Last week, on 7 September 2010, the World Bank finally decided to publish its much anticipated report on the global farmland grab. After years of work, several months of political negotiation and who knows how much money spent, the report was casually released on the Bank’s website - in English only. The report is both a disappointment and a failure.

In an interview with Zahra Moloo, Tony Moturi talks

Recent reports of LRA attacks in the Central African Republic and southern Sudan suggest something significant is happening. The LRA is either in complete disarray and acting out of desperation, or the rebel group has rediscovered a sense of purpose: to destabilize southern Sudan in return for military support from Khartoum. As is often the case with the LRA, the truth is hard to ascertain, says this article on Raise Hope for Congo.

Tidiane Kassé

Agnès Mussamba

Macalou Awa Dembélé

Hélène Diouf

Bangou Marimpo et Kanfando Nikiema Azarata

Christine Butegwa

We plan to provide regular information about mobilisation for the Dakar World Social Forum in February 2011. Watch out for more, and in the meantime check out the .

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and his main rivals are expected to formally declare their candidacy for January elections this week and the political temperature is already rising, reports Reuters. From alleged death threats against a presidential aspirant's adviser to calls from the opposition for the date to be postponed, the vote looks set to be just as contentious as previous elections in Africa's most populous nation.

Anthony Bulteau

Tontongi

Jill Cottrell Ghai et Yash Pal Ghai

Horace Campbell

From 14-16 February 2011 the Right to Know, Right to Education project will host a regional conference to address the issues of quality basic education for all.

The recent drop in maternal mortality rates - by about a third worldwide - seems to validate what many health experts have been saying for years: that the strategies for reducing maternal deaths are straightforward and that the missing ingredient has been commitment and resources. Nevertheless, the 2.4 annual rate of decline in maternal death is less than half of what is needed to meet the MDG 5 target.

Chekib El-Khiari, a human rights defender and journalist, is serving a three-year prison sentence in Morocco after he denounced corruption of some Moroccan officials. Amnesty International believes that Chekib El-Khiari’s conviction is politically motivated and that he is being punished for daring to mention the involvement of high-ranking officials in a drug-trafficking ring. Amnesty International considers Chekib El-Khiari to be a prisoner of conscience, solely detained for his anti-corruption statements and his human rights activities.

The chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) this week told the Bulawayo High Court that only Robert Mugabe as President can call for an election. The ZEC chief was responding to a court application by three MP’s expelled from the Mutambara MDC. Abednico Bhebhe (Nkayi South), Njabuliso Mguni (Lupane East) and Norman Mpofu (Bulilima East) lost their parliamentary seats when the Mutambara MDC sacked them. They responded by filing an application with the High Court to compel ZEC to call for by-elections to fill up the vacant seats.

A South African study has found that antiretroviral therapy which includes a cheaper nevirapine-based regimen was as beneficial to the long-term health outcomes of HIV-positive infants’ as the more expensive Protease Inhibitor (PI)-based regimens currently prescribed. The study confirmed that once tests confirmed that the infants’ immune system had successfully suppressed the HI Virus on the more expensive PI regimen, the child could be safely switched to the more affordable nevirapine based regimen. In fact the study showed slightly better outcomes in the children who were switched compared to those who remained on the PI regimen.

Following last year’s positive result from an HIV vaccine trial in Thailand the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise has issued a new scientific plan, calling for a speeded-up effort to test new vaccine candidates in large trials.

The recent mass rapes in a mineral-rich area of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo underscore the urgency of a new U.S. law to certify consumer goods free of "conflict minerals" tied to the violence. The law may be hard to enforce but supporters have high hopes

South Africa has failed to increase its research and development spending to one per cent of GDP by 2008–09, according to data published by the Department of Science and Technology this morning (9 September). The news, which appears in the country's annual research and development (R&D) survey that tracks public and private R&D expenditure, has disappointed the country's scientists and could set a bad precedent for other African countries.

The United Nations declared 2010 the Year of Biodiversity. But 17 years after the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the issue of biopiracy is still pitching North against South. Researchers and activists have coined the term biopiracy, "the theft of genetic resources", to describe corporations’ practice of securing "profitable private monopolies by staking out patent claims on Africa’s genes, plants, and related traditional knowledge", according to the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), based in South Africa.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the unwarranted assault of New Vision Photographer, Arthur Kintu, by a businessman and prominent religious leader, Hassan Basajjabalaba which occurred on September, 6th at Namboole while he was covering the elections in Kampala, Uganda.

The campaign for Angola's 2012 elections is off to a ill-tempered start with the ruling MPLA party and the opposition UNITA party accusing each other of dirty tactics that threaten a return to violence in the oil producing nation. The polls will only be the second since the end of Angola's civil war that pitted the Russian and Cuban-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against UNITA, backed by the U.S. and apartheid South Africa.

Almost a million South Africans are already on lifelong antiretroviral treatment and this number is supposed to triple in the next decade if government keeps to its implementation plan. But the prospect of the South African government being able to meet its target of treating 80 percent of those who need it by 2011 is being threatened by a lack of funds.

Community-based care delivered to adults living with HIV by people living with HIV using mobile technologies provided care as safe and effective as clinic-based care, researchers report in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. This prospective community randomised clinical pilot study was conducted in villages surrounding a rural clinic in western Kenya from March 2006 to April 2008.