The struggle for democracy and democratisation in Angola involve far more than removing Jose Eduardo dos Santos, argues Horace Campbell.

Civil society organisations from around the world released a report at the Durban climate talks that highlights the contradictions inherent in the World Bank Group’s presence at the talks. While the Bank seeks a leading role in climate finance, it has been unable to finalize an energy strategy and continues to finance dirty energy projects. The report titled, 'Unclear on the Concept: How Can the World Bank Group Lead on Climate Finance without an Energy Strategy?' finds that 'in spite of its climate-friendly rhetoric, the WBG continues to disproportionately fund dirty energy projects. In fact, nearly half of energy lending - more than US$15 billion - went to fossil fuels over the past four years.'

AIDC has organised a series of activities at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, between 1-6 December.

Civil society groups say the Durban conference is shaping up as a clash of paradigms between those who believe that the world needs a science- and rules-based multilateral climate system and those who are seeking to dismantle the existing one.

While NATO and its allies have claimed that Libya is fully capable of handling the trials of former regime loyalists, Franklin Lamb argues that the case of Saif al Islam Gadhafi is too critical to put this to the test.

The liberal democratic model imperialist-capitalist countries seek to universalise is 'essentially meant to rationalise, justify and protect and defend private capitalist property' in order to 'reproduce the system of class exploitation,' argues Issa G. Shivji.

A cross-party parliamentary group is urging the Tanzanian government to prosecute those guilty of corruption or bribery over the sale of a BAE Systems air traffic control package. The company, despite not being found guilty of corruption, has agreed to pay nearly £30m compensation to Tanzania. The International Development Committee also wants any others involved in the deal to face prosecution.

Over the past week, it's been hard to find articles not looking at the DRC elections through the lens of fear and/of violence. This is in contrast to how Congolese citizen journalists have reported on the elections on their blogs, in their local papers, or on their facebook pages, says blog Africa is a Country. For reports by local journalists outside Kinshasa, read Now AfriCAN (North Kivu), Local Voices (Bunyakiri, South Kivu), Mutaani FM (also in Kivu), Radio Okapi (MONUSCO’s website and radio channel) and Le Congo.

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has revealed corruption at the heart of the judiciary and ordered a stop to construction of court buildings until an audit is done. He took journalists on a tour of the Milimani courts, opened only in February, but which have in some instances degenerated with collapsed ceiling and malfunctioning locks. The cost of refurbishing the former income tax department building shot from Sh600 million to Sh1 billion and it took eight years to be completed - after a three-year delay.

to not want some say
that is where freedom lies
to be always in the moment
some say that is where freedom lies

there is no freedom some say

some say our world is defined
by one creator who has
determined the rules and
regulations that confine our fate
and only inside those boundaries
and under those laws
can the skeleton of freedom be found

some say freedom has no borders
some say freedom has no form
to be fully alive is freedom some say
only in death lies freedom some say

death is an eternal reward or punishment
there is no freedom some say
only a choice of good or evil

freedom some say is the wind
some say freedom is a dream

only those who have never
known freedom
doubt its existence
all others keep trying to know
it again and again

President Paul Biya’s regime has deeply disillusioned the Cameroonian people, writes Peter Wuteh Vakunta. But Biya will not be president forever, so the challenge for Cameroonians is to look beyond the failed leadership and begin to imagine a new future for themselves.

Moustapha Kassé
African youth are determined to press ahead for democratic change and have become a new force on the political scene. They form the bulk of the various protest movements and often are the organisers. They are a force to reckon with, notes Moustapha Kasse, but while they reject the political establishment as lacking credibility, they do not have an alternative proposal for the future. Kasse suggests a possible framework of demands they could use to further their aspirations and demands.

*****

Senegal : In the Republic of illusions, the master has lost his magic
Amy Niang
There is a deep sense of betrayal in Senegal – writes Amy Niang – where an erstwhile liberator has turned executioner and is trying to snuff out the peoples’ desire for liberty. The people feel profoundly let down by Abdoulaye Wade in whom they had placed so much hope and who, at the tail end of his rule, is destroying what little hope remains of leaving a positive legacy.

