Zambia appeared to have sparked a fierce diplomatic row with Kenya when it claimed the son of former President Rupiah Banda who is wanted on corruption charges is hiding out at State House in Nairobi. Zambian investigators recently claimed Henry Banda, who is wanted by police for alleged corruption during his father’s rule, is seeking refuge in Kenya after the alarm was sounded for his possible interrogation.

A faction of Angola's ruling party said recently its leader was detained, a claim the police denied. Though the MPLA is expected to win legislative elections due later this year, it has faced unprecedented challenges from youths inspired by the Arab Spring. Claims of arrest of an MPLA leader suggests he is also facing problems within his own party's ranks, suggests the Wall Street Journal.

Halliburton Co. said it’s responding to a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a probe into its operations in Angola over possible violations of US foreign bribery law, the Wall Street Journal reports. It isn’t the first time Halliburton has faced problems with the FCPA. The company and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., agreed in February 2009 to pay the US $579 million to resolve violations of the FCPA in connection with a four-company joint-venture project, dubbed TSKJ, to get $6 billion in contracts for liquefied natural gas facilities at Bonny Island, Nigeria.

Morocco is prosecuting activists who campaigned peacefully for a boycott of elections held three months ago, Human Rights Watch said. These prosecutions contradict statements by Moroccan officials that authorities arrested no one for advocating a boycott. One of several such trials resumes on 22 February 2012, before the Marrakesh First Degree Court. Charged with distributing fliers in violation of the law, the defendants were arrested in Marrakesh on 16 and 17 November 2011, as they began handing out fliers urging Moroccans to boycott the legislative elections on November 25. Another group of pro-boycott leafletters are on trial already in the city of Benguerir.

The UN says the number of Malian refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries to escape fighting between Tuareg rebels and the military has doubled over the past 10 days. More than 44,000 people have crossed into Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso.

The European Union has lifted some more of its sanctions against top officials and institutions in Zimbabwe. An EU diplomat said the bloc was ending measures against 20 entities and 51 people - including the justice and foreign ministers. However restrictions on President Robert Mugabe continue.

Home Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma must try again to be elected as the African Union Commission chairperson, the Southern African Development Community decided at the weekend. Foreign ministers from SADC countries met in Cape Town at the weekend, where her recent defeat at the AU summit in Ethiopia was discussed. Dlamini-Zuma contested the election against Jean Ping, the AU Commission head, who was standing for a second term.

An estimated $50-billion is exported out of the African continent illegally every year, former president Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday. Mbeki was speaking at the launch of a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) high level panel in Johannesburg. The panel, chaired by Mbeki, would investigate illicit and financial flows of finance out of the continent.

Senegalese riot police fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets at stone-throwing demonstrators after prayers at a mosque in Dakar on Sunday, in fresh violence a week before presidential elections. Rescue workers took away one man who was unconscious after being hit by a rubber bullet, an Agence France-Presse journalist witnessed. It was the latest violence in days of urban clashes between police and protesters trying to defy a ban and hold demonstrations against 85-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade's plan to run for a third term in office.

Top United Nations officials say 10 million people need help amid a food crisis in West Africa's Sahel region. UN Development and Humanitarian chiefs Helen Clark and Valerie Amos called Saturday for greater humanitarian response to the crisis that effects eight countries, including Niger.

Police are detaining leading Senegalese rappers Simon and Kilifeu as nationwide protests continue to rock the West African state. The security personnel Friday fired tear gas as well as rubber bullets to disperse pro-opposition demonstrators, comprised mainly of rappers called Y en a marre (enough of it). Simon and Kilifeu were arrested after they managed to surface in the city centre at the head of dozens of their colleagues, after they bypassed several points manned by armed riot police.

Key Somalia groups have reached an agreement on a number of pending transitional government tasks, including a federal structure for a future government and representation in parliament. Delegates from the presidency, cabinet and the parliament of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government met representatives from the authorities of Puntland, Galmudug and moderate Islamist group Ahlu Sunna wal-Jamea for three days in Garowe town to hammer out a final deal.

Hundreds of villagers and town residents of Liberia’s Grand Cape Mount Country have attracted nationwide attention in their bid to recover what they say is land seized from them and turned over to a Malaysian agro-industrial concern. A petition sent to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s office in January by the aggrieved people’s political representatives demanded the return of their land.

Egypt's first presidential elections since a popular uprising ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak a year ago will be held in the first week of June, officials were quoted as saying on Sunday. 'The election will start in the first days of June and will end in the last week of June if there is a run-off,' Ahmed Shams El-Din, a member of the presidential election committee told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. The head of the electoral committee Faruq Sultan told a press conference on Sunday that hopefuls can register for the election starting from March 10 to April 8.

Planners in the Egyptian military want to boost the old defense-industrial complex by cultivating new smaller scale projects that partner the Egyptian armed forces with a diverse portfolio of second- and third-tier foreign defense manufacturers.

A Harare court on Wednesday 15 February dismissed an acquittal application by a group of activists arrested a year ago for watching footage of the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. The six, including former MDC-T MP Munyaradzi Gwisai, were among more than 40 people arrested last February after watching the video at an academic meeting, which was raided by police. After their initial arrest some in the group, including Gwisai, were tortured in police cells and kept in solitary confinement at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare for weeks.

The emergence of presidential candidates like 27-year-old Ms Kingwa Kamenchu and Ms Martha Karua suggests a departure from the past and mirrors the yearnings and aspirations of the youth and women for an end to politics-as-usual.

Was the ANC’s decision disciplining or silencing the ANC Youth League? asks Zama Ndlovu on the Mail and Guardian blog Thought Leader. 'Before Julius Malema entered the political scene, there was very little public discourse on the acute socio-economic issues faced by a growing number of young South Africans today. After 18 years of political freedom, more than half of South Africans under the age of 25 remain unemployed – among the highest jobless rates in the world.'

According to the Tanzania government, the three-day floods that hit Dar es Salaam from 20-23 December claimed 39 lives. However, the figure is disputed by eyewitnesses who are putting the death toll to over 100. The floods have left numerous questions over the government’s ability to deal with, among others, natural and other disasters. While the government treated the problem as a natural disaster, there is massive evidence that the floods could have been avoided if successive Tanzanian governments had played their part effectively.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Eldoret North MP William Ruto exchanged angry words in Parliament recently over the implementation of the Constitution and the trial of the Ocampo Four at The Hague. Facing-off from opposite sides of the Chamber, the former political allies traded words on campaign propaganda and the reasons for the International Criminal Court taking two cases related to 2008 post election violence. Speaker Kenneth Marende was forced to intervene.