Anna Tibaijuka, until recently the executive director of the UN Habitat, has been appointed to the Tanzanian cabinet. Chambi Chachage writes to her and offers some sage advice.

Sokari Ekine is in Haiti for the next four weeks and will be sending regular updates to Pambazuka. During her stay she will be meeting with women community organisers and members of youth groups with a view to documenting their work. Much has been written about the situation in the camps and neighbourhoods such as Cité Soleil and Bel Air, as well as those children and parents involved in SOPUDEP.

Calling for greater recognition of the fact that ‘globalised’ action ignores the diversity of cultural, social, political and economic factors around the world, Fungai Machirori underlines that ‘we have to realise that when we talk gender and development, we are talking about human beings.’

South African poet and writer Rustum Kozain reviews ‘The Uprising of Hangberg’, Dylan Valley and Aryan Kaganof's portrayal of two days of violence in Cape Town. Watch a . This article first appeared on the website of The Africa Report.

Twenty-two years after the first World AIDS Day, it’s time to acknowledge that African governments have officially ‘disappeared’ the existence of three highly vulnerable populations - sex workers, people who inject drugs, and gay and other men who have sex with men (MSM). It’s time for the denial to stop, urges Joel Nana.

I am here
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The Oak tree

Trade ministers from the East African Community (EAC) economic bloc plan to continue trade talks with the European Union despite missing a November deadline, a top Kenyan official said. David Nalo, permanent secretary to Kenya’s East African Community Affairs ministry, told Reuters he expected the negotiations to last another year. 'Ministers of Trade in Arusha have agreed to engage with (the European Commission) and complete the negotiations that will lead to the signing of a full EPA,' Nalo said by telephone.

Kenya and South Africa signed agreements last Friday aimed at improving commercial relations between the two regional economic powerhouses before a planned visit by President Jacob Zuma next year. The deals were sealed during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to east Africa’s biggest economy. He said his trip was to create a better environment for businessmen to trade freely between the two countries.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that African countries should set up a special fund for infrastructural development to accelerate productivity and growth on the continent. He suggested a $100 billion fund that will be guaranteed by the governments to address inadequacies in roads, power and transport, stressing that there must be regional co-operation to tackle the challenges of development in Africa.

This case study describes some of the methods and activities developed by the Relay programme, which provides training and facilitates relationship-building among key stakeholders to support more in-depth, research-informed media coverage of complex, under-reported or misreported development. It describes how the methods and activities were applied in Kenya to the issue of tax and governance. Ultimately, the case study aims to inform the work of a broad group of actors, including researchers, communication specialists, media development practitioners, infomediaries, editors and media managers, as well as organisations interested in funding initiatives to improve research-informed development.

Two Egyptian opposition pages on the social network site Facebook were deleted ahead of Egypt's parliamentary election on Sunday then restored after discussions with the site's administrators, web activists who run the pages said on Friday. The activists said they suspected the Egyptian government had played a role in the disappearance of the pages, possibly by covertly bombarding Facebook with complaints about the pages that resulted in their removal, but offered no evidence to support the allegation.

Namibia's ruling party overwhelmingly won last weekend's local and regional elections, claiming 92 per cent of constituencies in regional voting, officials announced late last Monday. The South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo), which has ruled Namibia since independence in 1990, won 98 out of 107 constituencies in the regional vote, state broadcaster Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) said.

Rights groups contested on Monday an official turnout of 25 per cent in an Egyptian parliamentary election that was marred by opposition charges of ballot stuffing, bullying and trickery. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) always deals heavy defeats to its opponents but the two-round elections are being watched for the space given to the government's critics and clues to the NDP's strategy in a 2011 presidential vote.

'The crazy old man' - this apparently is how South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoane Mashabane, branded Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, according to a US embassy cable from Pretoria to Washington. It is part of the first batch of 250,000 US embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks and which were published by major newspapers around the world, including The Guardian in Britain and the New York Times.

There will be little surprise in the results of Egypt's elections today, says the latest edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin, as the ruling party has taken all the repressive steps necessary to ensure that it will have no problem in winning. But, says Egyptian human rights analyst Bahey Eldin Hassan, there will be four significant battles to watch: the legitimacy battle, the battle to monitor, the media battle, and the extent of violence. Opposition to the regime is widespread and growing, although its expression at the polls will be limited. Judges, bloggers, Facebook groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, and supporters of opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Commission all represent stirrings in Egyptian society that will likely be significant for the future, despite their exclusion from political power.

At least three people have been killed in the Cote d'Ivoire capital Abidjan when police opened fire on a crowd, despite efforts to maintain calm before Sunday's presidential run-off. Phillipe Mangou, the army chief of staff general, said on Saturday that a night-time curfew would take effect from Saturday through to the end of Wednesday, citing scuffles between youths wielding sticks, machetes and guns in and around Abidjan. Ivorians voted on Sunday.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) participated in the 48th session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) which took place from 10 - 24 November 2010 in Banjul, The Gambia. During that session, OMCT, along with partner organisations, delivered several oral statements denouncing, among other serious violations of human rights, the occurrence of torture and ill-treatment in Africa, the use of the death penalty across the continent, and the lack of adequate cooperation between the African Commission and the NGOs in connection with the Commission’s country missions.

Y a-t-il un espoir pour les femmes du Burkina Faso de voir leurs droits respecter dans un pays plus sensible aux problèmes auxquels elles sont confrontées?

Le Protocole de Maputo a été adopté le 11 Juillet 2003 par la Conférence des Chefs d’Etats et de Gouvernement de l’U.A. réunie à Maputo au Mozambique. Par l’adoption du Protocole, les Etats Africains ont reconnu, que malgré la ratification par nombre d’entre eux des instruments juridiques relatifs aux droits des femmes, leur mise en œuvre continue de poser problème et les discriminations contenues dans les différents textes et dans les faits ainsi que les pratiques néfastes à l’égard des femmes persistent encore en Afrique.

With tensions coming to a head over the past two weeks, Morocco is once again under the international spotlight for its alleged illegal territorial occupation of Western Sahara. In the wake of a raid on the Sahrawi encampment of Gdeim Izik by Moroccan forces on Monday 8 November, Konstantina Isidoros argues that such ‘events shed illuminating insights into Morocco’s illegal occupation’.