On the 8 October, seven prominent Sahrawi human rights advocates were arrested at Mohamed V airport in Casablanca, Morocco. They were driven away by Moroccan security forces immediately after disembarking from a flight returning from Algeria where they had been visiting the Sahrawi refugee camps between 26 September and 8 October.

A crony of the newly-elected Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, has been forced to resign from the government due to a magazine report that links him to a financial scandal. Mr Jean Pierra Oyiba who is President Ali Bongo Ondimba’s Chief of Protocol, resigned but has denied links with the scandal that was reported this week by the Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine.

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 Fourth Ministerial Conference of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC) opened in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 6 2009. Pambazuka News brings you a transcript of a press conference by Premier Wen Jiabao held on November 9, 2009.

President Mubarak has called on the Extraordinary African Summit for Refugees and Displaced Persons to alleviate the pains of the refugees, to protect them and to facilitate their safe return to their homelands, as he said “we are capable to do this with our own resources and with the support of the international community and our international partners”.

The spike in food prices of last year (2008) underscored what experts have been telling us for many years: the world's food systems are in crisis. The High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF) and its members have supported -over the last 8 months- national authorities as they respond to food and nutrition insecurity. This tracks the progress of the task force over this period.

The New York State African Studies Association (NYASA) will hold its 2010 annual conference on March 26-27 at Binghamton University under the auspices of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies. In view of the impending change in the global order and power relations, and in light of the accelerating interactions between Africa and Asia, the annual conference invites abstracts and proposals for presentations, panels and roundtables on the above general theme and its variations.

On November 5, 2009, Christian Aid partners OMUNGA and SOS Habitat were awarded the Civil Society Human Rights National Award, organized by the Human Rights Coordination Committee and Open Society Foundation –Angola. The award was implemented for the first time this year and is granted to organisations and individuals that have contributed to the defence, respect, protection and guarantee of human rights in Angola. This is a fantastic recognition of our partner’s human rights work in the country.

The Partnership for Change has urged President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to cooperate with the ICC and ensure The Special Tribunal Bill is passed and enacted into law within two weeks, failing which, Kenyans resolve to "starve the government of money".

Armando Nenane

Enedina de Andrade e Boaventura Monjane

With cheap labour, investment incentives and unrestricted exports, one Chinese textile group has turned to Egypt as an ideal location to produce its ready-made garments, beating stiff competition at home. The Chinese-owned Nile Textile Group has set up shop in the Port Said free zone, overlooking the north entrance of the Suez Canal, and developed an industrial estate now hiring 600 workers, 20 percent of which are Chinese and the rest Egyptian.

A new technology called "biochar" is being promoted as a major “geo-engineering” solution to global climate change, as well as a means of improving soils and addressing poverty according to this new report by The African Biodiversity Network, Biofuelwatch and The Gaia Foundation. However, this technology raises serious scientific and social concerns. Many questions need to be answered before claims about biochar can stand up to scrutiny.

Isaac Newton Kinity stresses that arguments around election rigging are no excuse for Kenya's 2007–08 post-election violence.

The Chinese government defended its decision not to block a UN Security Council resolution in 2005 referring the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC).Beijing, despite being a strong ally of Khartoum, abstained from voting on the resolution outraging Sudanese officials who accused China of failing to “protect its friends”.

A coalition of human rights organisations have expressed deep concern about the hostile context in which human rights defenders and journalists operate in The Gambia where hindrances to freedom of expression, arbitrary arrests and detentions, murders and judicial harassment against them are recurrent.

is an online service to provide access to African-published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship. AJOL is a Non Profit Organisation based in South Africa.

Historically, scholarly information has flowed from North to South and from West to East. It has also been difficult for African researchers to access the work of other African academics.

In partnership with hundreds of journals from all over the continent, AJOL works to change this, so that African-origin research output is available to Africans and to the rest of the world. AJOL hosts over 350 African-published, peer-reviewed journals from 26 countries. The AJOL website is visited each month by over 80,000 researchers from all over the world and allows near instant download of full text articles from its partner journals.

EISA, the Electoral Institute for Southern Africa, has added to the criticism of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE) . The problem started with the selection of civil society CNE members. “The transparency in the selection of CSO [civil society] representatives was questionable, thereby casting doubt over the integrity, impartiality and independence of the CNE”

Sudan has started registering voters for presidential, legislative and regional elections, but officials in the south and international observers say the process has begun on a flawed note.

At least 16,000 civilians have fled deadly clashes in western Democratic Republic of Congo and are now languishing, many without food or shelter, in neighbouring Republic of Congo, according to the UN and local officials.

The reproductive health expert of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Fanding Badji has called on African governments to show more political will in the fight against obstetrical fistula in Sub-Sahara Africa.