The Deputy Commander for Civil/Military Affairs of the US African Command (AFRICOM), Amb. Anthony Holmes, Wednesday visited Luanda, Angola, to foster a working relationship with the Angolan government.

Four freelance journalists on 17 December 2009 filed an application with the High Court in Harare seeking a nullification of the election of the new Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) executive. The applicants are citing irregularities in the manner that the elective Congress was convened and conducted.

The former governor of Nigeria's oil-rich Delta State has been cleared of 170 charges of corruption - involving the laundering of millions of dollars. The federal court in Asaba said there was no clear evidence against James Ibori, governor from 1999 to 2007.

The more people in a meeting, the more difficult it is to achieve consensus. Accordingly the UN negotiating system, built on consensus processes and inordinately influenced by the wealthy G8 nations, makes agreement difficult, writes Glenn Ashton.

On the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3–3.5C increase in Africa, writes Naomi Klein.

It's really no surprise that a major split has occurred between developing countries at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen over the best way to help the most vulnerable countries, or that developing countries reacted furiously to the leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Eastern Africa Journalists Association (EAJA) welcome the re-launch of Tanzanian Union of Journalists (TUJ). In a three-day meeting in Dar es Salaam, which ended on 5th December 2009, Tanzanian journalists elected a seven-member committee to steer the Tanzania Union of Journalists (TUJ) into proactive labour union and to convene a congress as a way of re-building and promoting democracy in the union, ensuring better conditions of service and ethical journalism.

The top United Nations envoy to Sudan has welcomed the peaceful ending of the registration process for next year’s elections, the first multi-party polls in the country in decades, with more than 75 per cent of people of voting age registering to cast their ballots.

This latest briefing from the International Crisis Group examines the situation in the run-up to national elections due next year and the early 2011 referendum on self-determination in the South. It concludes that key elements of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the two-decades-long civil war between North and South Sudan, have not been implemented.

Many of you will be familiar with Sokari Ekine who has been writing the Africa Blogging feature on Pambazuka News since 2005 as well as contributions to our C& A and book reviews. Her blog Black Looks has been submitted for this year's BOBs awards under the category of "Best Blog in English". We at Pambazuka believe she deserves our support and if you agree you can vote for Black Looks .

As the world meets to find ways of mitigating the impact of climate change, Nigeria, like other African nations which are at the receiving end of the effects of the global climate change, is counting its losses from the impact of the phenomenon.

Kenya's main political groupings, the Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) continued to wrangle over the constitutional powers to be given to future President and Prime Ministers of the republic.

The African Human Rights and Peoples Court based in Arusha, Tanzania, has said that it was incompetent to examine a request to suspend the judicial proceedings in Senegal against Chad's former president Hissein Habré.

MISA-Zimbabwe has been following with particular interest the seemingly contentious issue of shortwave radio stations within the context of the ongoing SADC mediation process.

An high-profile former Nigerian minister has gone to court to challenge the international arrest warrants issued last week on corruption charges. As a close ally of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Abuja Minister Nasir el-Rufai used to be one of Nigeria's most powerful people.

The killing and rape of hundreds of opposition supporters on September 28, 2009, by Guinean security forces are likely to amount to crimes against humanity. Accountability for the attacks is key to addressing Guinea’s ongoing political crisis, which deepened following a December 3 shootout involving the country’s coup leader and his aide de camp, both implicated in the September violence.

United Nations humanitarian agencies are providing emergency supplies and other forms of assistance to Kenyan Government officials as they respond to an outbreak of cholera in the northwest of the country that has left at least 26 people dead.

Former Argentinian Environment Secretary Romina Picolotti and Center for Human Rights and the Environment co-founder Jorge Daniel Taillant have authored a new piece laying out the case for the World Bank to determine its energy agenda on a human rights based approach.

International assistance is vital to prevent the Central African Republic (CAR) from falling back into political crisis and potential new fighting as it prepares for elections next year after a decade of violence and conflict between Government and rebel forces, the top United Nations official for the country has warned.

Negotiators worked through Tuesday night without a positive outcome on providing financing for poor countries, commitments on emission reductions or a legally-enforceable treaty. NGOs were definitely not happy with the move to limit their access to the conference during the last few days.