A political storm is brewing over the appointment of ambassadors after it emerged that President Robert Mugabe has decided to shift the country's foreign diplomats without consulting the prime minister as required by the law. Insiders at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that Mugabe had recalled Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN in New York, Boniface Chid-yausiku, without consulting Morgan Tsvangirai.

It's time for a quiet tea break at Macomia Seconday School in northern Mozambique but the schoolyard is abuzz with the cries of babies - enough so that one might mistake it for a kindergarten. The babies are being carted around by a group of older boys and girls, the type you might typically meet at a secondary school. Sometimes they bring the youngsters to their mothers for breastfeeding.

The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the African Union/United Nation Hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID). This new DRDC and HAND Briefing Paper entitled "Past and Future of UNAMID: Tragic Failure or Glorious Success?" attempts to provide critical analysis of the role of UNAMID in Darfur and to advocate for measures to enhance its work.

The Zimbabwean Ministry of Health has announced that it plans to do away with hospital and clinic fees for pregnant women in a bid to reduce maternal deaths, particularly in rural communities, and has also resolved to establish maternity waiting homes, again emphasizing improved maternal health care in the countryside. The ministry will look to international donors to help fund such new policies and amenities for expectant mothers.

High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has been in Kinshasa as part of a three-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo to draw attention to the plight of Congo's displaced people and the need to ensure humanitarian access to them. Guterres who travelled to Equateur province in western DRC, said that his agency was getting ready to re-establish a presence in the region to help the internally displaced as well as prepare for the return of refugees.

In just ten years the HIV/Aids infection rate in South Africa has jumped from one per cent of the population to one-third. Seventy per cent of HIV patients are also infected with tuberculosis, which is now the biggest cause of natural death in the country. But doctors say better treatment and education could wipe out the completely curable infection altogether. Al Jazeera's Rosie Garthwaite reports from Khayelitsha township.

In Niger 90% of the population depend on Agriculture. But with last year’s rain failure, the country is facing a catastrophic food crisis. Concern Worldwide, an international aid agency, is tackling the crisis by providing drought resistant seeds, distributing cash through mobile phone technology and using local food markets to provide aid. All this makes for a unique approach towards humanitarian aid.

With women having achieved little in terms of representation in decision-making positions in Zambia, a national women’s lobby group is hoping to change this in the 2011 general elections. While Zambia's electoral process may have built-in obstacles that hinder the meaningful participation of women as candidates, the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group (ZNWL) wants to change this through a campaign dubbed "50 percent of women and men in leadership for equitable development."

The third National internet Governance forum was held in Kampala on 14th/July/2010 at Imperial Royale Hotel. It was organized by I-network, CIPESSA and WOUGNET in collaboration with Uganda Communications Commission(UCC) and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoICT). Its purpose was to prepare for the forthcoming East African Internet Governance forum scheduled for 11th to 13th August 2010.

It is both preventable and treatable, but obstetric fistula plagues the lives of thousands of women in Kenya every year, leaving them incontinent and ostracized. Here are some reasons why: Information deficit
Lack of reproductive health education means there is widespread ignorance of the basic facts about fistula - a tear in the birth canal caused by prolonged obstructed labour, or by sexual abuse, surgical trauma, gynaecological cancers and related radiotherapy treatment. According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), there are 3,000 new cases per year in Kenya, with about one to two fistulas per 1,000 deliveries.

Colleagues of a radio journalist who was attacked by unknown assailants on 16 July 2010 are suspecting the military of being behind the attack. "Mansaré must have been a victim of an action carried out by persons hostile to his reports possibly, it is a settlement of scores," according to a colleague of Mansaré who spoke to the Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent in Guinea on condition of anonymity.

From 17 to 19 July 2010 in Uganda, more than 120 delegates from across the continent, joined by President of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and other participants, attended the African Youth Forum (AYF) in the city of Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital. The Forum is the first-ever official gathering of young people in conjunction with the 15th African Union Summit, taking place 25–27 July in the capital.

An organisation representing former freedom fighters says it wants its members to be apolitical and is fighting to have this included in the new constitution. The Zimbabwe Liberation Platform, ZLP, a liberal organisation that claims to be “a progressive section of former independence war fighters championing democracy and social equality” told The Zimbabwean that war veterans needed to regain their independence to avoid being manipulated by selfish politicians.

Several thousand people in northern Somalia have been displaced in recent weeks by clashes between Somaliland troops and a new rebel group, according to local and UN sources. The armed group is called Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) after the regions it hopes to “liberate” from the government of Somaliland, a northwestern region which unilaterally declared independence in 1991. No country formally recognizes Somaliland’s statehood.

Because of societal pressure and the criminality associated with men who have sex with men (MSM) in Kenya, Omondi Maina* married a woman. This is despite being involved in a homosexual relationship for the last 10 years. And Maina is not the only gay man in Kenya having sexual intercourse with both a homosexual man and heterosexual woman. New research has found that the strain of HIV among gays in Kenya is 100 percent similar to the HIV strain found in heterosexuals in the country. It is unlike the clearly defined strains of HIV found among homosexuals and heterosexuals in most countries.

After 13 years as founder and executive director, Firoze Manji has stepped down from his role as ED to focus attention on developing Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press.

We should clarify that Firoze remains as Editor in Chief of Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press - and he remains a member of staff of Fahamu (letters from many of you indicated that our original advert might have been ambiguous).

The board of trustees of Fahamu is therefore seeking a dynamic, visionary person with a passion for social justice, to lead the organisation, ideally based in Kenya.

If you are interested in applying, please review the by 31 August 2010.

Food shortages and high rates of malnutrition have long been a reality in the Sahel, but the understanding of malnutrition has drastically changed since the prolonged drought in the early 1970s. "Food and nutrition used to be seen as one, so the response to malnutrition was through food security; we started talking about nutrition security relatively recently.

The four journalists and their driver who had been abducted on 11 July 2010 by gunmen in Aba, Abia State, in southeastern Nigeria, were released on 18 July at about 1:30 am (local time) by their captors. The chairman of the Lagos State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Wahab Oba, said they were dropped off by the gunmen at a bush path in Ukpakiri in the state and had to wait till about 6:00 am before walking to the local market where they met an unnamed community leader who took them to a police station. He said the sum of N3 million (US$20,000) was taken from them.

The East African Community (EAC) has allowed governments to run their custom services individually, ending weeks of uncertainty over the possible impact of the planned common tax collection on members’ revenue targets. The formation of the common market on July 1 had provided for a common revenue team to collect customs taxes from the entry points such as sea and airports and sharing it out among the five member state

Professor N’Dri Assie-Lumumba and Professor Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo were awarded, each separately and for their respective scholarship, the 2010 Distinguished Africanist Award offered by the New York State African Studies Association (NYASA) on March 27, 2010 at NYASA’s Annual Conference at SUNY Binghamton on the theme of "GLOBAL-AFRICA, GLOBAL-ASIA: Africa and Asia in the Age of Globalization."