The top priority for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the protection of civilians from abuse, be it from the Government forces that it is mandated to support or armed rebel groups, a senior official has said.

The number of civilians fleeing tribal violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into neighbouring Republic of Congo since last week has topped 21,800, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.

The President of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Lovemore Matombo, and four other unionists were set free on Thursday after a Victoria Falls magistrate threw out charges against them. The 5 were arrested on Sunday for holding consultative meetings with workers in the town. Police, acting on instructions from Mugabe’s regime, claimed the leaders had violated the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) by holding the meetings without police permission. The magistrate however ruled that trade unions were exempt from seeking police authority for their meetings.

Market liberalisation has encouraged massive private investment in Africa's cellular networks, according to a report released by the World Bank. The result was a major revolution in information and communications technology (ICT), which helped boost economic growth to an annual 4 percent between 2001 and 2005, the report on Africa's infrastructure by the World Bank said.

The incumbent, President Armando Guebuza, has won the Mozambican 2009 elections in a landslide, obtaining three quarters of the votes, according to official results. Leopoldo da Costa, the chairman of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), announced that Frelimo’s Guebuza has been re-elected for second five-year term, winning 75.4 percent of the votes.

Thousands of people in Cote d'Ivoire poisoned by toxic waste face being cheated out of $45m in compensation after the money, which was deposited in a bank account in the West African country, was frozen. At the same time, a local figure, claiming to be president of the National Co-ordination of Toxic Waste Victims of Cote d'Ivoire and who is unknown to the victims' lawyers, has now applied to have the cash moved to the association's account.

In preparation for this Regional Conference as well as to facilitate informed input to the draft regulations as published by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the Kenya ICT Consumers Association in partnership with Akiba Uhaki Foundation, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Article 19, the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights(KNCHR) and the International Commission of Jurists-Kenya Chapter(ICJ-K) has organized the 2-day Kenyan Convening in Nairobi to discuss the key issues and where necessary offer innovative Civil Society alternatives.

Published in January 2008 in the journal Political Perspectives, "As a Man This is How You Should Behave! A Critical Look into Methods of 'Developing Men' as a Means of HIV/AIDS Prevention in sub-Saharan Africa" looks at two HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in Uganda that both focus on changing men's attitudes and behaviour. According to the author, both programmes, Operation Gideon and the "Be a Man" campaign, tend to reinforce the same "truth" about Ugandan men, namely that they are the ones in control of their families or society.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) unreservedly condemns the unlawful arrest and detention in Victoria Falls on Sunday 8 November 2009 of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President, Lovemore Matombo, together with four other union officials.

cc Badilisha

Badilisha! Poetry X-Change ° produced by the Africa Centre°, is an international poetry project based in Cape Town, South Africa. For the past 5 years poets from around the world and across the African continent have been featured at our annual festival engaged with wider audiences and local poetry networks via dynamic interactions in the form of workshops, discussions and multi-media collaborations. Badilisha! Poetry X-Change is now proud to announce a brand new dimension to the live poetry project. We are soon to launch Badilisha!

For centuries, farmers like Berhanu Gudina have eked out a living in Ethiopia’s central lowlands, tending tiny plots of maize, wheat or barley amid the vastness of the lush green plains. Now, they find themselves working cheek by jowl with high-tech commercial farms stretching over thousands of hectares tilled by state-of-the-art tractors — and owned and operated by foreigners.

Does clientelism play a major role in the voting decisions of African elections? Which factors are most important to African voters when choosing a candidate to vote for? This Afrobarometer working paper argues that clientelism is not a major factor in voting decisions. Instead, voters focus on issues relating to the provision of local public goods and the frequency of an MP's visits to the constituency.

At least 83,000 Somali children and women benefited from the Child Health Days Campaign carried out with United Nations support in the Afgooye corridor, which hosts displaced people who fled their homes owing to the violence in the capital, Mogadishu.

Despite good global cereal harvests this year, millions of people in dozens of poor countries are in desperate need of emergency humanitarian aid due to stubbornly high food prices, the United Nations agricultural agency warned in a new report.

Botswana's president accused Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday of failing to honour a power-sharing deal with his foes and called for new elections to resolve the political deadlock. In a state of the nation address after his re-election last month, Botswana's leader Ian Khama made clear he believed the blame for the political paralysis in neighbouring Zimbabwe lay at the hands of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

Sub-Saharan Africa needs to double its infrastructure spending to $93 billion a year, 15 percent of regional output, to drag its road, water and power networks into the 21st century, a report said on Thursday. The research compiled by the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) identified the continent's woeful electricity grids as its most pressing challenge, with 30 countries facing regular blackouts and high premiums for emergency power.

On the heels of a federal appeals court ruling that only the U.S. Congress and the executive branch of government - not the courts - can interfere with government-sponsored "extraordinary rendition", a U.S. citizen from New Jersey is asking another court to tell the government it wasn't okay to secretly imprison and abuse him in three different African countries over a period of four months.

On November 8/9, China’s and Africa’s governments will meet for the 4th summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt. A report published by International Rivers finds that China and Africa have been successful in boosting their financial and economic cooperation, but have failed to deal seriously with the environmental challenges that have resulted from their growing cooperation.

Facing History is working in close partnership with Skylight Pictures to bring the documentary film, The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, and additional film modules into classrooms around the world. This is an invitation to join a free online workshop about justice, genocide, and the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Red Card is a component of a health communication campaign led by C-Change in Madagascar that was designed to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and to curb associated risky behaviours by "letting girls call the shots" and sparking conversation between parents and adolescents. The campaign appropriated the signal soccer referees use to kick aggressive players out of a game; paper Red Cards were distributed to 1.5 million young women across Madagascar.