*****

Operation Exodus: Europeans are drooling over Africa and the diaspora?
Jean Paul Pougala
While Europe sinks deeper in crisis, Africa is increasingly looking like a top investment destination with so much of its wealth and resources as yet unexploited. The double-digit growth rate in some countries is an indicator that Africa is on the eve of its economic take-off. This is the time, says Jean Paul Pougala, for the diaspora to return and participate in the construction of the future.

*****

Cameroon: a devious kind of violence in education
Aîssa Ngatansou Doumara
In Cameroon’s extreme north, fathers prevent their daughters from going to school. Aissa Ngatansou Doumara describes the daily struggle to change mindsets that make tyrants out of protectors and prevent young girls from realising their potential.

*****

The challenge of three billion people in Africa
Maurice Oudet
On October 31 2011, world population hit the seven billion mark according to the UN. Africa, which has the highest birth rate in the world, already has more than a billion people. This demographic evolution is a huge challenge for the world and for Africa writes Maurice Oudet.

Voting is under way across the Democratic Republic of Congo where presidential and legislative elections are expected to provide a stern challenge to President Joseph Kabila's leadership. More than 31 million people are eligible to vote on Monday in the country's second elections since the end of the conflict-stricken country's devastating war in 2002, with some 19,000 candidates competing for 500 legislative seats, while 11 candidates are vying for the presidency.

Millions of Egyptians are expected to head to voting polls Monday, in Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since the uprising that toppled the former Hosni Mubarak regime earlier this year. A sum of 70 people died and over 3,000 were injured in fighting leading up to the poll. Protesters demanded an end to military rule and a transition of power to civil elected authority. The week long protests brought down the cabinet.

This study provides a simple cost-benefit analysis of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between African countries and the European Union. It compares the costs of signing an EPA - measured as tariff revenue losses, versus the 'gains' of signing an EPA - measured as duties African countries would avoid paying if they were to export to the EU market under the EU’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) scheme. The paper shows that even with this simple cost-benefit analysis (looking only at one dimension of the costs), for most African countries, the tariff revenue losses are higher than the duties at the EU border if there is no EPA.

Libya's former rebels are holding some 7,000 detainees, many of them sub-Saharan Africans, without access to due legal process after the country's civil war, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in a new report. Ban cited reports that some detainees had been tortured, that some people had been targeted because of their skin color, that women were held under male supervision without female guards and that children were being detained alongside adults.

Gambia's election commission has declared incumbent President Yahya Jammeh winner of elections, paving the way for him to begin a new five-year term in the West African country. Jammeh, who has been in power for 17 years, scored a landslide 72 per cent victory, according to results read out on Friday by Alhagie Mustapha Carayol, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission. The vote was regionally criticised as it was marred by intimidation of voters and the opposition.

The Party of Justice and Development (PJD), a moderate Islamic party has taken a resounding victory in Morocco's parliamentary elections, Taib Cherkaoui, the country's interior minister, has announced. Cherkaoui told a press conference on Saturday that PJD had won 80 seats from 288 seats announced out of the 395 up for grabs in the nationwide vote. That is nearly double the 45 seats won by Prime Minister Abbas el Fassi's Independence Party which finished second and has headed a five-party coalition government since 2007.

Nationally, Zimbabwe is more food secure at the end of 2011 than it has been for several years. However, parts of Zimbabwe suffered serious crop failure earlier this year and a million people are still predicted to need supplementary feeding. In Gwanda, Matabeleland South, the authors of this study by the Solidarity Peace Trust found that almost half of households indicated a day without food in the recent past.

'The Freedom of Expression Institute wish to register our disappointment in the ruling ANC for voting in favour of the bill in its current form. We are particularly disappointed since the ruling party promised more consultation on the bill when the bill was withdrawn from parliament a few weeks ago.'