The United Nations official leading efforts to tackle malaria is visiting Nigeria and Kenya, the two nations which together account for one third of the estimated 1 million deaths worldwide from the deadly disease.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was re-elected head of Angola's ruling MPLA party on Wednesday, a move that signals the 67-year old leader plans to extend his three-decade long rule of one of Africa's top oil producers.

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.

Progress in bringing stability to the war-wracked east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is mixed, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report, noting the heavy humanitarian toll wrought by a military operation to flush out a notorious ethnic Hutu militia.

Six Zimbabwean men were in a serious condition in hospital after they were attacked by residents in the Westenburg area of Polokwane, South Africa, on Monday night, Limpopo police said.

Protesters set alight the office of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir's party in a southern town after three southern politicians were arrested in Khartoum. There were no reports of casualties at the National Congress Party (NCP) building in Wau, and police later freed the three politicians.

Opposition parties are troubled by what they say is government’s strategy to keep them out of the general elections in May 2010. They accuse the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) of harassment. This includes arrests, obstruction of public meetings, and even murder.

The safe house for victims of gender-based violence hides behind tall, grey walls in a nondescript neighbourhood of the capital. Run by Tsotawi Tekat Tekelakay Mahiber (TTTM) – the Organization Against Gender-based Violence -- is known only to the police.

The UN Security Council has called for the holding of credible presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire at the earliest date possible, after the much-delayed polls were recently postponed again.

WOZA leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, appeared in the Bulawayo Magistrate's Court this week as instructed only to be informed that their court record file, which apparently is kept separate for security reasons, was not accessible.

South African health care professionals are endangering the health of the country's large foreign population by routinely denying health care and treatment to thousands of asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, Human Rights Watch has said in a report.

A reform programme designed to formalise customary land rights in Côte d’Ivoire may compromise durable solutions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) if their specific needs are not taken into account, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC.

Amnesty International exposed the shocking level of unlawful police killings in Nigeria in a new report. “The Nigerian police are responsible for hundreds of unlawful killings every year,” said Erwin van der Borght, Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme.

There has been renewed outrage over the unity government’s expenditure after it was revealed last week that it is spending more of the country’s money on travel than on healthcare.

In its endeavor to bring to the fore, health needs of lesbians and gays, as a group that is also affected by HIV and AIDS, Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) organized a march on World Aids Day, themed Universal Access and Human Rights.

Nigeria’s External Affairs ministry has uncovered $15.3 million of school fees racket allegedly perpetrated by some Nigerian diplomats. Minister Ojo Maduekwe said investigations were on, to determine the perpetrators, but vowed that those found culpable of defrauding the government would be dragged before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for prosecution.

Software and web-search giants Google on Monday November 1st, 2009 launched the online Google Trader pilot in Uganda to connect sellers and buyers of goods and services, including in agriculture.