Communicating why biodiversity loss matters for people is essential for reversing it. The failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December could hardly have been a less promising prelude to the International Year of Biodiversity, which opened last month (January).

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has completed the second review of Mali’s economic performance under a programme supported by the Extended Credit Facility (ECF). The decision also allows the government to request a further disbursement amounting to about US$3.1 million, which would bring total disbursements to Mali to SDR 21.99 million (about US$34.1 million).

The fight against fake medicines requires a united public-private front to overcome people's resistance to health warnings and to dismantle increasingly sophisticated trafficking networks, medical professionals said at a meeting in the Togolese capital Lomé.

On September 19-25, 2010, a festival and conference promoting peace and conflict resolution will be held in Nairobi, Kenya. A two-day conference will be accompanied by seven days of artistic performances featuring traditional and popular music, oral narrative, and drama. Organized by the Drum Café, the event seeks to bring together practitioners and researchers working in areas related to the arts and/or conflict resolution in and out of Kenya.

Twenty kids, five weddings (and more to come?) and a whole lot of polygamous loving going on, marital and extra-marital. Some say it is a private matter, but like it or not, just as with any celebrity, Zuma’s sexual behaviour is not private.

Berlin, Germany. Lusaka, Zambia. How have mobile phones, the Internet and computers changed people's lives on the African continent? To find out, eLearning Africa has launched an online photography contest. The organisers are inviting people from Africa to submit images that show how they live, learn and work with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

UNICEF and the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) at The New School will host an international conference on adolescent girls in April 2010. With an emphasis on reviewing existing evidence and policies, the conference will focus on the role and potential agency of adolescent girls in meeting emerging global challenges.

The Egyptian government has announced that it would be sending a committee to assess farmland in Uganda to grow wheat to then import back into Egypt. Egypt is the leader in wheat consumption and has historically relied mostly on imports. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Egypt consumes 14 million tons of wheat a year but is only able to produce 8 million tons.

The African Union Commission Chief Jean Ping, has informed Eritrea to send an ambassador to represent it in Addis Ababa, the seat of the African Union (AU), despite Eritrea's frosty relations with hosts, Ethiopia.

Employees of the African Union (AU) have demanded that the new AU Chairperson should address outstanding demands for benefit and security. The staff urged the new AU Chair, Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutharika, who would be presiding over the 53-member continental organization for the next 12 months, to make sure that they would be beneficiaries of attractive benefit packages.

A Ghana High Court, sitting in Accra, has dropped a four-year-old defamation suit brought against 'Akosua', a cartoonist with the privately-owned Accra-based Daily Guide newspaper.

Zimbabwe may have to import over half the maize it needs this year to cover a deficit after drought has destroyed crops and left the country facing a severe food shortage, a farmers' group has said. The former regional bread basket has relied on food aid and imports since 2001, after President Robert Mugabe's government seized commercial farms from whites to resettle landless blacks, most of whom were poorly equipped and underfunded.

The Obama administration should adopt recommendations in a report issued to help stop the flow of stolen money into the United States, Human Rights Watch said.

Dozens of African leaders met in Ethiopia to tackle the challenges facing the continent in the effort to meet the United Nations target of ensuring universal access to malaria control measures by the end of this year. Some 26 heads of State convened the first working session of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) during the annual African Union (AU) summit, which got under way in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) is demanding the arrest of a security guard from the University of Zimbabwe, after a student leader was ‘severely’ beaten in a crackdown by police and security guards on a public students meeting.

Researchers have reported results of a clinical trial showing that a new vaccine - Mycobacterium vaccae (MV) - is effective in preventing tuberculosis in people with HIV infection. The DarDar Health Study, named for Dartmouth and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, found that MV immunization reduced the rate of definite tuberculosis by 39 percent among 2,000 HIV-infected patients in Tanzania.

A surprise intervention at the weekend by Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary-general, has drawn warnings from senior officials in south Sudan that any outside efforts to influence a referendum next year could lead to further conflict. Mr Ban told an African Union summit at the weekend that he would “work hard” to avoid the secession of south Sudan following the referendum.

The International Criminal Court is to review its earlier decision not to add genocide to the charges against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. "It was a legal error to reject the genocide charges against President al-Bashir," said prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in a press statement.

Networks of people living with HIV in southern Sudan are trying to overcome deficiencies in the limping health system and broken infrastructure by spreading information about the pandemic and reducing stigma and denial.

Arriving at the airport in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, you have a fair chance that the newish-looking taxi taking you into town will not be the usual French or Japanese model, but Iranian. And it will not have been imported, as most cars in Africa are, but assembled in nearby Thiès.