As the November climate talks in South Africa approach, the World Bank continues to be overshadowed by past and prospective loans for fossil-fuel power plants. An October report by the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (KIPRED) and US NGO Sierra Club has sharply criticised the Bank’s cost projections for a proposed lignite-fired power plant outside the Kosovan capital Pristina, which the Bank is considering funding. Meanwhile, the Bank has approved $250 million for renewable energy projects in South Africa, due to host the Durban climate talks, part of a widely-criticised $3.75 billion loan mainly targeted to the country‘s Medupi coal-fired plant.

Hundreds of families who sought refuge from post-election violence in Ivory Coast at a church compound in the western town of Duékoué have started returning to their communities, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. At the height of the violence in April up to 25,000 people were staying in and around the Catholic Mission in Duékoué, about 400 km west of Abidjan, which aid groups described as overcrowded and lacking the sanitation facilities to host such a population. Security improvements in western Ivory Coast have encouraged many displaced persons to consider returning to villages, with many families excited at the prospect of returning home, IOM said.

The list of candidates for Ivory Coast's parliamentary election closed on Monday with 1,182 candidates vying for 255 seats, but the former ruling FPI party boycotted the process, the election commission said. The FPI ran the country while leader Laurent Gbagbo was president from 2000 until earlier this year.

Jacob Zuma's spokesman Mac Maharaj stands accused of receiving millions in bribes from French weapons maker Thales, the company that will be at the centre of the government's arms deal inquiry next year. A two-month Sunday Times investigation has uncovered a paper trail that leads from the arms company to Maharaj and his wife Zarina. Schabir Shaik, Zuma's former financial adviser who was convicted of corruption in the arms deal trial, was the conduit used by Thales to channel the money to Zarina Maharaj.

President Bingu wa Mutharika failed to give a comprehensive answer on the diplomatic stand-off between Malawi and Zambia arising from a 2007 deportation of Zambia’s President Michael Sata when he was opposition leader then. The Head of State accused journalists in the country of concentrating on backbiting and gossiping instead of concentrating on developmental issues. Ruling party functionaries booed journalists at the press conference and some intimidated them.

Protesters calling for Egypt's military to hand over power have beaten back a new raid by security forces to evict them from Cairo's Tahrir Square after more than 48 hours of violence in the heart of the Egyptian capital. Security forces fired tear gas and attacked a makeshift field hospital on Monday morning, while protesters broke up pavements to hurl chunks of concrete at police. Egypt's health ministry says at least 22 people have been killed and 1,500 wounded in clashes between government forces and protesters in Cairo and other cities since Saturday, raising concerns over the conduct of parliamentary elections due to begin on 28 November.

It will take two centuries for sub-Saharan Africa to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, according to NGO WaterAid, which calls on national leaders to commit 3.5 per cent of their annual budget to the sector. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are being sidelined as governments concentrate on health and education, says the WaterAid report. Meanwhile, people’s lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation services is holding back social and economic development in the region, costing around 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) every year.

The world-turned-upside-down of the European debt crisis reached a new extreme last week when Europe came pleading for lucre where it once only seized it: Africa. The hands-out visit of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho of Portugal to its former colony Angola was a milestone of sorts. 'Angolan capital is very welcome,' Mr. Passos Coelho said in Luanda, the capital city. That may be an understatement: the former colony’s cash could be essential as Portugal is forced to sell off state-owned companies after a bailout this year, reports the New York Times.

The Global Fund has denied Uganda $270m (about Sh700b) needed to put over 100,000 more people on lifesaving ARVs because the country’s policies are deemed harsh on sexual minorities. The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created to dramatically increase resources to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need. The Uganda government’s New Vision newspaper reported today that the Aids control manager in the Ministry of Health, Dr Zainab Akol, had said the rights of minorities were derailing the fight against HIV/Aids.

The President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, intends to pull Ghana out of the International Monetary Fund in a final bid to end moves by the Christine Largarde-led funding agency to suffocate the US$3 billion loan the NDC government wants from the China Development Bank (CDB). With just a little over a year left of its four-year mandate, and following what appears to be deep-seated challenges that have crippled the roundly marketed STX housing project, analysts say the Mills government badly needs huge foreign capital injection if it is to honour a string of mouth-watering campaign promises on whose back it rode to political power in January 2009.

Swaziland's government has failed to pay more than $10m (£6.3m) in grants to Aids orphans because of its financial crisis, an IMF official has said. Swaziland has the world's highest HIV/Aids rate, leaving some 69,000 orphans. The IMF's Joannes Mongardini said the government should cut its wage bill to ease its financial crisis.

Ghana will seek to boost revenues from its mining industry next year by hiking taxes, according to a text of the 2012 budget delivered to parliament. The corporate tax rate on miners will increase to 35 per cent from 25 per cent and a separate 10 per cent tax on windfall profits will be introduced, according to the text.

thedailynewsegypt.com has a useful article on Egypt's election system. The first parliamentary elections following the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak are expected to attract an electorate that traditionally boycotted elections. Over 18 million Egyptians voted in a referendum in March, an indication of voter confidence in a new era free of the rigging and electoral fraud that tainted the previous one. However, voters are concerned that they will find it difficult to figure out the system, which could ultimately spoil their vote.

A report published by the UNFCCC’s expert panel shows that coal power plants that receive climate finance through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) may receive millions of artificial carbon credits under current rules. CDM Watch and Sierra Club call on the CDM Executive Board to exclude this project type from the CDM at the upcoming climate change conference in Durban. 'The study results show unequivocally that coal projects do not belong in the CDM,' says Eva Filzmoser from CDM Watch. 'We are now calling on all decision makers to act swiftly and decisively to stop these harmful projects from receiving revenue from the CDM, a mechanism whose aim is to deliver "clean development".'

Marieme Helie Lucas critiques appearing in Issue 557 of Pambazuka News. She praises the author’s analysis but also points out that some important happenings are missing and some erroneous statements and assumptions were made.

Richard Pithouse reflects on the recent five-year suspension of the outspoken South African president of the African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, and sees in the disciplinary action traces of the powerful ANC’s hostility to popular organisation outside of its control.

We have no stereos
Droning love ballads
To lull us from our reality
The only music we
Know is the wordless symphony
Of the buzzing stars
The bright eye of the night
Candles our hope
We don’t know
Various shades
Of lamps and globes but
We know the colour
Of the moon
The only show
Our eyes can
Afford us is
The flaunt
Of the rising sun &
The display
Of the falling night...

Cash for dictators, sabotaged food production and enforced trade liberalisation: Leslie Mullin explains how USAID has undermined Haitian development.

In an article written on the eve of the country’s elections last month, Marieme Helie Lucas explores ‘what women have to lose, should fundamentalists come to power in Tunisia.’

‘Despite the neocolonialist excuses of humanitarian motives, the real motivations’ for Gaddafi’s assassination ‘keep popping up’, writes Nana Akyea Mensah. But 'where is the international outrage and condemnation'?