More than 30,000 Angolans are stranded in transit camps after being abruptly deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and there are growing fears of a cholera outbreak as the rainy season begins.?? The families - around two thirds of whom had official refugee status in DRC - were booted out earlier this month in retaliation for Angola expelling thousands of Congolese migrants in recent years.

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The Ethiopian government has asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of a prolonged drought affecting parts of East Africa.

The number of Ethiopians needing emergency food aid has climbed by over one million from last year's figure, the government has announced. According to the revised 2009 humanitarian appeal for October and December, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), the number of people in need of emergency assistance has now reached 6.2 million from 4.9 million last year.

While U.S. attention is fixed on Afghanistan’s contested elections and the need to insure a democratic process, in another part of the world, democracy has been under siege at the ballot box with terrible consequences. African elections have devolved into rituals of absurdity. In the last five years we have witnessed attacks on democracy in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Climate change will lead to ever greater numbers of people being uprooted in Africa, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today, calling for enhanced and swift actions to reduce disaster risk and step up mitigation.

Children in the Central African Republic (CAR) are paying a heavy price for the troubles faced by the country, and their plight could worsen without urgent international support, said a senior official with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The international community is failing over 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Somalia at a time when the humanitarian crisis is deepening, Walter Kaelin, the Representative of the UN Secretary General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, said at the end of his mission to Somalia in Nairobi, Kenya.

Reports that China is financing investments to the tune of $7bn in military-ruled Guinea in exchange for access to its resources have re-ignited western fears about Chinese activities in Africa. Portrayed as a callous grab for resources that ignores the recent killing of Guinean opposition protesters by government troops, closer analysis of the situation reveals as much about foreign perceptions of China in Africa as its does about one of the continent's most significant economic relationships.

The lack of confidence in global markets has driven some countries to push ahead with alternative food security strategies built around direct investment and bilateral relationships. State-backed investments in foreign land for food production have attracted considerable attention over the past year.

The US is preparing to give Mali's army millions of dollars worth of military hardware to help them fight al-Qaeda's North African branch. Trucks, powerful communication devices and clothing are among $5m (£3m) of equipment being handed over.

The Guinean Prime Minister, Kabine Komara, has hailed the decision of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the 28 Sept massacre of protesters in Conakry by elements of the Guinean military. In a broadcast to the nation Wednesday, the Prime Minister said the decision would make it possible to identify all those involved in the killing of civilians who were protesting an alleged plan by mili tary leader Moussa Dadis Camara to transmute to a civilian leader by participating in the forthcoming presidential election.

On 22 October, only moments before the funeral service of the late Eunice Nothemba Boyseen, a group of police officers arrived at Mrs Boyseen's house and attempted to illegally evict her daughter Dora Boyseen and the rest of her family. Luckily, residents were able to prevent this eviction from taking place.

The top United Nations envoy to the Côte d’Ivoire today called on the West African nation to build on momentum towards holding its much-delayed presidential elections, slated for the end of next month.

A new United Nations report calls for the lifting of restrictions and costly fees imposed on the $40 billion that migrant workers send home to Africa each year, the world body’s agency tasked with eradicating rural poverty has said. “Supporting this people-to-people money flow to rural areas of Africa is especially vital now because of the recession,” said International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Assistant President, Kevin Cleaver.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has urged Robert Mugabe to ‘relinquish power’ saying the ZANU PF leader alone was ‘responsible for the political stalemate’ in Zimbabwe. Speaking in France during a joint press conference with the French Foreign Affairs Minister, Odinga did not mince his words, bluntly saying; ‘In Zimbabwe Mr. Mugabe is not part of the solution to the political problem; he himself, is the problem.’

Unidentified gunmen shot and wounded three peacekeepers, two critically, from the joint African Union-United Nations mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in an attack on Saturday in the war-ravaged region on the western flank of the Sudan. The police unit came under fire near Zalingei, West Darfur, while escorting a UNAMID garbage truck. The armed men stole the police vehicle and escaped.

The World Bank has announced a 10-year US$215 million fund to support the countries of the Central African region in developing their high-speed telecommunications backbone infrastructure to increase the availability of high-speed Internet and reduce end-user prices. Three countries - Cameroon, Chad and Central African Republic (CAR) - are participating in the initial US$26.2 million phase of the Program. A further eight countries are also eligible to participate in the Program - Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Principe, and Sudan.

The African Union IDPs Convention would be the first international instrument of its kind and would send a signal to the rest of the world about the seriousness with which Africa, home to around half of the global total of internally displaced persons (IDPs), considers the issue.

The pace of diplomacy on Sudan is increasing, with talks set to resume on Darfur and active engagement by the African Union, the United Nations, and the United States in efforts to move Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement forward as it approaches the last year of a projected 6-year interim period. But, says veteran Sudan analyst John Ashworth, in fact the agreement "is not Comprehensive, nor Peace, nor an Agreement. Its failure could ignite a new war even more deadly than the two previous conflicts in Southern Sudan.