Reporters Without Borders condemns the Zimbabwean authorities' repeated harassment and intimidation of "The Zimbabwean", a privately-owned newspaper that is edited in Britain and printed in South Africa.

The bishops of the so-called 'Province of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa' has issued a strong statement raising concerns about the dire human rights consequences of Uganda's proposed new law, which will ban homosexuality, and even make it punishable with the death penalty. Read the full statement below.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has recommended that the Endorois tribe in Kenya be given back its land, after they were evicted from it to make way for a nature reserve in the 1970s.

With hundreds of thousands of girls and women believed to be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Europe, rights groups have mounted a campaign to get EU leaders to stop what they see as a barbaric and dangerous procedure. FGM – an umbrella term for procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons – has been condemned by governments, rights groups and health organisations across the world.

The European Union formally decided on February 15 to lift restrictive measures against 6 individuals and 9 companies in Zimbabwe that were previously subject to travel bans and asset freezes, but continued the measures for another year on the majority of the 203 individuals and 40 companies on the list.

From The Huffington Post, this article by Internews President David Hoffman discusses the possibilities for increasing the spread of information and communication technology (ICT), "the I-Factor", in light of recent democratic movements. He criticises the effects of the "proselytizing of Western-style democracy by the former [United States (US)] president" in dealing with authoritarian regimes directly threatened by the rhetoric of democracy promotion.

Experts in mobile communications have urged Uganda’s operators to reduce the cost of mobile broadband to increase the penetration of mobile phone-based services among people. Cheap mobile broadband is also a major incentive for the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms.

The World Bank has pledged to speed up funding for South Sudan after acknowledging that the slow delivery of aid was hindering the region's development. Government officials and development groups have criticised the organisation for distributing only 188 million US dollars out of the 524 million US dollars given by Western donors

The European Union's decision to extend sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and senior members of the ruling ZANU-PF party was endorsed by a leading human rights organization.

The Kenya Prisons Service has won praise for its HIV programmes, including education, testing and the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to prisoners, but specialists say unless the issue of unprotected sex is addressed, HIV transmission will continue unchecked.

In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, Tougher Chinese bank regulations weakens South african rand, Zambian miners reinstated at Chinese mine, Zain signs deal with India's Bharti, and Tanzania seeks to protect seed genetic heritage.

Almost a quarter of patients eligible for HIV treatment in South Africa’s Free State province died before getting it, a further 13% disappeared from the healthcare system and 5% were still on a waiting list, according to a review of three years of progress in the province’s public sector antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme.

Over 400 Bushmen were denied the right to vote in Botswana’s 2009 general election, with five Bushman communities inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve omitted from the electoral register.

Not long ago an editorial like the one that appeared in the independent Al- Dustour newspaper this week might never have made it into print. In his weekly column, entitled 'Fraud for the benefit of Egypt', chief editor Ibrahim Eissa accuses Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of systematically and meticulously rigging elections and referendums to perpetuate his rule.

Despite arrests presently rocking the Kenyan gay community, human rights institutions recently held the first ever Public Lecture on Sexual Minority Rights aiming to address the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals among students and members of faculties of different academic institutions in Kenya.

The Ethiopian government and United Nations have opened a new refugee camp for thousands of Somalis fleeing violence in the Horn of Africa country. Somalia shares its northwestern border with Ethiopia, which has experienced a growing influx of Somalis over the last three months.

African ministers, health researchers and pharmaceutical industry representatives began meeting today to discuss how to boost drug innovation and production on the continent. The African Expert Meeting on Pharmaceutical Innovation in Africa — taking place in Pretoria, South Africa this week (18–20 February) — aims to encourage African policymakers to act to boost drug development and access to essential medicines.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a new online database that exposes the widespread gender gap in land rights around the world. The Gender and Land Rights database allows users to produce comparative reports on several different statistics, such as the total number of women landholders and rural households headed by women, in almost 80 countries

Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.

Many HIV-positive African patients are starting treatment too late for it to be effective, new scientific studies have shown. Studies from South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe presented at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco (ending 19 February), all found late enrolment of patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) to be a significant barrier to treatment programmes.