safeguards to prevent future misappropriation of funds.

Cameroon has received heavy rain and flooding during the past year. Some experts attribute the unusual weather to climate change, while others point to poor management of dams, reports Global Press Institute.

Lawyers in Zambia have formed the Coalition for the Defence of Democratic Rights (CDDR) to defend civil rights in the country. In its inaugural statement issued Wednesday, the lawyers said the formation of the coalition became necessary because of the growing illegality and violence initiated by individuals, the the abuse of state power by the Executive to advance their private and political interests. The CDDR said it intends to make the international community aware of the current abuse of rights and threats of violence being deployed by President Michael Sata’s government, paving the way for future prosecution and accountability for the unlawful conduct currently being committed by the ruling Patriotic Front (PF).

Amid the tributes to Ethiopia’s recently departed prime minister was much twittering (and tweeting) about ‘stability’ and the ‘transition’, especially from Ethiopia’s foreign donors. There is considerable concern that without Meles Zenawi, the charismatic former rebel leader who ruled Ethiopia for 21 years until his death, the country may implode, infighting might engulf the ruling party or Ethiopia’s fragile economic growth might reverse. While these fears about the country’s stability are warranted, there has been little recognition of the role that human rights play in underpinning stability, says this Human Rights Watch post.

Anglo American will face a hearing next year to determine if it's liable for miners who contracted silicosis while working in its gold shafts. Anglo American no longer has gold assets in South Africa, but the proceedings, initiated by 18 plaintiffs, have been launched on the grounds that miners contracted the debilitating lung disease when the company still ran bullion mines.

A Zimbabwean independent monitoring group says it will be impossible to hold free and fair elections in March when President Robert Mugabe wants the polls. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network said the call by Mugabe for full elections in the last week of March doesn't allow enough time to establish conditions for a free vote.

Experts from five emerging world economic powers have told how a two-day think tanks forum this week reached consensus on creating a BRICS development bank designed to complement existing global financial institutions such as the World Bank. Liu Youfa, deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies, said, 'At the previous forum before the BRICS summit meeting in March, we were still discussing whether to create this bank, but now we are talking about how to create this bank.'

Donors have acted hastily in suspending aid to Rwanda over allegations that it is supporting a rebel insurgency in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a leading expert on 'fragile states'. Professor James Putzel, co-author of Meeting the Challenges of Crisis States, a report from the London School of Economics, questioned the decision of the EU, the US and Germany in partially freezing aid to Rwanda amid accusations that its military is supporting the violent rebel group M23. President Paul Kagame has vehemently rejected the allegations.

Days after the presidents of Sudan and South Sudan signed a partial agreement in Addis Ababa, several voices have come out in opposition to some of the agreement’s clauses, particularly in Juba. A number of South Sudanese military commanders and politicians held a press conference declaring their opposition to the deal, particularly the resulting security arrangements.

Nathan Pajibo, like thousands of his fellow Liberians, has been living in Buduburam refugee camp near the Ghanaian capital Accra for over two decades after fleeing the civil war in 1990. In June 2012 he lost his refugee status alongside 11,000 Liberians across the region and the camp will soon be handed over to the district assembly, but lingering fear prevents Pajibo from returning. One of at least 6,000 Liberians still living at Buduburam, he is waiting for the Ghana Refugee Board to process his application. Some 4,000 ex-refugees have applied for local integration, around 1,000 will return to Liberia, and about 1,000 are applying for exemption to remain as refugees, according to the Ghana Refugee Board (GRB).

The majority of Kenyans have confidence in pro gay Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga and his team of judges in the judiciary according to a poll. The survey conducted by Infotrak Research and Consulting found out that 70 per cent of those polled have confidence in Mutunga. Mutunga’s pro-gay activism began with his writings under the pen name Cabral Pinto and has recently said that he believes the Supreme Court would decide on the issue of gay rights and same sex marriage in Kenya.

Residents of Zimbabwe’s cities say that outdated, overflowing sewer systems dirty the streets, contaminate the water supply and threaten their health. City council officials say the government is aware of the problem but can’t afford to overhaul the infrastructure, reports Global Press Institute.

The head of the UN refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, has warned hat the UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies are under increasing strain from a combination of simultaneous major new conflicts and unresolved old ones. In a speech at the annual meeting of UNHCR's Executive Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, Guterres said his organization was facing a level of refugee crises unmatched in its recent history.

As a major international deadline on foreign assistance transparency draws closer, a new index shows that while donors are becoming more open with their data, still less than half of foreign aid information is openly available. 'Progress is being met, things are getting better, but that progress is modest,' David Hall-Matthews, the managing director of Publish What You Fund, a global initiative advocating for aid transparency, said in unveiling the organisation’s Aid Transparency Index 2012. Nearly two-thirds of the organisations that Publish What You Fund surveyed both last year and this year showed improvement, with the average score across all donors going up from 34 per cent to 41 per cent transparency.

Lawlessness is reigning in the Somali port city of Kismayu, where gunmen have killed at least three people since the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab abandoned their last bastion there, residents said Sunday. After Kenyan and Somali troops' advances towards the strategic port forced the Islamists to abandon it Saturday, the Kenyan army said helicopter gunships were attacking Shabaab bases outside the city to clear the way for a final ground assault to occupy the city.

Ethiopia has announced plans to lease 100,000 hectares of land both to local and foreign investors, despite recent reports that foreign investors were grabbing large chunks of land. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agricultures said details on the leases will be provided in this year's budget. The ministry indicated that it had prepared large fertile tracts of land in Gambella, Benshangul-Gumuz, Oromia and Amhara states to be offered to investors.

Maxwell Dlamini, president of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), has been denied his university scholarship by the government because of his political activity, he said. Dlamini was called to the scholarship selection board today (27 September 2012), where he hoped to be allowed to continue his law studies at the University of Swaziland, but he said he was denied for being a ‘progressive’. Writing on Facebook, Dlamini, said he was questioned about his activities in SNUS and ‘why I cause all the noise in the tertiary institutions [and] why I want to overthrow the government.’

Malawi’s President Joyce Banda has called on the United Nations General Assembly to ensure that an ambitious programme adopted last year to spur development and economic growth in the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) be fully and speedily implemented. 'In particular, duty-free quota-free market access and supply side capacity must be ensured to the least developed countries,' President Banda told the Assembly on the second day of its annual General Debate, adding that implementation must be 'in its entirety and in an effective and timely manner'.

A civil society group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to mark the country’s 52nd independence anniversary by 'urgently committing itself to socio-economic rights reform and end systemic poverty that has remained the bane of millions of Nigerians for decades'. The organization in a public statement dated 30 September 2012 and signed by its Executive Director, Adetokunbo Mumuni stated that, 'The struggle for political freedom and independence from colonization was widely applauded by our people but over five decades after Nigeria gained independence the country’s enormous natural resources and wealth have not been utilized for the prosperity of the country and its peoples. Rather, socio-economic conditions in post-independent Nigeria have remained precarious, and consequently millions of our citizens embarrassingly remain in poverty and misery. For such people, the promises of independence remain unfulfilled.'