Aid agencies have been unable to fully meet the needs of tens of thousands of people who have fled inter-communal clashes over natural resources in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Every December, the village of Kangete, in eastern Kenya's Nyambene District, gears up for yet another season of festivities - not Christmas, however, but the initiation of hundreds of young men into manhood through circumcision

A group of senior officials from China, Africa, and from international organizations involved in health assistance in Africa met in Beijing on December 4-5, 2009 to review China's health assistance to Africa and to discuss opportunities for international cooperation in achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals in Africa.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) can be delivered safely in the first year without routine laboratory monitoring for toxic effects, according to an article in The Lancet.

An initiative by a mobile phone manufacturer, Samsung, and three non-governmental organisations to train youth from poor backgrounds in Nairobi in ICT and entrepreneurship is beginning to bear fruits.

The Moroccan government is taking fresh steps to support beleaguered local businesses, which are a key part of the national economy. Two new programmes by the National Agency for the Promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises (ANPME) are intended to boost competitiveness in the struggling sector.

Crisis Action is an independent, non-profit organisation that works with others to ensure civilians are protected both from and during armed conflict. We are now looking for a creative, effective and dynamic person to head up a new office in Nairobi, Kenya to lead our work towards the African Union.

Some 36 million people have been cured of tuberculosis (TB) over the past 15 years through a rigorous approach to treatment, according to the World Health Organisation. However, last year 1.8 million people died from TB including half a million deaths associated with HIV - many of them because they did not access antiretrovirals.

HIV-exposed but uninfected children grew as well as children of HIV-uninfected mothers, no matter how they were fed in the first two years of life in a non-randomised cohort study in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa from 2001-2004, Deven Patel and colleagues reported in a study published in advance online by the journal AIDS.

Civil servants will receive a long-awaited pay rise and back wages dating from January 2008, the Algerian government announced after talks with labour leaders.

Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), a shack dwellers’ movement in Durban has contributed tremendously to the protection of the right to adequate housing by mobilising shack dwellers to resist and challenge forced evictions and insist on in-situ upgrading of their areas as the only acceptable solution.

The effectiveness of one year of antiretroviral treatment in treatment-naive children in resource-limited settings is comparable to that of children in resource-rich settings, report Andrea Ciaranello and colleagues in a study published in the December 15 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

One of Botswana’s senior officials has argued that the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the ancestral home of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen, ‘should be reserved for wildlife’, despite the fact that the country’s High Court has ruled that the Bushmen have the right to live there.

Multimedia company, Wananchi Group, moved to slash the cost of its internet offering by half, saying it was keen to cash in on its investment in fibre optic technology as it passed on savings to its customers.

Arab and Muslim countries must review their development strategies to benefit from transformative policies, innovative projects, and plans for renewal linked to shifting to a knowledge-based economy, according to a declaration issued December 3rd by participants in a Tunis conference.

Corruption is preventing the world from reducing extreme poverty, from averting child deaths and even from fighting epidemics like HIV/AIDS. And it will have a devastating effect on the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals if not tackled directly by each national government.

The battle over who will eventually succeed 85-year-old President Robert Mugabe as party leader threatens the future of his long-ruling Zanu PF but analysts say an immediate split is unlikely at a congress which began this week.

Alleged plotters who tried to kill Guinea's junta leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara are being "hunted down" and arrested, the military government says. Junta spokesman Idrissa Cherif told the BBC more than 60 people had been held over last week's assassination attempt.

A landmark UN treaty on women’s rights, which will be 30 years old next week, is in danger of being politically undermined by a slew of reservations by 22 countries seeking exemptions from some of the convention’s legal obligations.

Global food prices are on the ascent again with the FAO Food Price Index – a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar – registering four straight monthly rises.