There is no longer any doubt that targeted killing of ‘terrorists’ has become official US policy, writes Crossed Crocodiles. ‘Terrorist’ is evolving to mean anyone who questions the US quest to control oil and other natural resources or who opposes global capitalism.

Following the Ethiopian elections of 2005, scores of unarmed men, women and children were massacred by state security personnel. Alemayehu G Mariam pays tribute to these martyrs for freedom and calls on all Ethiopians to reflect on their sacrifice.

The US has once again succeeded in imposing an illegal and repressive puppet government in Haiti in blatant disregard of the will of the people, writes Nia Imara. But there is still hope that, with collective struggle and a vision, change can occur.

As DRC prepares for its third presidential election on 28 November, Antoine Roger Lokongo cautions that external interests in the country’s vast mineral wealth mean that a genuine democracy owned by the Congolese people is likely to remain elusive.

Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has

Kenya's newly-constituted Supreme Court on Tuesday 15 November refused to rule on a date for next year's elections, stoking voter unease over moves by the government to amend a polling timeline already endorsed by a referendum. Under the constitution adopted last year, Kenya was due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 August 2012, the first polls since a disputed vote in 2007 after which more than 1,220 people were killed and 350,000 displaced. The post-election violence is being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

After 23 October elections to the Tunisian Constituent Assembly, strikes have broken out in numerous sectors, including airport, postal and oil workers, against poor wages and working conditions. These strikes underscore popular opposition to the entire political establishment, which has still not succeeded in assembling a government based on the elections, says The 23 October poll gave the right-wing Islamist party Ennahda the most seats in the 217-member Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly is tasked with drafting a new constitution and appoint an interim government.

Britain is being urged to help close down a legal loophole that lets financiers known as 'vulture funds' use courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries. The call came from international poverty campaigners as one of the vulture funds was poised to be awarded a $100m (£62m) debt payout against the Democratic Republic of the Congo after taking action in the Jersey courts. Vulture funds legally buy up worthless debt when countries are at war or suffering from a natural disaster and defaulting on their sovereign debt. Once the country has begun to stabilise, vulture funds cash in their cheap debt deeds, at massively inflated cost to the countries.

Zambia’s recently elected government is to double royalties on copper mines, it announced as it unveiled its 2012 budget, which aims to back its election pledge of distributing more equitably the southern African state’s mineral wealth. Alexander Chikwanda, finance minister, said he proposed to increase the mineral royalty rate to 6 per cent from 3 per cent for base metals, including copper, and from 5 per cent for precious metals.

Regional leaders meeting for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Angola cornered President Robert Mugabe and told him Zimbabwe could not hold elections without reforms that would guarantee free and fair elections. He was also told last week the region would not accept violent elections. Mugabe suffered a double blow at the summit after his plan to have South African president Jacob Zuma toppled as facilitator to the Zimbabwe crisis was thrown out by SADC leaders, who felt Zuma had done well in trying to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis.

Partly inspired by the Arab Spring, partly by their own experiences of living abroad, but mostly by what they say is utter frustration about the huge inequalities that divide Angola, an emerging youth protest group has no fixed political affiliations and no formal leadership, says this IPS article. Starting off with just a dozen people, their support base has grown rapidly, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, and in October they mobilised some 700 people to walk down a main street in Luanda carrying placards saying 'Down with the dictator' and '32 years is too long'. Pedro Seabra, a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security in Lisbon said: 'Angola is still a very long way off from any sort of Arab Spring but these protests are very new for Angola and very significant. Things are definitely staring to change.'

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale’s support for African National Congress (ANC) Youth League president Julius Malema may see his presidential ambitions collapse as he is frozen out of the camps of both President Jacob Zuma and those seeking to oust him. Mr Malema, who faces suspension of five years from the ANC, is likely to sink Mr Sexwale’s aspirations and those of many senior politicians if he fails in his desperate campaign to retain his membership. Mr Malema’s known backers include ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, Sport Minister Fikile Mbalula, former MP Tony Yengeni, veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mr Sexwale, Northern Cape chairman John Block, and Limpopo Premier Cassel Mathale.

National planning commission chairperson Trevor Manuel has handed over a development plan to President Jacob Zuma that deals with nine national issues that the commission has identified as the country's top priorities. The nine challenges are: Too few people work; The standard of education for most black learners if of poor quality; Infrastructure is poorly located, under-maintained and insufficient to foster higher growth; Special patterns exclude the poor from the fruits of development; The economy is overly and unsustainably resource intensive; A widespread diseased burden is compounded by a failing public health system; Public services are uneven and often of poor quality, Corruption is widespread, South Africa remains a divided society. Visit this Mail and Guardian plan to download the full 430-page plan.

South African exports to Europe - a major trading partner - had been hit hard not only by the slump in demand associated with the euro-zone debt crisis, but also by the volatility of the rand, which undermined the competitiveness of local enterprises, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has said. The shaky outlook for exports to Europe could contribute to lower economic growth in the coming year, torpedoing the government’s ambitious plans to boost job creation and reduce poverty. The Treasury cut the economic growth forecast for this year to 3,1 per cent in the medium term budget policy statement last month, and its expectations of it rising to 3,4 per cent next year could prove too optimistic if Europe’s debt crisis pulls that continent into a recession.

Equatorial Guineans voted Sunday in a referendum on a new constitution that would limit presidential terms to two and strengthen the small oil state's democracy. The opposition has branded the vote a 'masquerade' because the text does not make clear whether President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa's longest-serving leader, will have to step down when his term ends in 2016. Obiang, who currently chairs the African Union, is on an offensive to win himself a clean bill of health on the international scene and reverse his country's reputation as one of Africa's most corrupt and autocratic.

Liberia’s main opposition leader has rescinded his decision to work with the newly-elected government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and called for a rerun of the runoff. Mr. Winton Tubman told a press conference in Monrovia on Saturday evening that his party refuses to recognise the results of the second round polls which he described as a 'political masquerade'. The surprise declaration comes barely two days after he pledged to work with the newly-elected government of President Sirleaf 'in the interest of national unity'.

This map shows where UN Peacekeeping is currently assisting with elections and where they have recently assisted.

Sub-saharan Africa’s business regulatory environment, Cameroon and Liberia’s wasted potential, Eritrean politics and appropriate state models for Somalia are among the topics featured in this week’s review of African blogs, by Dibussi Tande.

Two Spaniards and an Italian working at a refugee camp in western Algeria were kidnapped in October. Malainin Lakhal?? writes about how Morocco has used the kidnappings in their propaganda against The Polisario Front.

I'm writing to inform you that I was elected vice president of the African Union’s ECOSOCC at its fourth General Assembly, on 1 November 2011 in Nairobi.

This election is certainly an honour, but it is also a great responsibility and I invite you all to join me to ensure the mission’s full success!

The challenges in Africa are enormous and we need as a society to play our part in the construction of our continent. Africa needs all her daughters and sons!