Talks on the fate of the Western Sahara remained stalled last week as the UN envoy charged with facilitating diplomacy, Christopher Ross, wrapped up his regional tour. Ross, whose eight-day visit to Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Sahrawi camps ended in Algiers on Thursday (March 25th), said that while concerned parties "stressed their willingness to pursue the course of negotiations", their stances remained far apart.

The Seeing is Believing project uses very high resolution satellite imagery to give farmers in West Africa information on soil fertility and accurate land size. Smallholder farmers in West Africa, and many other tropical regions, are experts in precision agriculture, and have been for many generations.

For the nearly 50 million people of South Africa, the 2010 World Cup represents an opportunity to show the world its progress through sports. But for a new nonprofit organisation, soccer's biggest stage also offers an opportunity to publicise young women who tend to go unheard.

The children are afraid. There are armed bandits hiding with stolen animals in the thickets behind Nawoyaregae Primary School in Kaputir Location. Cattle rustling and gory battles between the neighbouring Turkana and Pokot communities are the order of the day in this area, some 700 kilometres northwest of Nairobi. A long tradition of cattle raiding has been sharpened by competition over grazing land and water.

The food insecure population in Southern Sudan has increased significantly since January, following escalated inter-tribal/clan and cattle–raiding conflicts during 2009, combined with poor rainfall that led to reduced crop and off-farm production. Areas affected by conflict include Jonglei, Warrap, Unity, and Lakes states, as well as Mvolo and Mundri East counties in Western Equatoria.

At least 400 children, mostly pedestrians, die in road accidents in Uganda every year, the Minister of Works and Transport has announced. 46% of those injured road accidents are urban children and it is twice the percent of falls and burns added together, according to the Injury Control Centre of Uganda report.

Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa are still living in desperate squalor, in a country that offers them no official sanctuary. This is according to a new report released by the Solidarity Peace Trust, titled: “Desperate lives, twilight worlds - how a million Zimbabweans live without sanction or sanctuary in South Africa.” The report released on Wednesday details the dire reality facing Zimbabwean immigrants who fled their country seeking safety and work in South Africa, a trend that is still continuing.

Use of cotrimoxazole, a cheap and widely available antibiotic, cut the death rate by half in the first 72 weeks on antiretroviral therapy in over 3,000 HIV-infected, symptomatic and severely immunosuppressed patients in Uganda and Zimbabwe, Sarah Walker and colleagues reported in an analysis of the DART trial published on March 29 in the online edition of The Lancet.

After months of varying views on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), member states of the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) have finally taken a “harmonised” position on the matter when the next round of negotiations with the European Commission (EC) begins.

This manual is designed to help NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) who may be interested in the field of Human Rights but feel that they do not know enough about it or where to start. Sections include:

Understanding the Problem
The Skills a Human Rights NGO needs
Building Cultures that favour Human Rights
Interventions
Working in Co-operation
Helping the Damaged
Further information (web links)

ECOWAS Commission President James Victor Gbeho has decla red that the 'era of coups is over' in West Africa, following years of political instability highlighted by military intervention in the governance of member states.

Countries seeking food security and will allow investors to export all of their produce, the head of a private Nigerian agriculture consultancy firm said on Monday. Gulf Arab countries reliant on food imports have intensified efforts over the last year to buy land in developing nations ranging from Pakistan to the Sudan and Ethiopia.

Mauritian Prime Minister, Navin Ramgoolam, on Wednesday evening announced the dissolution of parliament and the holding of legislative elections on 5 May. Speaking to journalists, he said the elections would be “a democratic rendez-vous" for the country and praised his government's achievements.

Large-scale leases of African farmland by foreign investors risk driving conflict and fueling corruption in the region, farm experts said Monday at a conference on agricultural research and development. But if regulations for responsible foreign land investment can be drafted and followed, such leases could provide a much-needed cash infusion for African agriculture which has struggled to find investment elsewhere, they said.

An international think tank has accused Sudan’s ruling party of trying to rig elections in war-torn Darfur region, as the country prepares for its first multi-party polls in 24 years. The International Crisis Group said voter registers for the April 11 to 18 polls had been manipulated, constituencies based on a flawed 2008 census and the election commission staffed with too many pro-government officials, in a report released late on Tuesday.

The Nigerian Senate has cleared 38 ministerial nom inees for appointment into the federal cabinet, paving the way for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to sw ear them into office and give them portfolios. The clearance of the nominees marked the end of three days of screening by the upper legislative chamber.

Heavy rains hit Maniema province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), flooding the provincial capital Kindu and seven neighbouring villages, according to the local government. The port city of Kindu was submerged with at least 1,220 citizens displaced in the rains that pounded the area and lifted the water levels in the River Congo, the local environment department reported on Tuesday.

To throw out bogus refugee claimants, Canada has introduced a new bill that will usher in a new system within a year. Though Canada accepts about 260,000 new immigrants each year legally, thousands of people entering this country on tourist visas or fake papers stay back to apply for refugee status on grounds of persecution in their home countries.

Civil society organisations are making public, worldwide, a communication by the Provincial Government of Benguela (Angola) that banned the demonstration that would take place in Benguela, last Thursday (March 25th), against the brutal demolitions and forced evictions that have become a regular occurrence in major cities and rural communities in Angola.

The soldiers who arrived in Makombo, a remote district in northern Congo on 14 December last year were practised at this sort of thing. Wearing Ugandan or Congolese army uniforms, they did everything at first to allay the suspicions of villagers, as they searched for areas where children would gather – markets, churches or water points. Once they had identified their prey, they tied them with rope or wire into human chains up to 15 people long, and forced them to carry off the goods they had looted.