It’s Cairo, Casablanca & Cape Town
Addis, Abuja & Accra
Ouagadougou, Timbuktu & Antananarivo
Lagos, Lomé, Lusaka & Lalibela
 
Its peace and turmoil
Order and chaos
Evolution and revolution
Anarchy and regulation
Innovation and duplication
Progress and retreat
Static and constant change...

As a means to reduce conflict and fulfil its citizens’ hopes, South Sudan’s key challenges revolve around the development of an inclusive, residency-based citizenship, writes Christopher Zambakari.

Following a day of protest on 20 July and a violent government crackdown that left 20 dead, Steve Sharra reflects on the lack of debate in Malawi.

African prosperity relies on a wholesale rejection of the Western free trade model, which was not the view of David Cameron or the delegates he travelled with on a recent trip to Africa.

For the past three decades, neoliberalism has insisted that ‘there is no alternative’ to semi-colonialism and the diktats of the IMF and World Bank. But, writes Senegal’s Guy Marius Sagna, our people ‘have enough common sense to understand that things have to change’.

‘South Africa became the regional economic powerhouse that it is today partly on the backs of immigrant labourers from the SADC who helped build the country’s economy. Is it unreasonable for people to want to share in the fruits of what they helped create?’ asks Mandisi Majavu.

Will there be an end to impunity and the cultivation of the rule of law and justice for the Kenya people? Beth Maina Ahlberg writes about the fresh winds blowing through the Kenyan judiciary and the vested interests wanting to maintain the status quo.

Eveliina Lytinen reports back on a roundtable discussion about the exclusion of internally displaced persons from protection and assistance, during the recent International Association for the Study of Forced Migration conference in Uganda.

A group of civil society organisations have issued a statement that requests that the government removes the restrictions imposed on civil society organisations and human rights activists in order to enable these actors to contribute to the change called for by the revolution and in implementing a peaceful transition of power towards a civil government freely elected by the people.

Existing ‘normative social, political and legal structures do not support’ internally displaced persons and ‘their quest to own and have access to properties or land’, writes Denis Barnabas Otim, in an exploration of the relationship between IDPs and property rights in Africa.

Acronyms used to conceptualise transitional justice and forced displacement can have negative political consequences when deployed to understand situations and inform interventions, observes Adam Branch, as ‘people start to take that acronym for uncontested reality, forgetting the words that make it up’.

Berna Ataitom makes the case for the local integration of refugees in their host countries, describing it as the forgotten yet ultimate solution.

Uganda has had a turbulent history of nation-building, with identity often rooted in ethnicity rather than notions of citizenship, notes Annelieke van de Wiel. This year’s International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) conference gave rise to numerous discussions on the need for the country to face up to its past and develop an inclusive Ugandan identity, van de Wiel writes.

A gallery of images from Hossam el-Hamalawy and published on the London Guardian website illustrates how a protest march towards army headquarters in Cairo ended in violence.

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has said it is worried by the rate at which state security agencies are arresting citizens on charges of insulting President Robert Mugabe, whose cases the organisation is receiving every day. 'One of the most fascinating things at ZLHR is that everyday we are getting a case of a person being charged with the law of insulting President. If you say anything critical especially mentioning governance and in particular current President you are likely to spend a night in jail, and that to me is a symptomatic of a country which is not ready to accept democracy. Democracy in its own allows citizens to freely express themselves without fearing for what will happen after.'

After being filed two weeks ago, it is now only a matter of time before the MP for Gaborone Central, Dumelang Saleshando, presents a motion of no confidence in President Ian Khama and his government. Because the motion is not likely to pass, Saleshando intends to use it to highlight the shortcomings of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government under Khama, whom he considers unfit for office. Speaking in an interview, Saleshando blamed the recent public service strike on Khama, saying as unions bargained with the employer, the president had seen fit to tour the country vowing that there would be no salary increase.

Several key Malawi leaders of last week's anti-government protests are in hiding after President Bingu wa Mutharika threatened to arrest them following the deadly riots, a leading rights activist said. 'The leaders have received death threats from unknown people. They are in hiding for their personal safety and that of their families after the President said he would arrest them,' Moses Mkandawire, one of the main organisers of the protests in the northern city of Mzuzu, said.

Government departments have been called upon to cut their 2011/2012 budgets by 25 per cent. According to Bheki Bhembe who is Director of Budget and Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, meetings with the ministries on the issue are underway. 'We have issued Circular No.3 of 2011 to cut ministries’ budgets by 25 per cent. We are meeting them to look at reducing their budgets hoping to reduce level of commitment going forward,' he said. He noted that the reality of the government financial crisis has hit home with the ministries and they are cooperating.

Mali's majority party, the Malian Alliance for Democracy (ADEMA), picked Parliament Speaker Dioncounda Traore as its presidential candidate for April 2012 polls, a party official said Saturday. ADEMA holds 54 of 147 seats in parliament and has dominated the chamber since former president Alpha Oumar Konare was elected in 1992.

At least 38 soldiers have been arrested over an assassination attempt on president Alpha Conde of Guinea, who was nearly killed last Tuesday when his home was bombarded with rockets. An official of the Guinean government told the AP news agency on Thursday that many of the men arrested have ties to Guinea's previous military rulers. Conde, 73, escaped unhurt from the incident, but a member of his presidential guard was killed and two others injured as they fought off the attack for over two hours.