Zimbabwe’s First Lady Grace Mugabe has joined the bandwagon of homophobic leaders after she recently condemned homosexuality as ‘taboo and satanic’.Addressing a gathering in Mashonaland Central at a handover ceremony of foodstuffs in an Orphanage at Madziwa Business Centre, the first lady, not to be outdone by her husband, used the opportunity to divert people’s

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete dissolved parliament on Friday ahead of a general election in the east African country slated for October. Kikwete pledged to continue with economic reforms, foster political reconciliation in the volatile Zanzibar archipelago and tackle corruption. "Based on our achievements of the past five years ... I am confident that the people will acknowledge our work and give us a fresh mandate to rule," he said in an address to parliament.

Moroccan activists are pressing law-makers to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming the move would boost human rights and limit government impunity. Even though Morocco's Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) recommended that the Kingdom accede to the statute signed in 2000, it has yet to be ratified. Concerns have been raised that it contradicts the country's own laws.

Nine-year-old Nomasonto* had no choice but to switch roles with her mother and care for the HIV-positive woman who gave birth to her. Instead of worrying about homework and going out to play with her friends, Nomasonto’s daily concerns were now a matter of life and death. Suddenly the child had to wash her mother, change and feed her. She even had to take her ill mother to hospital for checkups and to collect her medication.

Educational inclusion relates to all children accessing and meaningfully participating in quality education, in ways that are responsive to their individual needs. The terms ‘inclusion’ and inclusive education’ are often used in relation to children with disabilities and/or special needs and emerged partly out of debates to reduce their segregation from mainstream schooling.

Across the world, but especially in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, young people are taking action to protect themselves from HIV, says a new study by UNAIDS. "Young people have shown that they can be change agents in the prevention revolution," the agency said in a supplement to the OUTLOOK Report 2010, released ahead of the International AIDS Conference starting in Vienna, Austria, on 18 July.

Recently appointed co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone is reported to have asked officials in her ministry to explain why ZANU PF officials and military officers, implicated in the looting of white-owned farms, have not been investigated or arrested. A report in the weekly Zimbabwe Independent newspaper quotes Makone saying she had received a dossier containing ‘a long list’ of cases where officials have either looted property or taken over farms in defiance of court orders. Makone told the paper she was still working on the document and had given a copy to the permanent secretary in the ministry ‘to check what happened to the cases.”

They inhabit a polluted part of Ivory Coast's main city with few jobs and a swelling population, but residents of Abidjan's slums have a rare respite: a stretch of pristine rainforest. From their wooden shacks and unpainted concrete houses by motorways on the edge of Banco National Park, the millions who live in north Abidjan need no lesson on its worth. "This forest is a great thing," said textile worker Sebastien Coulibaly, 35, in front of the sky-scraping green mass of vines and broccoli-shaped trees.

The old woman walks on the Tunis street, pulling a trolley made from the remains of a child's pram. She gathers discarded bread and sells it by weight to a livestock feed processor. "I work from sunrise to sunset, summer and winter," Aljia says. On the best of days, the elderly widow makes just one or two dinars. "I do not find pleasure in this exhausting work, but who would provide for me if I stopped moving?" she asks.

"Instead of moaning all the time, why don’t you create your own (political) party?" some men asked Brigitte Rabemanantsoa Rasamoelina, a female politician from Madagascar. She accepted the challenge and in February formed Ampela Mano Politika, a political party which started with only 22 female members and now has over 5,000 female members ... and 10 men

According to a new report from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the Fund's efforts have contributed to saving an estimated 4.9 million lives by December 2009. The coming years will see even more results, as half of the total disbursements by the Global Fund were delivered in 2008 and 2009. Much of the US$ 5.4 billion of financing approved in Rounds 8 and 9 will reach countries in 2010 and 2011, and will continue to significantly boost health outcomes.

Tinashe, a single mother of three living in Mbare township in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, regularly misses a meal so as to stretch her US$90 a month income, and occasionally gives her children food left over from her employers' meals at the middle-class household where she is a domestic worker.

OSISA seeks the services of a team of consultants to undertake an evaluation of OSISA’s programming in gender and women’s rights in Southern Africa, since its establishment. The evaluation is designed to be an important process that should draw lessons that OSISA ought to learn from its experiences in the past decade, as well as highlight opportunities for the Foundation going forward. The evaluation has two key overarching objectives, namely:

If you had 24 hours to capture your world on film, how would it look? The One Day on Earth project plans to have this question answered by tens of thousands of filmmakers worldwide. They are inviting global citizens everywhere to tell the story of their world during the 24-hour period of Oct. 10, 2010. Filmmakers will be able to share their videos and perspectives from 10/10/10 on

John Muswere, 34, arrived four hours ago at the main bus terminus in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, after making an unplanned journey with his wife, their three-year-old child and few household possessions from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he spent 18 months working as a mechanic. "I am left with little money on me because I left South Africa in a hurry and before my employer could pay me. All the transport operators are saying my money is too little and I don't know how I am going to leave this place [the bus terminus]," Muswere told IRIN while his wife tried to pacify their wailing child.

Argentina has approved a gay marriage law, making the country the first in Latin America where same-sex couples can wed. Same sex couples will now be granted the same rights, responsibilities and protections that married couples have. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government supported the bill and defied the Catholic Church’s opposition to the law.

When Baraka, a young mother in Guidimouni, southern Niger, took her 13-month-old son Abdul to the local health centre, tests showed that he was suffering from severe acute malnutrition and malaria. He spent a week in an outpatient feeding programme but continued to lose weight.

The International Criminal Court ruled Thursday that Congolese militia chief Thomas Lubanga should be freed after his war crimes trial was suspended unless prosecutors mount an appeal within days. Presiding judge Adrian Fulford that Lubanga should be "freed without conditions" as his detention "is no longer fair" given the suspension of the trial.

A reminder to the ANC that it needed to deepen democracy in society arrived at the ANC’s Polokwane conference, where one major gripe against President Mbeki was that he had failed to create “policy coherence” amongst the ANC and its alliance partners, let alone the broader society. Mbeki was criticised for insulating public policy through technocratic methods, and failing to build consensus in society beyond the so-called chattering classes. Whilst Mbeki’s vision for a post-colonial society that worked rested on making unpopular decisions, it was at least palpable.

African countries have to balance their spending on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for education better. Skills development among teachers, which accounts for only 10% of most countries’ ICT budgets, has to be strengthened. Spending on costly hardware, which covers 90% of most countries budgets, should rather be reduced. This is one of the key recommendations of a communiqué released by participants in the Third African Ministerial Round Table on ICT for Education, Training and Development.